Chapter Fourteen-Andrea
I must’ve been dreaming.
That’s the only explanation.
Because one minute, I was standing in the middle of Carter & Cove, face to face with the man who wrecked my heart and rewired my body—his green-eyed mini-me clinging to his leg like a scene from a Tim Burton rendition of a Norman Rockwell painting—and the next?
I’m being ushered into his matte camo-painted SUV like I didn’t just blow up both our lives.
“You okay up there?” Remy asks, catching my gaze in the rearview mirror as he buckles Callie into a car seat with the kind of effortless competence that makes my heart ache.
“I, um, yeah,” I manage, easing into the passenger seat with my pulse in my ears and my babies doing somersaults under my ribs.
“She’s pwetty, Dad,” Callie whispers after a minute.
“Yep, Shortcake, she sure is,” Remy whispers, frowning.
My gaze returns to the sweet little girl’s, “You’re pretty, too.”
“Can I hold your hand?” Callie surprises me.
I turn my body slightly, startled.
Her little face is tipped up toward me, hopeful, unsure.
My heart lurches.
“Of course,” I whisper back, reaching across the console.
Her tiny fingers wrap around mine, warm and sticky from who knows what. And I hold on like she might float away otherwise.
This feels right somehow.
But still I want to cry because I didn’t know when I made my idiotic plans to become a mom on my own.
I didn’t know about Callie. I didn’t know that Remy had responsibilities, and that he took them seriously. It’s all my fault because I didn’t ask. Didn’t care. I just saw what I wanted, and I acted.
Selfishly. Like a greedy brat.
Callie lets go of my hand, asks for her book, and Remy moves to get it from a little backpack he has on the floor at her feet.
I move, facing forward in my seat once again, and really, that should have made me feel better.
But I don’t.
I can feel myself spiraling, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Oh my God, I’m a terrible person. I’m gonna be a terrible mother.
“We’re gonna grab dinner,” Remy says, matter-of-fact, pulling me from the brink of self-imposed destruction without even knowing it.
“Dinner?”
“Yeah. We eat first,” he says, with a pointed look at my now growling stomach, “then we’ll talk.”
Just like that, he makes the decisions.
No questions. No demands.
Just taking over.
Like he’d never stopped being the man who touched me like I was precious and growled in my ear like I was his.
I want to protest.
I should protest.
But instead, I let him drive us to some retro burger joint outside Roseland—where he tells me he bought a house. The restaurant is like one of those 1950s themed diners, complete with vinyl lined booths, neon lights, real milkshakes, and waitresses in cherry-red aprons.
Callie orders chicken tenders and a vanilla shake. Remy gets a burger the size of his head. I get one about half that size with sweet potato fries and coleslaw.
Mine also comes with a side of regret and one hell of a pickle.
Remy also orders a side of steamed broccoli.
“It’s good for you,” he mutters and pushes the dish at me.
God help me, I eat the broccoli because vitamins.
I’m halfway through dipping salty fries in my vanilla milkshake like a monster when exhaustion hits me hard.
It’s not just the food coma or the pregnancy.
It’s everything.
The past.
The secrets.
The reality that I am now undeniably tethered to the man sitting across from me—who keeps looking at me like he’s trying to figure me out.
Good luck, pal. I’ve known me for thirty-two years and I can’t even begin to understand my own actions or motivations.
The ride back is a blur of soft radio music, streetlights flashing past, and Callie singing off-key to some Disney tune in the backseat.
I barely register it when he parks at the top of a long, circular driveway, in front of a veritable mansion.
A few minutes later, I maybe hear the click of the seatbelt and hear Remy whisper as he helps me out of the car.
I turn into the heat of his body, wrapping my arms around his neck, and holding on to the dream that I’m here because he wants me, because he loves me.
He rumbles something against my hair. But I can’t make it out.
I feel something warm press against my temple.
Then, I’m out like a light.