14. Forrest
FOURTEEN
Forrest
The next two weeks passed in a complete blur.
My life had been stagnant for a very, very long time…and now, all of a sudden, everything was moving. Willa had arrived; we were working on getting her identification and safety from the Daleys with a lawyer; Stetson and Marlena were looking into Shepherd Daley’s criminal connections.
And now I was sitting in the lobby of a doctor’s office in San Antonio, waiting to see if Willa was healthy…and if she was pregnant.
In hindsight, it felt like sheer stupidity on my part.
When she’d walked into my bedroom that night and told me she couldn’t get pregnant, I’d believed her on instinct; I’d been making it a practice to trust her, given how many people had lied to her, how she hadn’t been heard for so long. So I’d come inside her.
Then I’d done it again.
And again.
And…again.
And it hadn’t occurred to me until we actually started playing at the prospect of it that it might actually be possible.
Shepherd Daley was a decrepit old asshole, and he’d only ever had five kids with four wives over the course of his entire adult life. The youngest of his kids was, according to Willa, fourteen.
Fourteen years without a child, even when he’d…I couldn’t even think of it. All the years she’d spent taking the blame for something wrong with him—
It made me sick.
And I wanted…
Fuck me. Sophie and I had always talked about kids, but it seemed so far away when we were still engaged, working through school, starting our business. It was a concept, not a reality.
Sitting in this doctor’s office, though?
This was real.
The lobby door opened and Willa came through.
She crossed to me, her brow furrowed, fingers twisting together in front of her, and we walked out together without saying anything, through the lobby and through the sliding doors and out into the San Antonio heat.
I waited until we were on the sidewalk away from the entrance before I looked at her.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. They ran…they ran some tests for STI’s? I’m all good on that front. And the doctor talked to me about what Daley did.” Her eyelashes fluttered. She still wasn’t looking at me. “They did bloodwork and a urine test too.”
I waited. Held my breath. My lungs were burning.
She looked over at me.
“That last one was positive.”
“What—”
“Faint positive,” she said. “For pregnancy. They can’t be sure—”
I reached out and gripped her hand. She went still.
And I was just…
I hadn’t expected it, hadn’t truly thought it was possible. I knew it was a longshot, figured we just needed to be safe.
But here she was.
Pregnant.
With my kid…proof that we were both getting out from under what had tried to bury us.
“We don’t have to keep doing this,” Willa was saying, shaking her head. “This—this thing between us—”
“Are you kidding?” I blurted out.
She watched me.
“Willa, I want this,” I said. “I’ve…never been more sure of anything in my life.”
“You do?”
“I didn’t know before you got the results, but I do now,” I said. “Please—let me take care of you—”
She flung her arms around my neck, heaving a sigh of relief. People were staring…I didn’t care.
She pulled back slightly. “It’s so fast, though. You’re sure?”
“Seems like it’s already happening…”
“Not definitely,” she shook her head. “There’s a chance it was a false positive.”
“And the bloodwork?”
“They said it’ll take 3-5 days.” She paused. “But…they did say it would have had to be from the past few weeks. It couldn’t be his. It would definitely be yours.”
I pulled her in again, tucking her head under my chin, against my chest. Her breath came steady and deep, her fingers curling in the cotton of my shirt.
Documentation. That was the thing. She had no ID, no birth certificate, no legal existence…and now she might be carrying my child. The lawyer was working on it but lawyers moved slow and Shepherd Daley was still four miles away and the bloodwork wasn’t back yet and—
“Marry me,” I breathed into her hair.
She pulled back and looked up at me, eyes wide.
“Forrest—”
“I know it’s so fast,” I said. “I know that’s…I know. I want you to be free in whatever way you need, I want to facilitate that however I can. But I also…” I paused. Tried again. “If you’re my wife, you have documentation. You have protection. You have—”
“Forrest.”
“I know it’s not romantic—”
“Forrest.” She put both hands on my face. “Ask me again. Not the practical version.”
I looked at her for a long moment.
“Willa June Pruitt,” I said. “Will you marry me?”
Her eyes went bright.
“Yeah,” she said. “Obviously. Yes.”
I pulled her into my arms and kissed her hard, truly not giving a damn if anyone saw us. I needed to be with her…needed to talk to her about what the future looked like. I wanted to do this. I also wanted to make sure she got whatever she wanted, that she would be able to reach for anything.
I would go anywhere with her if I had to.
She’d brought me back to life…and I was going to give her the life she deserved.