Chapter 44 Blake
BLAKE
DESPITE OUR AGREEMENT TO KEEP it between us, we decide to do the unthinkable and tell the dads.
Not because we’re desperate for transparency but because morning sickness has descended on me like a swarm of locusts.
It hits out of nowhere the day after Wyatt and I have our conversation on the dock, turning my life into a state of pure misery.
Mom told me that when she was pregnant with me, she only felt nauseous at night. My nausea begins in the morning, and then (fun times) continues well into the afternoon, and then (lucky me) stretches out long past evening.
Pregnancy sucks.
Day one, we were able to convince my father that I had a twenty-four-hour stomach bug.
Day two of me marrying the toilet was harder, because he got worried and suggested we go to the emergency room. Mom convinced him it was probably a forty-eight-hour bug, then secretly drove to town and picked me up some pregnancy-safe stomach remedies. They didn’t help.
On day three, when Dad was ready to drive me to the ER himself, Wyatt and I finally called a family meeting.
Sixty seconds ago, we told my father and Wyatt’s parents about the pregnancy. Now we’re sitting on our respective deck chairs, awaiting the explosion.
It doesn’t come.
Dad and Garrett look at each other for a moment. Then they nod and turn back to us.
“Okay,” Dad says.
“All right,” Garrett says.
I wrinkle my forehead. “What’s happening right now?”
“You’re pregnant,” Dad tells me.
“Yes, I know that! I’m asking what’s happening here.” I wave my hand between them. “You two are cool with this?”
They shrug, which heightens my suspicion. Wyatt told me about that midnight boat ride my father forced him on. What if they take him out on the boat again?
“Please don’t drown him,” I blurt out.
Everyone startles.
“Honey,” Mom starts.
“No,” I cut in. “That’s totally what’s happening right now. Why they’re so calm about it.” I plead my case to Wyatt’s parents. “You can’t let him kill your son.”
“I’m not killing anybody!” Dad protests, doubling over with laughter.
“No, she’s right,” Wyatt says uneasily. “You guys are too calm. I don’t trust this.”
Wyatt’s mom eyes him curiously. “You’re pretty calm yourself.”
“Yeah, because like we just told you, we’re waiting until the scan before we make any decisions.”
Hannah nods. “And we’ll support whatever you two decide.”
Relief flickers through me. I wasn’t worried about Hannah, though. She’s levelheaded like my mom. Our dads are the crazy ones. And yet neither of the crazies looks bothered.
“Dad,” I say, “you can’t possibly be happy about this.”
“Happy?” He mulls it over. “Well. I can’t say that my twenty-one-year-old daughter having a baby was in my five-year plan for you. But…” He shrugs. “Things happen.”
“Things happen?” I echo. “What’s going on here?”
A gasp sounds from the phone in the center of the deck table. It’s Gigi. She’s back in Dallas, but Wyatt didn’t feel right telling their parents and not including his twin. I don’t blame him. If I had a sibling, I’d include them too.
“Oh my God,” Gigi says. “I know what’s happening. They want this.”
My gaze swings back to our dads.
“You are happy,” Gigi accuses. “Admit it.”
“Again, I don’t know if happy is the word I’d use,” Garrett says carefully. “But we sort of came to terms with it already.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Wyatt demands.
“It means once we accepted the relationship was happening whether we like it or not, we obviously talked through all the steps that might follow. Marriage, for one,” his dad says.
“We’re splitting the cost of the wedding,” mine pipes up. “That way, we have equal say.”
“You have no say,” Mom says in exasperation. “It’s their wedding.”
“There’s no wedding!” I interject, starting to get frustrated.
“Anyway, after the wedding, what naturally comes next is babies.” Dad gives me a reassuring look, which doesn’t reassure me in the slightest. “Don’t worry, sweet pea. We’ve already negotiated everything.”
Oh my God. I rub my forehead.
“Graham will come first in the hyphenated name. Graham-Logan. Because Grahams are always in first place,” Garrett explains.
“But Logans always come in clutch to get the job done,” Dad says smugly.
“If it’s a boy, Grahams have middle name rights.”
“If it’s a girl, Logans obviously.”
“And then the grandfather babysitting schedule will be—”
“Okay, we’ve heard enough,” Hannah interrupts while Gigi’s uncontrollable laughter floats out of the phone speaker.
“All right, guys,” chirps Wyatt’s twin. “I gotta get on a work call. But…maybe congratulations? Either way, Luke and I will keep this to ourselves. I promise.”
“Thanks, but I wasn’t worried about you or BIL blabbing,” Wyatt says before she disconnects. He turns to glare at his father. “You’re the one I’m worried about.”
“Yeah,” I chime in. “I know we have this whole incestuous family dynamic where everyone is up in everyone’s business, but I don’t want anyone to know. If we keep it, the pregnancy stays a secret until the first trimester’s over.”
Dad is stricken. “We can’t even tell Dean and Tuck?”
“Especially not Dean,” Wyatt grumbles.
Meanwhile, I’m tripping over the last thing I said. And the word if.
If we keep it.
We only told our families because I needed to explain why I’m throwing up every other minute, but now that we’ve brought them in on this fucked-up journey, it’s feeling a lot more real. Like maybe this isn’t an “if we keep it” situation anymore.
Maybe it’s when we keep it.