Chapter 24
24
GAbrIEL
I stand here with my hands clammy, my heart feeling like it’s beating out of my chest, the sounds of horns and sirens playing somewhere close. The door opens, but it feels like it’s opening an inch at a time, or maybe it’s just the nerves in my body knowing that right behind the door is my girl. The smile fills my face when the door slowly reveals her hair and then her face. She stands there in a jogging suit, wearing the cowboy boots I gave her. Her eyes are red like she was crying, and my heart contracts in my chest, but nothing, and I mean nothing, can wipe the smile off my face from seeing her. Her face, on the other hand, is filled with utter shock. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweetheart.” The minute I say the words, she puts her hand holding a stick to her mouth and covers the sob that rips right through her.
In the blink of an eye, my hand goes to my head to take off the cowboy hat she gave me. I step into her entrance and then wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her to me and picking her up. “Sweetheart,” I say softly.
“Are you really here?” she asks me, but instead of answering her, I bend my head to touch my lips to hers. I was planning on giving her a soft kiss, but after not having her for over six weeks, suddenly having her in my arms, the kiss goes from zero to a hundred. We both moan when our tongues meet. She wraps her arms around my neck, the sound of her stick falling on the top of my boot and then to the side as I hear the paper crumble from behind me. But it’s all outside noise, and nothing matters because I’m here, and she’s in my arms. She lets go of the kiss, placing her forehead on mine. “You are really, really here, Cowboy?” she questions softly, and I’ve never seen her more beautiful in my life.
“As real as can be.” I put her back down on her feet. “I know I should have called,” I start to say but then look down beside my foot, seeing the white stick with the purple cap looking up at me. That’s not a wand, that’s a pregnancy test. I look down at it and then look back up at Zara, my body bending to pick it up. “Um,” I say, looking at the two lines down the front. “Sweetheart?”
Her eyes go big. “Surprise,” she utters softly but then puts both hands at the side of her head.
“Is this?” I look at her and then the test, my body in shock. “Are you?”
“Pregnant,” she finishes the question for me. “According to that one”—she points at the test—“I think so.” She bends to pick up the paper that I heard behind me and holds it up. “But I have to check the other two.” She turns around and bolts from the door. My body is cemented to the middle of her entrance as I hear her boots click down somewhere in her house.
I swallow down the lump in my throat, feeling the back of my neck tingle. “Pregnant.” There is an echo in my ears, and I listen to the clicking of her boots coming closer and closer to me.
She reappears. “This one has a plus sign.” She holds up her right hand. “And this one says pregnant.” She holds up her left hand. She tries to swallow but then looks at me, her face going pale. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She drops both of them as she turns and runs away from me. I put the stick down on the table by the door, following her in the house, where I hear her dry heaving.
“Zara,” I call to her as I walk down the hallway.
“Don’t come in here!” she shouts before she dry heaves again. I obviously don’t listen to her as I walk into the bathroom. She is on her knees in front of the toilet. “I told you not to come in here.” She turns her head to the side to look at me.
“The door was open, so I could literally stand in the hall and still see you.”
“Well then, close the door,” she hisses before she closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth.
I look around, turning on the faucet before finding a facecloth and wetting it. I wring the water out of it before handing it to her. “Place that on the back of your neck,” I tell her, and she moves her hair to the side and places it on the back of her neck.
“Have you eaten today?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
“I ate this morning, but I felt nauseated after two bites, so I gave up.” She gets up from the floor, flushing the toilet. “Can I have a minute?” she asks, then looks at herself in the mirror. “Good God, I look?—”
“You look just as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than the first time I laid eyes on you and felt the earth shift under my feet,” I tell her, and she comes over and puts her forehead in the middle of my chest.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She looks up at me.
“How about you take a minute, and I’ll go and get you something to drink?” I suggest to her, and she nods. I bend down, kissing her neck before leaving her alone. I hear the water turn on as I walk down the hall in search of the kitchen.
Finally finding it after walking into the living room and thinking maybe it opens up to the kitchen, but I have to go past the staircase and around it. I spot flowers on the counter and try not to let them get to me. I haven’t spoken to her in six weeks, anything could have happened. Fighting back the need to take the flowers and throw them out the front door into the street, I open her fridge, finding it almost bare, containing just a couple of takeout containers. I then go to the pantry to see if she has any saltine crackers but coming up empty. I walk back out, grabbing a bottle of water at least, and head to find her. “Sweetheart,” I call for her.
“On the couch,” she mumbles as I walk by it and then look into the room. She is sitting with her side to the back of the couch, laying her head down on it.
“I couldn’t find—” I walk around the couch to sit next to her. Her boots are kicked off, and she is under a throw blanket. “Well, anything,” I say, and she laughs. “So I brought you a bottle of water.”
She smiles at me, grabbing the bottle from my hand. “Thank you.” She opens the top and takes a couple of sips.
“I bet this isn’t what you expected when you rang the doorbell.” She tries to make a joke out of it.
“I can say with a hundred percent certainty that I was not expecting this.” I get up to shrug off my jacket and toss it to the other side of the couch before sitting back down and putting her feet in my lap. The need to hold a part of her is stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before. “I was expecting maybe you slam the door in my face.”
She gasps. “Why would I do that?”
“Well, for one, I haven’t called or texted you in six weeks,” I start to say.
“I haven’t done that either,” she murmurs softly. “I wanted to but?—”
“But I thought you were living your best life,” I finish what I thought she was going to say.
“I wasn’t,” she admits as she lifts a hand to stop the tear from rolling down her face.
“We should talk.” I finally get the courage to say. “To be fair, we should have talked before you left.”
“On that we agree.” She tries to give me a smile but I see her bottom lip quiver and it breaks me. I move over on the couch until her ass is in my lap and I’m holding her in my arms.
“I missed you, Sweetheart,” I admit to her, “so fucking much.” I tighten my arms around her, breathing in her smell.
“I missed you too.” She puts her palm on my chest.
“Why did you take a pregnancy test?” I ask her.
“I was talking to Sofia,” she tells me why, “and then it dawned on me.” I kiss her head. “What’s one more baby momma?” she jokes and I glare at her. “I’m kidding. I’m in shock.”
“You are not alone in this,” I tell her. “I’m going to be there every step of the way.” My head asks me how this is going to happen when she lives here and I don’t. “We are going to have to figure things out. But there is still time for that.” I don’t know if I’m trying to convince her or me of this. I am about to kiss her lips when my phone rings from my jacket. “That might be Sofia,” I tell her. “She was the only one who knew I was coming here today.” I reach over to grab it, taking her with me. Pulling the phone out of my pocket, I see it is Sofia.
“Let me answer that,” she says, grabbing the phone from my hand and pressing the green button. “You better have a great explanation,” she barks into the phone before putting it on speaker.
“Oh, hi,” Sofia says as if she didn’t know I was coming here. “So he made it.”
“He made it,” Zara states, looking up at me. “He definitely made it.”
“That’s good.” She sounds nervous. “Have you guys talked?”
“I’m sitting in his lap,” Zara shares and Sofia groans.
“This is going to be very, very bad,” she moans. “Why? Why couldn’t you guys not do this?”
“It was a force stronger than us,” I finally say and Zara puts her head on my chest.
“So you two spoke… about everything?”
“The pregnancy test fell literally at his feet,” Zara explains, trying not to laugh but laughing loudly anyway.
“And what did the pregnancy test reveal?” she asks with bated breath.
I look at Zara, who looks at me and then the phone. “You can’t tell a soul.”
“This is very, very bad,” she sings. “I don’t want to know,” she quickly says. “I don’t know, I didn’t ask. The only thing I know is that my cousin called me because he wanted your address to send you flowers.” We both laugh. “That’s my story and I’m going to die on this hill.”
“Well, someone sent her flowers,” I grumble and immediately want to take it back. It makes me sound needy. “But it wasn’t me.”
“That was me!” Sofia shrieks. “Well, not me, RC sent her flowers and a cupcake. Anyway, I’m letting you go before you slip something out and I have to keep another secret from my husband.” She doesn’t even let us say goodbye before she hangs up the phone. I toss the phone to the side.
“You’re having my baby,” I say, not sure if it’s for her or for myself. Listening to the words, she nods.
“I haven’t been with anyone but you and the last time I was with Daniel was October,” she admits to me. She closes her eyes. “I have to tell my parents.”
“I have to tell Colson,” I add up the list of people who need to know, “then I have to tell my parents.” I kiss her lips softly. “We’ll tell your parents tomorrow and then if you can come down, we can tell my parents this weekend.”
Her smile starts small but then fills her face. “Can I ride Fireball?” Her eyes light up and I shake my head.
“Sorry, Sweetheart, but that’s not safe.” I hate to break her heart like that, then she sits up in my lap.
“You aren’t the boss of me, Gabriel.”
“Sweetheart, it’s not safe for you to ride a horse when you are pregnant,” I inform her, “but if you want, we can go to the doctor. If she says it’s okay, then I will gladly saddle her up for you.” I know full well the doctor is going to tell her that it is not safe. “But we can go and see her.”
It takes her a couple of minutes to think of a comeback or anything. “Fine,” she counters with the plan, “but you have to tell her that I can’t ride her so she doesn’t hate me.”
“I’ll take the brunt of her wrath,” I agree. “We should get some food in you.”
She turns in my lap, straddling me. “We should,” she says mischievously, “but first we should…” She puts her hand on my chest. “I don’t know, get naked so I can see if I remember what you look like.” She comes in for a kiss. “See if the sex is as good here in the city as it is in the country.” I laugh at her. “Stop laughing. How do I know you give good sex in the city if we never have sex in the city?”
I push up from the couch and she wraps her legs around my waist. “Sweetheart, it’s going to be even better in the city.”
“You think so?” she asks me as I walk up the stairs.
“I haven’t had you in over six weeks,” I remind her, turning into her room, seeing the bed in the middle of the room. “It’s going to be quick the first time, but I promise to make up for it the second and third time.”
She smirks at me. “Promises, promises.” She stops speaking when my mouth claims hers, and I show her exactly how good we are together in the city or in the country.