Chapter 11 #2
“Oh my god. I should have brought juice or something.” She snaps her head around, whipping me in the face with hair that smells like grapefruits and fresh air. “Hold on.” Her hand curls around my shoulder. “You’re going to hold on, right?”
“Yeah,” I force out, just so I don’t terrify her completely.
She’s gone in a whisper of citrus scented air, leaving the bench beside me painfully empty.
I can believe in that reality more than I can in the fact that she’s here and in what she just told me.
I can understand that she’s pregnant, even though that alone makes my head swim, but what she’s offered?
The fact that she believes I’d be any kind of decent father or role model for anyone?
It hurts in all the ways that the best things in life still cause pain and fill a person up with terror.
“Odin?” The air pressure changes and I know that she’s back.
If I had two good eyes, maybe I could actually fucking see something, but I can’t shake the black from this one. I turn my face towards her like I’m searching for the warmth of the sun.
“Here. I got you ice cream from that little cart over there. Open. I’ll feed it to you.”
There’s no fucking way I’m going to let her do that. I fumble with my hands to try and find the damn thing, and that’s exactly when she presses the spoon of the cold, sweet treat to my lips. I open only to protest, and she stuffs it in.
Strawberry.
The creamy goodness of one of the only flavors I like, floods over my tongue. How the hell did she know? If she’d picked vanilla, I might have yakked all over her.
She feeds me calmly, spoon after spoon. The sugar really does help, or maybe it’s just shock fucking off now that I’ve had a good fifteen minutes to process. My brain might not have sorted things out, but I guess my body is doing its thing. Even if it’s old as fuck.
Shit.
As soon as she senses me come back online, she passes the bowl into my hands. It’s huge. She must have got the largest size they have, and they scooped half the pail into the clear plastic thing.
I don’t have much of a filter on a good day, and right now, my hatches are far from hatched and my defenses are far from defending.
“Are you sure you want someone like me in your child’s life?”
Her hand gravitates to my knee like she needs to brace us both. “What do you mean someone like you?”
I don’t want to explain my entire sordid childhood to her.
I’ve already given her most of the outline of my younger years.
I do want her to understand that I have no idea how to be a father, though.
“My mom was a drug addict. She used all throughout her pregnancy. I was born addicted. My grandma took care of me, I guess, until I was four. I don’t remember much of anything about any of that.
When she passed, I went to live with my aunt.
She was my mom’s younger sister. She didn’t want me, but she did like the sympathy people gave her, or the props, I guess, for looking after her dead sister’s kid after she OD’d and her own mother passed,” I pause, hating to go back to my childhood, but she has to know.
She’s looking at me with such kindness in her eyes I can hardly bear to continue, but she places a warm hand on my knee.
“I was mostly ignored, and that was fine by me. I wasn’t treated like part of the family.
The dog was given more love, but that was okay, because I loved Benny too.
He was a sweet dog. A basset hound. The day he passed was the worst of my life, if you can imagine that.
” She makes a wet sounding noise in her throat and her hand strokes over my knee.
“I was never loved or given a second of guidance, but I know it could have been much worse. As soon as I was able, I got a job, hung around with the wrong friends, did a bunch of stupid shit. My aunt kicked me out when I was sixteen and told me not to come back. I didn’t.
I did a bunch of illegal shit to stay afloat because that was easier and more lucrative than honest work.
I just kind of drifted around all over the place.
I thought I was tough, on the inside and out, because I didn’t trust anyone and didn’t need anyone.
I thought the softer emotions were a joke.
I didn’t need to be loved and I sure as fuck wasn’t going to be giving any of it.
” My hand grips the full bowl of ice cream so hard that the heaping scoops nearly spill over the edge.
“I might not call myself a piece of shit now, but I have no idea how to guide a child. No idea how to be a dad.”
For a long few moments, Willow is quiet.
I know she’s processing what I just said, and I give her that time, even though it makes me feel sick inside.
I’m not trying to scare her off. She deserves to know the truth so she can go into this after making an informed decision based on reality and not the hope of redemption that a lovely soul like hers believes in.
She carefully takes the ice cream from me and sets it aside. She grips my hands, bending over them. I don’t even realize that she’s crying silently until splashes of wet baptize my knuckles.
She grazes her lips over them, as though she can kiss away the blood, sweat, tears, and stains from me.
I’m astounded by her kindness. Frozen with it. Sick with it. Sick with tenderness and the dangerous hope it brings.
“We’re all a product of our pasts,” she whispers.
“I want to be a good mother, and you want to be a good father. We will be, because of the past, because of now, because of how we’ll move forward in the months to come.
That’s what matters. Not that we might mess up.
It’s that we try. I think the greatest love is just that. Trying.”
Somehow, I force words past the wet blockage in my throat. “I’m sorry that I’m a mess. I should be the one supporting you.”
She kisses my hands one more time and lowers them, but still clutches them tightly. “I want to propose that this is a partnership. We’re equals. We support each other and lean on each other, and we pick each other up when we need to. My dad used to say that’s what made things work.”
My brain is already whirring, churning over logistics.
I can find her a place to stay. I know tons of people in Hart, most of them connected in some way to the club.
They’d give her a job if I asked. But health insurance?
Having a baby costs money. A lot of it. I just heard Zeppelin a few days ago, talking with Gunner about how much an appointment costs, even with insurance.
His old lady, Ginny, is due in a few months.
“You aren’t in school anymore. Do you have insurance?”
At the sound of that word, Willow blanches.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her taken aback this entire time.
I hate to say it because I know how triggering this must be for her after her dad and those bastards denied his coverage.
She didn’t just lose him. She lost everything over someone else’s greed.
“I- I don’t. I can probably get it, even if it’s expensive. I- I didn’t even think about that yet.”
“Marry me,” I blurt, before my brain can catch up.
“I have insurance through the club. You’d be covered.
” Now that I’ve said it, I have to keep going, or look like a fool.
“We could get divorced a few years later, so it looks legit on paper. That doesn’t tie you down.
Zero obligation. Just… safety. Financial security.
Health insurance for you and the baby in case—everything out there fucking forbid—that anything should go wrong or be wrong.
I’ll find you a house here. It could be yours, with the illusion of us living there together.
I’m at the club most times anyway, so no one would question it.
I can find you employment as well, if you’d like to work to fill up some of your days, but if not, it’s not a problem.
I know you don’t want to take my money, but I have more than enough savings for both of us, at least until you figure out what you want to do.
I don’t know what I can offer, but I can give you these things.
I can look after this. Will you let me?”
“I mean, I- I…” she squeaks.
Yeah. I’ve completely shocked the hell out of myself again. I sure as shit didn’t see myself proposing or finding out I was going to be a father today.
“We could sign a contract. Not for when we’d get divorced, because leaving a paper trail for evidence of insurance fraud is never a great thing, but I’ll have our club’s lawyer, Lynette, write up a contract for you protecting all your assets.
I’ll get her to draw one up for me as well, a will of sorts, I guess, that leaves everything to the baby if something should happen to me, with you as executor. ”
“No!” Her yelp echoes through the park. “Stop.” She lowers her voice to a hiss, getting herself under control. She visibly shivers. “Don’t talk about anything happening to you.”
“I just want to make sure you and the baby are taken care of. I never had that. I fucking wanted to so badly.” My voice breaks on the end. Without hesitation, Willow pushes herself into me and slings an arm across my chest.
“I appreciate that, but I don’t think insurance fraud is the way. They could just as easily say that it was a pre-existing condition. Like- like with my dad.”
“Our health insurance is top notch. Lynette would set it up and ensure you’re covered. She’s very good at that. She’s an amazing lawyer and she’d fight so damn hard for you if she had to. I don’t know that anyone could cry fraud. A baby is, and always has been, a valid reason to get married.”
The way she looks up at me sends fractures spreading through my already cracked heart. She’s so uncertain, but she’s trying to cover it up with more bravery. Fake it until she makes it, except she’s already made it. She came all this way. Again.