2 - A MISTAKE AT THE CLINIC #3
Brock came through the door still in uniform, his duty belt unbuckled and slung over his arm, looking like a man who'd spent twelve hours dealing with other people's problems.
Joey was on his feet before Brock could speak. "Dad."
"Hey, son." Brock's eyes moved between them, reading the room the way Victoria imagined he read prisoners—cataloging body language, facial expressions, the energy in the air. "What's going on?"
"Victoria's pregnant."
The duty belt hit the floor.
Brock caught it a second too late, bending to retrieve the leather and metal with movements that looked suddenly mechanical. His face had gone white. "What?"
"Can you believe it?" Joey was laughing, running his hands through his hair, nearly vibrating with excitement. "The clinic called. They screwed up the test results. She was pregnant the whole time, Dad. The transfer worked!"
Brock's gray eyes found Victoria's. She saw the understanding crash over him—the realization, the calculation, the knowledge of what had really happened. He opened his mouth. Closed it. His hands gripped the duty belt so hard his knuckles turned white.
"That's—" He swallowed. "That's incredible news."
"I know!" Joey crossed to his father, slapping him on the shoulder. "I can't believe it. After everything, after the money and the move and—" His voice caught. "I'm going to be a dad."
Brock's gaze stayed locked on Victoria. She met it steadily, her chin lifted, her expression carefully neutral. Say something, she willed him. Say what you're supposed to say.
"I'm happy for you," Brock said, and his voice was almost normal. Almost steady. "Both of you. This is—" He stopped. The muscle in his jaw pulsed. "Congratulations."
Victoria stepped forward and hugged him. It was the expected thing to do, the thing a daughter-in-law would do, and she felt his body go rigid against hers, felt his hand come up to pat her back with a stiffness that was nothing like the man who'd held her on the couch three weeks ago.
"Thank you," she whispered into his shoulder. "For everything."
For everything. The words carried a meaning only the two of them would understand.
Brock pulled back. His eyes were dark, unreadable. "I need a shower."
"Of course," Victoria said. "Dinner's in an hour."
He nodded once and left the room without looking back.
That night, Joey celebrated. He opened a bottle of wine he'd been saving—a gift from a client—and poured himself a glass.
"I'm going to be a father," he kept saying, like he was trying to convince himself.
"I'm going to teach the kid to throw a baseball. And read them bedtime stories. And—" He looked at her, his brown eyes bright behind his glasses.
"We should talk about names again. For real this time. Nicholas, if it’s a boy. We could call him Nick. Summer, if it’s a girl, because she was conceived in the summertime."
"I thought you didn't like seasonal names."
"Seasonal names are growing on me." He took her hand across the table. "Everything's growing on me right now. I'm so happy, Victoria. I didn't think I could feel this happy."
The guilt twisted in her gut. She smiled anyway. "Me neither."
Brock came down for dinner but didn't eat much. He pushed his food around his plate, answered Joey's enthusiastic questions with monosyllabic responses, and excused himself early, claiming exhaustion from his double shift. As he stood to leave, his eyes met Victoria's for one electric moment.
We need to talk, that look said. Soon.
She nodded, barely a movement of her chin. I know.
—
The next morning dawned gray and humid, the kind of July day where the air clung to your skin and even the crickets sounded lethargic.
Joey left for work at seven-thirty, still floating on the cloud of his newfound fatherhood.
He'd kissed Victoria goodbye at the door and pressed his hand to her belly one more time.
"Take care of them," he'd said.
"I will."
She'd watched his car pull out of the driveway, watched it disappear down the winding Beckley road, and then she'd gone back inside to wait.
Brock had the day off. She'd known it since yesterday.
She was in the guest room folding laundry when she heard his footsteps on the stairs. The door was open. She didn't turn around.
"We need to talk." His voice was rough, like he'd been up all night again.
"I know."
"Victoria. Look at me."
She set down the t-shirt she'd been folding—Joey's, a band logo faded almost to nothing—and turned. Brock filled the doorway, dressed in civilian clothes for once: jeans and a gray t-shirt that stretched across his chest. His arms were crossed, his jaw tight, his gray eyes storm-dark.
"The baby's mine."
It wasn't a question. Victoria didn't treat it like one. "Yes."
"Jesus Christ." He uncrossed his arms, ran a hand over his buzzed hair. "When you said the clinic called—when I heard Joey say—I knew. I knew it right then." His voice dropped. "Does he know?"
"No."
"And he can't. Ever."
"I know."
"You keep saying you know." He stepped into the room, and suddenly the guest bedroom felt very small.
"But do you understand what we've done? What we're going to have to do for the rest of our lives? Every time Joey looks at this child, every time he calls them his—we have to live with that lie. Both of us."
Victoria's hand drifted to her belly. "I've been living with it for three weeks. I can live with it forever."
"It's not just about you."
"You think I don't know that?" Her voice rose. She forced it back down. "You think I don't lie awake at night thinking about what this will do to him if he finds out? But he won't find out, Brock. He can't. We're the only ones who know, and we're going to take this secret to our graves."
Brock stared at her. The tension in his shoulders, in his clenched fists, in the rigid line of his spine—it all seemed to vibrate at a frequency she could feel in her teeth.
"I haven't stopped thinking about you," he said.
The confession landed like a dropped stone. Victoria felt her breath catch.
"Every night since that night," he continued, his voice lowering to something almost guttural.
"I've tried to forget. I've tried to pretend it was just a moment, just a mistake, just something we did because we were both hurting. But I can't."
He took a step closer. "I can't stop thinking about your mouth. Your body. The way you felt on top of me."
"Brock—"
"I know it's wrong." Another step. "I know you're my son's wife. I know this baby—our baby—is supposed to be his. But I can't stop wanting you. And when Joey told me you were pregnant—" He shook his head. "Part of me was terrified. But part of me was—"
"Happy," she whispered.
"God help me, yes."
Victoria closed the distance between them. Her hands found his chest, palms flat against the cotton of his shirt, feeling the thunder of his heartbeat beneath. "I feel the same way," she said. "Every time I look at you. Every time I hear your voice. I've been trying to pretend I don't, but I do."
Brock's hands came up to cup her face. His thumbs traced her cheekbones. The touch was gentle, almost reverent, but his eyes were hungry in a way that made her knees weak.
"We can't keep doing this," he said.
"I know."
"We're going to destroy everything."
"Maybe."
"Victoria—"
She kissed him.
It wasn't like the first time on the couch—hesitant, questioning, a step off a cliff into unknown darkness.
This was certain. This was knowing exactly what they were risking and choosing it anyway.
His mouth opened under hers, and his hands slid into her hair, and the sound he made was somewhere between a groan and a surrender.
Her fingers found the hem of his t-shirt and pulled.
He lifted his arms, letting her strip it off, and then his hands were on her—tugging at the buttons of her blouse, pushing the fabric off her shoulders, unhooking her bra with a practiced efficiency that made her wonder how long it had been since he'd done this. Years, maybe. Since his wife died.
"My turn," he murmured against her lips.
He guided her backward toward the bed—the bed she shared with Joey, the bed where her husband had slept last night with his hand on her belly—and sat her down on the edge.
Then he knelt before her, and his fingers hooked into the waistband of her shorts, and he pulled them down her legs along with her underwear.
Victoria leaned back on her elbows, bare beneath his gaze.
The morning light through the window painted her skin in shades of gold and shadow.
Brock's eyes traveled the length of her body, lingering on the blonde curls between her legs, on the flat plane of her stomach that wouldn't stay flat for much longer.
"You're beautiful," he said. "You know that?"
She started to answer, but his mouth was already on her inner thigh, kissing a trail upward, and the words dissolved into a gasp. His stubble scraped the sensitive skin. His breath was hot against her. And then his tongue found her center, and she stopped thinking entirely.
He ate her like a man starving. Slow, deliberate strokes of his tongue that traced her folds, circled her clit, dipped inside her.
Victoria's head fell back. Her hips bucked against his mouth.
She threaded her fingers through his buzzed hair and held on, held on, while he learned the shape of her, the cadence she liked, the pressure that made her breath come in short sharp bursts.
"There," she gasped. "Right there, don't stop—"
He didn't stop. His tongue pressed flat against her clit, and two fingers slid inside her, curling upward to find the spot that made her vision blur.
Victoria's thighs clenched around his head.
Her back arched off the bed. The orgasm hit her like a wave breaking, pulsing through her body in rhythmic contractions that she felt all the way to her fingertips.
Brock worked her through it, gentler now, easing her down from the peak. When she finally opened her eyes, he was looking up at her from between her legs, his lips slick, his gray eyes dark with want.