Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AVA
“There’s no way she could have known, Kasey,” I whine.
Kasey holds a careful expression as he watches me from across the kitchen table.
It’s just after midnight, the only source of light in the room coming from the dim overhead bulb of the stove, and I’m doing a number on a plate full of scrambled eggs and toast. I woke up a half hour ago to a particularly violent bout of nausea and made fast friends with the toilet in Kasey’s bathroom.
He’d held my hair and rubbed soothing circles across my spine, just like he’d done before in the church.
Once the retching calmed down, he pressed a kiss to the top of my shoulder and beelined it for the kitchen to make me food, knowing it was what I needed.
I’d expected a bowl of cereal or maybe a piece of fruit, but I eventually emerged (after rigorously brushing my teeth) to find him shirtless at the stove, spatula in hand.
“Ava, it’s okay,” he says gently. Calmly.
“No, it’s not! If Maeve knows, we can safely assume everyone knows. That woman is the literal nucleus of gossip in this god-forsaken town.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know for sure,” he tries. “Maybe it was just a guess.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m wearing your shirts, which are baggy enough not to show anything. And she knows better than to stir up something that big if it’s possible there isn’t truth to it. I don’t understand the ‘you might be married but there’s no hiding your sins’ comment, like, what was that shit?”
His lips twitch. “Well, I think she probably assumes the baby is mine. That we . . . conceived before we were married. Which—to be fair, Ava—is a fair assumption considering we’ve only been married for five minutes.”
“Oh my god, a baby out of wedlock, fucking cry me a river. And I’m sorry,” I say, closing my eyes as hormone-raged bursts of light shoot inside my brain.
“Are you asking me to be fair to the damn woman who just verbally accosted us during a perfectly decent lunch? She ruined my burger—ruined my whole appetite!—and now I’m gagging over a porcelain throne in the middle of the night like a frat boy. ”
Kasey tries hard to fight his smile, but it’s a losing battle. I, on the other hand, cannot seem to do away with this intense anger. “What did you think was gonna happen, sugar?” he asks. “You’re my wife, and you’re pregnant. Of course people are going to think she’s mine.”
My mind snags on his use of the word she as a bright solar flare of joy crashes through me, briefly soothing over all the anger.
And yet: “I didn’t expect the fucking doctor to violate one of the most important laws of his whole practice and tell Maeve about my pregnancy.
Do you think she pays him for intel? Fucking crooked witch.
” I cover my face in my hands and groan.
“I didn’t expect to have to answer questions about this until well after . . .” I trail off. Oops.
Kasey’s eyes blaze. “Until after what, Ava?”
I sigh. Pick up my fork and stuff egg into my mouth. Look up at the ceiling.
“Ava.” He sits back in his chair. A picture of patience. “Until after what?”
“Until after we annul this marriage.”
There’s no mistaking the hurt that sweeps over his expression.
But he doesn’t let it deter him from stating the obvious.
“That may be so, but you’re right. If Maeve knows, I’m sure a lot of other people probably know now too.
And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry that this is going against your plans, I really am.
But let’s look at it from another angle.
You’re going to be a mother. There is a baby inside of you with the most beautiful, non-taloned feet I’ve ever fucking seen.
Fuck Maeve. The only way her bullshit works is if she actually gets under your skin.
Don’t let her get under your skin, Ava.”
My eyes burn with a well of tears, and I worry that if I let myself start crying, it’s going to take a good long while before I’ll be able to stop.
Kasey doesn’t get it . . . He doesn’t see why people assuming the baby is his is reckless.
I know he means well—god, his heart is so good. Sometimes I can’t stand how good he is.
I force down a deep breath and try to make him understand.
“I’m already taking so much from you, Kasey,” I eventually get out.
“It’s not that I want to keep the baby a secret forever—I know there’s a ticking clock with this.
And I think it’s beautiful that you want to help with her, I really do.
But I wanted time to figure things out. I wanted time to establish what the next year of my life is going to look like before saying anything to anyone else.
If the whole town thinks the baby is yours . . . it just makes things harder.”
He looks at me for a long, long while.
“Your doctor didn’t violate HIPAA,” he eventually says, tone devoid of all its usual warmth. He sounds downright dejected. It twists inside my heart. “That was Maeve’s great-niece in the lobby. She must have recognized us.”
I deflate. “I didn’t even notice anyone else in there.”
“Understandable.” He looks down. Like he can’t bear to look at me, to face my words head-on. “You were pretty focused on generating power through all that fidgeting.”
I hurt him, and he’s still trying to make me smile.
God, I don’t deserve him. Which is exactly why I need to stop him from hurling himself at my problems.
“Kasey, I’m not . . .” I start, fumbling. Nervous. “I’m not saying I don’t want this. I’m not saying I don’t want you.”
“Okay.” He nods once. “What are you saying?”
“I just . . . I don’t want you to have to keep cleaning up my messes. I don’t want the town to look at you and judge you for burdens that aren’t yours to bear. To just let you take responsibility for this, so quickly, feels like a bad idea. Like someday you might hate me for it.”
“Ava, I’m not trying to rope you into saying something that’s out of touch with reality.
I know I didn’t put that baby in your belly.
I’m not asking you to lie about that, or to give me something you’re not willing to give me.
I know you can do this on your own.” He takes a steadying breath, and looks at me like there’s nothing else he’d ever want to look at again.
“Since I met you, I’ve been desperate to take care of you.
Borderline out of my mind with a need to honor you and protect you and— and even when you’re terrorizing me with your stubborn fucking brattiness, you’re all I want.
You make my world spin, sugar. And I want you to know what it is to be truly, deeply, madly loved.
You and all your messes. Without conditions. ”
There’s no stopping the tears now. They flow down my skin with the force of a torrential downpour. Because I do know what it is to be truly, deeply, madly loved. And it’s all because of him.
It’s the exact thing that terrifies me most.
Picking up my fork again, I stab a piece of egg with all the might of a deflated balloon. “For what it’s worth,” I whisper, “I really like these.”
A smile spreads across his face, eyes sparking with amusement. He shakes his head in disbelief. “Jesus. You are going to put me in an early grave, woman.”
When I’m done—when I’ve licked the plate clean—Kasey scoops me into his arms and brings me back to bed.
The next couple of weeks go on with a comfortable routine.
Kasey heads out to work before the sun rises every morning, leaving behind a warm mug and a different colored flower.
I ease into the day, spend lazy hours bundled in his bed soaking in the smell of him or laid out on the couch with my laptop.
I hear back from my colleague on the restraining order paperwork and, now confident that I’ve got it all right, I get it ready for Kasey’s signature.
Most afternoons I venture down to the barn, enjoying the quiet walk along the way and the horses once I get there.
I admire Kasey and his brothers and everything they do as they all take turns teaching me something new.
I let the warmth of a downcast Texas sun sink into my skin and fill me with hope for a future that might be just like this.
I still get emotional. A little shaky with anxiety.
Sometimes I want to jump in my Range Rover and drive away and never look back.
But I know there’s no place to drive to, and even if there were—I don’t really want to go.
It’s just something I wrestle with. Something that cages me in at times, makes me feel small and incapable.
On those days, I stay in. I curl up with a blanket and turn on a movie, or text Layla to come over with sweet treats.
I never tell her about all the ways in which I worry, but I think she picks up on it.
Sometimes she brings Olivia, or the boys.
Sometimes it’s just us, and we lie on opposite ends of the couch, staring up at the ceiling beneath a shared blanket. Silent, but together. It’s . . . nice.
One Wednesday morning I wake up with a jolt. The sun is up and Kasey’s long gone, but something feels . . . different. My awareness spins around the room, searching for the source of my rapidly increasing heartbeat.
And then I feel it.
Well, feel her.
I clasp my hands to my stomach, gasping.
It’s the most beautiful, wonderful, breathtaking feeling I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.
There, deep in my belly, is the faintest flutter, like someone is tickling me with the pad of their pinky finger from the inside out, teasing with happy little strokes.
“Oh my god,” I breathe, eyes filling rapidly with tears.
I sink back into the pillows, into the sheets and blankets that smell like Kasey and sunny days and home, and simply close my eyes and feel her.
For the first time since taking a pregnancy test in my sterile, cold Miami apartment and watching it far-too-quickly turn positive, I truly let myself be excited.
For the first time, I don’t worry about all the things that could happen to make this harder than it already is.
I don’t think about all the ways I feel like I’m failing or how I don’t measure up.
How, maybe through some existential karma from mistakes made in a previous life, I’m just not wired to be worthy of the things I so desperately want.
I just let myself exist in it.
This baby, I realize, is everything I never knew I needed.
She is hope manifested, a calling to something greater than myself.
She is and will be my reason for getting up every day, for fighting against the pain of the world to carve out a little slice of something calmer, something safer.
And the truth is, when I let myself dream about that slice, of all the glimpses of what it might look like, it’s not just me and her.
I lie in bed and feel her kick and promise her that I will make sure we are happy. I promise her I will never leave her, that I’ll never run from her, and it’s the surest I’ve ever been about something in my entire life.
Eventually the fluttering stops, and my mind relaxes, and I feel .
. . calm. But also really, really happy.
And desperate to tell Kasey about it, to watch the skin crinkle outside his eyes while he looks at me the way he does, like he already knows the slice I want and all the ways to help me get it.
Bounding out of bed, I throw on the shirt he wore last night to bed and a pair of sweatpants I find in his drawer.
My jeans are starting to get too tight, and I know I need to go shopping, but I’d probably still wear his clothes anyway so, also, what’s the point?
I brush my teeth and run a comb through my hair and scour through the house trying to find a pair of socks to put on under my sneakers.
Outside the air is warmer than it has been, and I’m sweating before I even make it ten feet from the house. The sun is shining so bright, I’m not sure anything could wreck this mood I’m in.
It probably should’ve been the first clue, but I’m too blissfully ignorant to realize it.
I make it more than halfway down to the barns before instinct kicks in, a sudden intuition that something’s wrong.
A curling plume of dread I’ve long grown accustomed to.
Watch out, it says lovingly. Trust no one.
I used to be fond of it, of the ways it helped me move through life.
But now . . . now I just feel exhausted.
Suddenly Layla is in the distance, running toward me. I scan her up and down for any clues, but her face is set with determination the moment she sees me. “Ava!” she shouts, the smallest lilt of worry in her voice.
I stop moving. But she keeps running until she’s right in front of me. Panting.
“Ava, they need you at the main house.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Something bad, I think. Let’s go.”
She turns on her heels and kicks off, so I do too. The back of the house is already in view, but so far, I don’t see anything. Is Kasey hurt? Did something happen to him? Maybe that’s why Layla came to get me, and not him. “Is Kasey—” I start to ask through uneven breaths.
But the question dies on my tongue, because now I see.
Kasey looks unhurt, standing tall beneath the sunlight, his dark hat firmly on his head.
He’s turned away from us so I can’t see his face, but written in the lines of his posture is all the evidence I need that he’s not happy.
On either side of him are Rhett and Wells, both with arms crossed in front of them.
They, too, are stiff and unyielding forces.
Farther in the distance, sitting a few yards away, is a silver BMW I don’t recognize, a rental, I think.
But it looks like a car I’ve been inside hundreds of times, whisked off to romantic dates and dinner parties and charity events for the firm.
And standing next to the car, in a dark-blue suit that looks a little crumpled, is a man with cold eyes and an even colder heart.
A man I’ve been ignoring for weeks as I hoped my silence would be enough to make him go away forever.
Guess I was wrong.