18. Chapter Eighteen #3
Maybe I'm not actually pregnant at all.
"Ready?" he asks, shepherding me back toward the stairwell that short cuts to my apartment. Normally, I like the idea of a short cut.
Tonight, I want anything that will give me more time. I need time. I need a plan. I need to go back in time and never decide I was going to stay up and wait for Kevin to get home from Vancouver.
No, I want to answer.
Yes, I should be able to say.
The best I can do is, "Yeah."
We walk on, neon and wings and rules I can't keep straight anymore fading into the distance, and it's just his hand, my purse, and one flight of stairs until we see if I just blurt everything out and ruin the life of the best friend I've ever had, along with ruining my own.
Old habit says goodnight at the door. New normal is Kevin following me in without a second thought. Because we're supposed to be exclusive and casual and all that heady intoxication of good friends and great sex.
I barely register which version we're doing now before the smell hits. The room swings and I'm sprinting for the bathroom, on my knees at the toilet before I know I'm moving.
"Sarah." His voice is close and careful. He doesn't crowd the doorway. Doesn't touch me without permission. "I'm here."
I know he's here. That's part of the problem.
I breathe, swallow, breathe again. I can feel the porcelain slick under my palms. I can also feel the terror.
"Hey, it's okay." He moves closer now, kneeling beside me. "Can I—?"
I nod.
His palm settles between my shoulder blades. Just like Paige’s earlier, it’s warm and steady. It would be comforting, except the whole world is spinning.
"You're okay. Just breathe."
I can't look at him. Can't do anything but focus on the grout lines in the tile and try not to heave again.
"Is it a bug?" he asks. "Dominic said half the training staff's been out with it since Dallas. Some kind of twenty-four hour thing."
A stomach bug. That's what he thinks this is.
I wish it were that simple.
"Sarah?" His fingers brush up and down my spine. One. Two. Three. Four. And a thumb. I can feel each one. "Talk to me. What do you need? Water? Crackers? I can run to the store—"
He's already problem-solving. Already trying to fix it.
But there's no playbook for this. There are no rules.
My purse is on the floor where I dropped it. I reach for it with shaking hands.
"What are you—" He stops when I pull out the paper towel bundle.
My fingers won't cooperate. The paper towel sticks to itself, and I'm trembling so hard I almost drop it. But I get it unwrapped.
Two pink lines stare up at me. Still there. Still real.
I hold it out to him without looking up.
I can't look at his face. I can’t bring myself to see the moment he realizes the message the little stick is delivering. The message I don't have the words to deliver myself.
I feel like such a fucking coward. I'm ruining his life and I can't even look him in the fucking eye.
I keep looking down. The toilet is easier to stare at than Kevin, which is saying something.
He takes the stick from my hand.
For a second, he just... stops. No movement. No breath.
I turn just enough that I catch a glimpse of his chest — I watch, waiting for it to rise, to fall, to do anything — and there's nothing. He's a statue holding a plastic stick with two pink lines.
Then his throat swallows. Once. Hard.
"Okay," he says. It doesn't sound like it's coming from the guy who's had years of media training. It sounds completely stripped. Like the word escaped before he could get his guard back up.
I get brave enough — stupid enough? — to look at him fully.
I see it then — the split second where Kevin St. Clair, who reads every play three moves ahead, realizes this is the one he didn’t see coming.
Then something shifts. The moment the defenseman snaps back to form. His shoulders straighten. His jaw sets.
I might throw up again, this time from adrenaline and nerves. And fear.
So fucking much fear. Fear of what's in his mind. Fear of what my future's going to become. Fear of what this does to us.
I'm going to fucking lose my best friend.
There's no way this doesn't change things.
"Sarah—"
"I swear I'm on the pill. I didn't lie to you.
I've been on it for years. I missed two days last month when I was sick because I fell asleep way early, but I’ve never had an issue before.
" The words tumble out, scattered and watered down with the tears that I can no longer hold back.
"Maybe that’s how this happened. Maybe it's defective. Maybe I'm defective—"
"You're not defective."
He's stating what he believes to be a fact.
He means it. I can tell that he means it.
I hear him stand. The test is still in his hand — I can see it in my peripheral vision.
He takes a step back. Then another.
Then he's walking into the main room of my studio apartment. I push myself off the floor and follow, even though my legs are numb from restricted blood flow while I squatted next to the toilet.
Kevin stops abruptly. Turns and looks up at me. At the folded-out bed. At the kitchenette. Back to me.
"Is it the wings?"
I blink and shake my head slightly. "What?"
Um, no, Sunshine. It is most definitely not chicken wings. It's the birds and the bees.
"The smell. Is that what set you off just now?" He's talking fast. His problem-solving mode clicks into gear. "The wings from downstairs?"
"I—" Where is he going with this? "Yeah. The smell just hit wrong. Maintenance is coming out to change my air filters sometime this week."
"You can't live above a sports bar if wing smell is making you sick."
"I'll be fine. I can wear a mask or something." I'm already trying to minimize this, make it manageable. "Morning sickness doesn't last forever, right? Paige told me that she can almost brush her teeth now without puking. It'll go away. I just need to get through—"
"You're not wearing a mask in your own home." He says it flatly. It’s absolute to him. Non-negotiable.
"Kevin, it's not that big of a deal—"
His blue eyes lock on me. They look like twin sapphire tornadoes. "Pack a bag."
I stare at him. "What?"
"Pack a bag. Come stay with me tonight." He puts the pregnancy test on the corner of the pull-out bed and is already moving toward my closet. "You can't stay here. Please. No wing smell, no vents."
"We need to talk about this—"
"We will. At my place." He stops at the dresser, turns back to look at me, and the determined set of his jaw does not escape my notice. "Where it doesn't smell like a fucking sports bar and you're not getting sick every five minutes. Say yes, and I'll grab your bag."
I don't have the energy to fight him, so I follow his path across the room.
My duffel bag is in the closet. I pull it out, start throwing things in without thinking. Jeans. Shirts. Underwear. That black lace bra that I had on when he got home from Dallas.
From before. When everything was simple and casual and I was just the girl who bought sexy lingerie on the spur of the moment to reward her friend with benefits when he got home from a game he'd been so happy to win.
But why even bother with lace and surprises now?
My hands are shaking.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I say to the bag, to the room, to him.
"I don't know how to do this. I can barely keep the rescue afloat and our rent's going up and a dog is paying for it and I'm supposed to be moving into the role to be his handler and helping Diane figure out how to fundraise and now there's a baby—" My voice cracks.
"I can't have a baby, Kevin. I can barely take care of myself and I'm only Ranger's co-parent and I'm not qualified to be any human's fucking parent and—"
He's there. Suddenly right there, taking my face in his hands. “Sssh—” he says.
And then he's kissing me.
It's not gentle. Not careful.
The press of his lips against mine. The press of fingers on each cheek, holding me forward and steady. The press of his breath into mine.
In an instant, just one simple connection to him shuts up every spiraling thought in my head.
When he pulls back, he leans down far enough that his forehead rests against mine. His hands are still cupping my face.
"Sarah."
It's just my name. One word. But something about the way he says it — taking charge, unlike any way he's ever said my name before — cuts through the panic and gives me a much-needed beat to breathe.
"This isn't the talk we need to have," he says with quiet simplicity.
"But—"
"I said we'd talk when we get to my place. Let me take care of you." His thumbs stroke my cheekbones once, wiping away a tear I didn't even know I'd let go. "When we get home."
Home.
Not "my place."
Home.
I nod because I can't speak.
He releases me, picks up my half-packed duffel. He's used to toting bags of gear everywhere, and he takes care of mine like it's second nature. "What else do you need?"
"My toothbrush and hair stuff. Deodorant. Phone charger. Ranger's food."
Kevin walks back in my tiny bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet. He starts placing items in my small travel toiletries bag. He even remembers to add my makeup and brushes.
"Sarah, Ranger lives with me. This isn't his house. I have his food at my place. What else?"
This apartment is the size of a shoebox, but I can't see anything. "I don't know. I can't think."
"Then we'll come back if you need something." He zips the duffel. "Let's go home."
His hands open — empty, steady — a place to hold on to, a place to land.
I reach.
Kevin takes my hand. The pregnancy test is still on the mattress where he set it down, and I'm pretty sure those two pink lines shine like one of the neon signs in the bar downstairs.
He doesn't look at it as we leave.
But I do.
One last glimpse before the door clicks shut. As it does, the assumption that we can keep whatever it is between us "casual" is officially past tense.