16. Ford
FORDCHAPTER 16
E mzee was pregnant.
My wife was fucking pregnant!
Joy surged through me.
“We’re going to have a baby?”
“I am,” she said softly.
Wrapping my arms around her, I murmured, “My God. When? How far along are you?”
“About two months.”
“Two months!” I yelled.
I was fucking ecstatic.
Until I did the math.
And then suddenly, the reality of our situation sunk in.
I pulled away. “Why didn’t you tell me you suspected something? I would’ve come to the appointment too, been with you when you found out.”
Her silence said it all.
This hadn’t been a confirmation.
She’d already known.
“Jesus Emzee, how long have you known for?”
She just shrugged, looking down at the ground, which only served to piss me off more.
What the hell was going on?
Had she known about the baby when she ran away to New York?
What about every time she harassed me to sign the divorce papers—had she known then, too?
Frustrated, I started pacing the sidewalk outside the doctor’s office.
It was a warm day, and I was sweating in my blazer.
“When were you planning on telling me about this? Or were you not?”
“Ford,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Em.” I shook my head as if I was waking up from a dream.
Because that’s how this whole thing felt.
Like it was a dream.
Or a nightmare. I couldn’t tell.
I was thrilled about the baby, but furious that she had kept it from me.
“How could you not tell me?” I demanded.
“This is our baby. Our child. Did you think you were going to raise the kid in secret? I would have found out sooner or later.”
Questions were tumbling out of me all at once.
I needed answers. My whole world had just been upended.
Emzee cleared her throat.
“I’ve known for about a month,” she confessed.
I let that information sink in, and I wasn’t happy.
“So you knew you were pregnant when you asked for a divorce. You knew when you left Chicago,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach.
“And you never said anything.”
“That night of the gala, I took a pregnancy test. That’s when I knew,” she said, lifting her chin stubbornly.
“It was the same night I found out what you did to me in high school.”
“So you thought you’d just, what, hide out in some other city for the rest of your life to avoid me and try to be a single parent? Or pretend the kid was someone else’s? Maybe get Andrew to play daddy? Do you realize how fucking unreasonable that is?”
“I didn’t plan this!” she shouted, getting off the bench to stand in the path of my pacing.
“I’m still trying to figure it all out. I don’t know where I’m going to be or what I’m going to do. This is all new territory for me.”
She was angry, too.
Breathing hard and glaring at me.
“We’re not getting a divorce,” I said.
“We’re not over. Not with a baby on the way.”
“The baby has nothing to do with what is going on between us,” Emzee argued and I wanted to laugh.
Because what the hell was going on between us?
I still couldn’t figure it out.
The way she jumped from crossing state lines to run away from me to seducing me in my own apartment to throwing divorce papers in my face had given me more than enough whiplash.
It felt like she was slipping away, even though she was standing right in front of me.
“I love you,” I reminded her.
“The past was a long time ago, and I’m sorry. I fucked up. Let me fix it. Let me fix us . I have faith in our relationship, and I know we can be okay again.”
She shook her head and I began to feel hopeless, until I remembered the whole reason I had followed her today.
“Wait a minute,” I said, and then pulled out my phone, scrolling through my messages until I found the one I’d gotten from my parents.
“What the fuck is this nonsense about me signing the divorce papers? My parents are already trying to set me up on dates.”
I shoved my phone at her.
At the picture my parents had sent of some random girl.
Emzee frowned. “Who is that?”
“I have no idea,” I told her.
“But I’m sure she won’t be the last mystery date they set me up with, because apparently I’m now legally divorced. You know anything about that?”
The color drained from Emzee’s face.
My stomach dropped to my feet.
“Emzee,” I said. “What did you do?”
“I…sort of forged your name on the papers,” she admitted.
Mind blown, all I could do was laugh, even though I was seeing red.
“You did what?”
“You refused,” she argued.
“I couldn’t keep waiting.”
Sinking back down on the bench, I put my head in my hands.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Then I looked up at her again.
“You forged my name and hid a pregnancy?”
“Yes. I did.”
The ground felt like it was actually tilting beneath my feet.
I tried to take a few deep, calming breaths to fight the vertigo.
This could not be happening.
This was not my life.
“First of all,” I told her.
“There is no way in hell you’re getting rid of me when you’re pregnant with my child. Secondly, that signature is not legal, and I’ll contest it. And win. You know I will. I know some great lawyers.”
“Ford, don’t—” she started to say, but I held up my hand to silence her.
“I don’t want to hear it. I can’t be around you right now.”
No matter how much I loved my wife, I couldn’t stand the thought of being with her for one more second.
I was too pissed. Too hurt.
It was painful enough that she’d walked out on me and moved to New York on the sly, but the fact that she hadn’t told me about the baby—our baby—had shattered something inside of me.
My chest ached. I needed some time alone to process everything.
“How could you do this to me?” I asked quietly.
“How could you keep this a secret?”
“You had secrets too,” Emzee said, her voice taking on an edge.
“And you kept them from me for years.”
I couldn’t believe she was comparing the two.
Okay, sure, I knew that the whole modeling/prostitution ring was a big deal, and yeah I should have come clean ages ago about the locker graffiti and the whore rumors I’d started about her, but God, that was so long ago.
It was in the distant past. Whereas this, all this with the baby and the divorce and the New York stuff, this was happening right now.
It was the present and the future.
Our future. Baby’s future.
“This doesn’t even begin to compare,” I told her.
“And you know it.”
I stood up and started pacing again, unable to help myself.
I didn’t know what to do or say, and it was clear that Emzee didn’t either.
How had our lives become so messed up so quickly?
And how could we ever make things right again?
For our baby’s sake if nothing else.
Finally, I walked back over to her and took a deep breath.
I’d made my decision.
“This is my child,” I told her.
“And I love you, Em.”
She looked up at me with a big, questioning stare.
“What happens now?”
“I honestly don’t know. But no matter what happens, we’re going to figure this out. Somehow. Together,” I said, measuring my words carefully.
“As for today, right now, I’m going to fly back to New York and take some time and space for myself. Let me know when you’re in Brooklyn again, and I’ll see you there. And Emzee?”
“Yes?”
“Please don’t run away from me again. Promise me.”
Slowly, she nodded. “I promise.”