Chapter 6
Six
Becca
Nico stands on the rug, dripping from the shower, steam forming a halo around his whole body.
That body. My life raft. Chest and arms carved from years of hard work—fixing cars, baling hay, working construction.
Legs that can run like hell when necessary, though it’s been a while since we had to outrun Chief Pitts, busting up one of our keg parties in the woods.
Still, I bet he could run uphill like he was raised by the fucking catamounts.
Nico is still the wild, sweet boy I fell in love with, only now with responsibilities.
Let’s see if he’s ready for this one.
Nico tugs the towel off the rack and slowly wraps it around his hips.
I take in the tanned, muscular calves, the delicious, vee-shaped valley below his navel, with soft black hairs peeking out above the towel.
He studies me with his deep brown eyes. His forehead grooves in worry. He looks from me to the thing in my hands and asks if this is what he thinks it is.
The two pink lines are so pink, he has to see what I’m seeing. Hell, someone standing down the street would have no problem seeing what this is.
“Nico?”
My lips are trembling so hard I can’t get the rest of the words out.
I don’t have to. He knows.
Now that the realization has settled on his face, I need to know how he feels.
I need to know exactly how a pregnancy will affect the start of our marriage.
I need to know if he’s upset or sad or frustrated or, worst of all, if he wants out of this.
It’s unthinkable, but I have to prepare myself. I could be doing this on my own.
A memory flashes in the back of my mind. Of my parents warning me, “If that boy gets you pregnant, don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
But then another memory surfaces. Darren Davis snapped Quincy’s bra strap in sixth grade.
Then Nico shoved Darren into a locker. Not hard.
Just enough to rattle him. I had stood there with my mouth agape.
Darren and his friends frequently mocked Nico after they noticed he wore clothes that had once belonged to Darren, thanks to the thriving thrift economy in Songbird Ridge.
People getting each other’s secondhand wares was never anything surprising, but Darren and his friends were, how shall I say this, total pricks.
“Oh my god. Are you pregnant?” Nico asks, gripping the doorframe like the railing of a tossing ship.
“Yes,” I reply hoarsely, searching his eyes for something. Waiting for the shock to wear off into something else.
“I thought…” Nico drops to his knees in front of me, eyes flicking between me and the thing in my hands.
“We were careful? Yes. Yes, as long as I’m taking the pill. But I’ve been forgetting here and there.”
He nods. “How many times?”
My trembling hand touches my forehead as if that will help me remember exactly where I messed up.
“Two days in a row last week.”
“Okay,” he says. “But it’s too soon to tell from last week.”
I bite my lip and confess the rest of it. “And three or four days sporadically the week before that.”
He takes my hand and says, “We’ll go to the doctor and make sure it’s not a false positive.”
Sweet, sweet Nico. “False positives are super rare. It’s the false negatives you have to watch out for. Also, Leela sent me home early after I ran out of a meeting because I had to puke.”
Nico doesn’t say anything else at first. Just slow blinks at me. He doesn’t get it. He just has to trust me that I am, without a doubt, pregnant.
I confess, “It’s all my fault…I sometimes turn off all reminders on my phone….”
“Hey, I played a part in it too,” he says with a little smile. He’s being brave for me.
“I should have checked when I realized…I didn’t read about how long it takes for the hormones to get out of my system. And then instead of tapering off sex…”
“We did it a lot more,” Nico says, rubbing the back of my hand.
I smile weakly, waiting for his real reaction, my eyes focusing on the rivulets of water trailing off his bronzed shoulders. The scent of his clean skin. The comforting scent of his drugstore shampoo.
I nod.
After what feels like an eternity of him just holding my hand, but what in actuality is probably only thirty seconds, he says wetly, “We’re having a baby.”
I look up from the stick in my hand to see his throat bob. “We’re having a baby,” I repeat.
He lets go of my hand and presses a thumb and forefinger into his closed eyes, but tears escape anyway. He chokes out, “We’re going to be parents. I’m going to be a dad.” His shoulders shake, and I can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying.
“Nico, are you okay?”
He uncovers his face then, and the next thing I know, he’s seated on the edge of the tub, and I’m somehow in his lap.
The damp towel is wetting my shorts and the backs of my thighs, and his wet, warm arms are locked around me.
“I’m more than okay. I’m…holy shit,” he says, smiling.
He sounds like he’s holding back laughter, or shouting, or something else.
I’m so, so relieved. I don’t know what I was worried about. Of course, he’s happy. Hearing the truth out loud feels different from knowing it.
“It’s not how we planned things. We wanted to wait, and I screwed it up, kind of…”
He shushes me with a kiss. The softest, sweetest, lingering kiss.
The same sort of kiss that we shared when we were barely eleven years old and kissed for the first time.
Nico and I were riding our bikes on a summer day.
It was shortly after his grandfather was granted kinship custody.
He just wanted to see if we could ride our bikes all the way up to the overlook on the mountain road.
We made it, but I’d had to stop and walk my bike halfway.
Nico could have ridden up and back in the time it took for me to go for the rest of the way, but he stayed with me.
By the time we reached the overlook, it was late, and we were both in big trouble.
I remember he was sad about something —it was always about his parents—and I just leaned over and kissed him.
It was just a peck. Until he kissed me back.
A longer, sweeter kind of peck, one that broke my world open completely.
That was the moment I knew I would love Nico forever.
That’s the kiss he gives me now, as we’re perched on the tub, with tears streaming down my face, finding out that we won’t have time to be together, just the two of us as newlyweds, for very long.
That we’d better start saving money now.
That we’re going to have to make some major changes, like find a bigger, two-bedroom apartment.
Shop for a car seat. Buy a crib. The list of things to do and plan for now really outweighs anything having to do with the wedding.
Also, strangely, I feel a little bit empowered by that fact. What does a dress matter? What does a string quartet matter, or country club salmon, or champagne roses, or taper candles versus pillars? What does anything matter when a baby is on the way?
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Nico says. “Talk to me.”
“You’re so calm,” I say. “Aren’t you scared?”
He laughs and gently squeezes me closer. “Becca, I’m freaking out. But I’m so fucking happy at the same time. There’s the ‘oh shit’ part of me, but also, this kid is going to be so loved.”
I nod, a knot forming in my throat. He’s right.
My shoulders relax as tears spill down my cheeks. Nico leans forward to kiss me again. I drop the stupid pregnancy test and hook my arm around him as he kisses me deeply.
“I love you so much, Becca.”
“You’re not mad that I screwed up?”
“Don’t ever say that to me again,” he says, his voice shaking. “You didn’t screw up. We didn’t screw up. It just speeds up a lot of the ideas I’ve been kicking around.”
“What ideas?”
He grins mischievously and thinks for a moment. “Let me give it to you as a wedding gift.”
“Nico! You know I can’t stand suspense!” I laugh through my tears that are quickly abating now.
His hand moves up my leg, under the hem of my cut-off sweats, gently squeezing the muscles there.
“Too damn bad,” he says, softly nibbling my throat.
I try to be strong and not swoon at his touch. His thumb brushes against my inner thigh. I fail to resist the urge to wriggle a little.
Another thought occurs to me. “Nico, how are we going to tell my parents we’re pregnant?”
“We don’t have to do that right now. Be here with me and forget everything. Fuck your parents for right now. Fuck all the parents,” Nico murmurs, tugging my oversized, ancient tee-shirt down, flicking his tongue over the spot where my neck meets my shoulder.
When I let out a tiny squeak of pleasure at his mouth right there, the hard length pressing into my lower bottom twitches. I jerk upward, trying to stand, intending to lead him into the bedroom.
But Nico holds me still, his hand brushing against my skin, higher, under the soft material, until he reaches the leg band of my underwear.
“We don’t have to tell them now, but we need…oh…my god…we need to s-strategize…”
“Spread your legs.”
I open up a little for him, just a little, enough to let him tease me there, over the material covering my slit. My breath hitches as he caresses me.
Nico leans in, and his voice is a low rumble against my throat. “I love watching your face when I do that.”
“Nico…”
“Close your eyes and relax. Forget everything else for a fucking minute and let me do this for you.”
I don’t have any choice when he talks to me like this.
All day I’m stressed. And now, it’s compounded times three. Work, the wedding, and now a baby on the way, with no idea how I’m going to break the news to everyone.
But none of that matters. Nico wants me to empty my head for him. He wants me to let him take charge. To let him take care of me.
As he slips his big, rough fingers inside my panties, he does just that.