CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER nineteen
David helped Noah into the chair he’d been sitting in. Noah never got sick, but his wide eyes and pale face made David nervous. He gently caressed Noah’s jaw with the backs of his fingers, trying to understand what was wrong.
“Noah?” David asked. “Can you hear me?”
Noah nodded, but his eyes were distant.
David looked over his shoulder at Caroline, who watched Noah carefully, her brow furrowed in concern. She held her stomach protectively, as though Noah might somehow harm the baby in his stupor.
“I have pictures!” Dr. Chen said as she waltzed into the room with several sheets of black-and-white photo paper. “These turned out excellent. It’s been awhile since we’ve had such clear photos.”
If she noticed Noah on the verge of passing out, she didn’t say anything as she passed off the photos to Caroline.
“Oh, David,” Caroline said with a gasp. “Look at him.”
David kissed Noah’s forehead and turned to see. He remembered when his sister sent her ultrasound pictures in the family group chat last year. At the time, David thought it was a bit silly to see everyone freaking out over some fuzzy scans of a babyish blob. But now, he understood.
“Look, there’s his nose,” David said, gently touching the little button nose on the baby’s face. “And his foot!”
“Look how tiny his fingers are,” Caroline said. More happy tears welled in her eyes, and she used the photos to fan her face to dry them. “Oh my. He’s so small.”
David grabbed one of the sets of photos and showed them to Noah. “That’s him. Isn’t it amazing?”
Noah blinked out of his trance and took the photos. David could see in his eyes that he didn’t feel the same wonder. To Noah, these were still black and white blobs. At least the sickness seemed to leave his face now that he had something tangible in his hands.
“He’s a lot bigger than I thought,” Noah said absently. “Is he kicking and stuff yet?”
Caroline shook her head. “Not that I’ve felt so far. They said I should feel him soon.”
David felt the sliver of tension needle between them again. He refused to let it widen. He stepped closer to his boyfriend.
“Caroline asked that you come back here so you could see him for the first time, the same time we did. In the pictures, I mean,” David said, gently carding his fingers through Noah’s curls. “I’m really glad you came.”
Noah smiled up at him, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course, babe. Wouldn’t miss it.”
This isn’t going to work. The thought burned through David’s mind with the precision of a laser—straight through the skull. Noah was forcing himself to be here. Even though David had begged him to pretend to be happy even if he didn’t feel that way, it still hurt to see Noah faking it.
“Now, we can really plan things,” David blurted out. He wished he had a fucking chair to sit in. He sat on the edge of Caroline’s exam table instead, looking between her and Noah. “We can finalize the nursery colors now.”
Caroline smiled. “Yes. I’ll put together some of my favorites—I had a few picked out in case it was a boy. Now we can look at decorations, too. And a theme. My mother showed me a nursery themed around dreams, with clouds and sheep. It was beautiful.”
David straightened in his seat. “Maybe Noah can help with that. He’s got a really good eye for interior design. His apartment in Colorado is beautiful.”
Noah and Caroline met eyes like two wild animals happening upon the same kill.
“Maybe,” Caroline said at the same time Noah said, “I’d love to.”
Discomfort coiled around the base of David’s spine. “Caroline, just see what he comes up with,” he offered. “Please.”
Caroline’s smile went flat. “I said maybe.”
“Which is fine,” Noah added, reaching over to squeeze David’s knee. “Whatever happens, it’s going to be a beautiful nursery. And besides, we have to design one for our place, too.”
Caroline stiffened. “No, they need to match. I don’t want the baby to get confused when he isn’t at home.”
“At home?” David asked, and his voice broke on the final word.
Noah and Caroline both snapped to look at him and mirrored each other’s apologetic looks.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Caroline said gently. “I’m sorry, David.”
She had meant it that way; David knew it in his bones. It made perfect sense, of course. David traveled the country as a Formula America driver, and his stint in Los Angeles had been his longest time living in one place since he was ten years old. What did he think—that the baby was going to come live with him? A baby needed its mother. The father was just a sperm donor and someone who did all the yelling when something went wrong.
Fat and stupid. Nice combo , David thought.
“We do need to start talking about these things,” Noah said gently. “Not today, but soon. David and I want to have an equal part in the baby’s life. All three of us need to figure out what that’s going to look like.”
“I told David, I’m not moving to America,” Caroline replied curtly. “I’m happy to visit once the baby is old enough, but I want him to be cared for by my doctors in France.”
“Okay, but David drives in Formula America ,” Noah said in a forced, even tone. “He has to be here about 300 days a year.”
Which meant David had about two months with his son. Babies grew so much in the first year alone—his baby boy wouldn’t even know who he was. Wouldn’t recognize his voice, his scent, or anything. And when Caroline inevitably dated someone else, his son would think that man was his father.
“I understand that, but I’m not putting our son at risk by flying him across the world all the time as an infant,” Caroline said. “His immune system will be very fragile for some time.”
“Like I said, today’s not the day to discuss this,” Noah said. He sounded like a different person, like this was a business meeting and not their future.
“I’m his dad ,” David suddenly said. “I want to see him. I love him, and I want to see him grow up.”
“Babe,” Noah soothed, thumbing his knee. “We’ll figure it all out.”
David kept his eyes on Caroline. She held his gaze with unwavering intensity in a way only French women could. “You have to let Noah help,” he said. “He has to be involved somehow. How can you expect him to feel a connection to the baby when he’s not allowed to be involved?”
Caroline set the photos aside and folded her hands over her belly. “Right now, our son is in my body. My choices are the only ones that matter right now. I choose who is involved and who isn’t.”
Desperation gnawed at David’s gut, eerily familiar to hunger. “Let Noah be involved. He wants to be involved.”
Caroline huffed out a laugh. “He doesn’t want to be involved, and his involvement doesn’t matter to me, okay? The baby comes first. Way before Noah.”
She might as well have slapped David across the face. The pain cut through him to his core, cutting through the extra seven pounds of fat like nothing. Memories of the engineer at Oxbow came rushing back. The engineer was making assumptions, just like Caroline. And though the assumptions were half-true, David wasn’t going to let anyone speak about his boyfriend like that, not even the woman carrying his baby.
David crossed to stand behind Noah, who was wise enough to keep his mouth shut. “I am not sacrificing my relationship with Noah over you being upset about his involvement. Noah is part of this, Caroline.”
Caroline leveled a glare at him. “It is not trivial who I want involved with raising my son.”
“Our son,” David corrected.
Caroline let out a noise of disgust and gathered her things. David’s insides twisted up on themselves, suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. She was still the scared girl taking medical appointments in a foreign country, trying to make sure he was involved. Insulting Noah wasn’t okay, but neither was abandoning Caroline to face any part of this by herself. He had to fix this before it blew up in his face like everything else in his life.
Noah gripped his wrist. “Leave her be, Jochmann.”
David gently pulled away and shook his head. “She’s alone, and she did this for me. Just give me one second.”
He strode for the door, then paused. Noah had been everything to him this past week, nursing him out of his post-race darkness, driving him to Oxbow, and protecting him from his vivid imagination about Klaus.
“Go,” Noah said, reading his mind. “You’re right, you need to talk with her.”
David met his eyes with all the gratitude he could muster, then entered the hallway. Caroline stood with Dr. Chen, wiping her eyes as Dr. Chen led her toward an empty chair.
“Caroline,” David called, hurrying toward her with his heart in his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin today.”
Dr. Chen didn’t look at him as she instructed Caroline to step up on the scale. The hair rose on the back of David’s neck at the sound of it creaking—the scale was identical to the one at Oxbow.
“Well, according to my conversion, you’ve gained seven pounds in the past seven weeks, which is right on schedule,” Dr. Chen said. “So a little over three kilograms.”
“I didn’t need to hear that,” Caroline said. She patted her stomach and laughed, but it sounded forced. “I’m just glad he’s healthy.”
David had gained the same amount of weight in five days that Caroline had gained in the past seven weeks. His stomach churned as he stood there like an idiot, caught in the parenthood purgatory that came with being the father of a child but not the mother’s partner.
Caroline finished discussing with Dr. Chen and finally looked at him. Her gray eyes were gathering storm clouds, waiting for him to step out into the open. She’d only looked at him that way one other time: when he’d sat up in bed and told her he was in love with Noah Caparelli and was breaking up with her.
“You sabotaged me,” Caroline said, and sabotage sounded especially deadly on a French tongue. “I did a nice thing by allowing Noah to come back here, and you sabotaged me.”
“What?” David asked, at a loss. “How is that sabotaging you? Letting Noah pick some furniture isn’t sabotage.”
Caroline narrowed her eyes. “Today was supposed to be about the baby. Now you are trying to make it about Noah.”
“I am not,” David argued. “I just want Noah to feel connected to the baby. He’s been completely left out, and I hate it.”
Caroline’s eyes flashed. She took a deep breath and straightened out her posture to her usual ballerina-like grace. “He is treating our baby like a business transaction. Talking about deals and discussions—this is what my father talks about when we are talking about legal things.”
“He’s trying to protect me,” David said, keeping his voice down so none of the medical staff would hear. “By talking about what things will look like after the baby’s born, he’s helping me.”
Caroline cocked a brow. “Helping you how, David?”
David swallowed hard. Caroline knew about his father’s abuse, but only at a surface level. She didn’t know how often the beatings had been, and David only told her what he had to. She knew Klaus was dangerous, and that was more than David had ever wanted to admit to anyone.
He’d thought about telling her everything once, back when he’d decided he had to do the proper thing and settle down with a woman. They’d been sitting on one of the docks in the marina, sharing ice cream in a cup and watching the boats go by. Caroline told him about Normandy and how quiet life was there, and how much she loved her family.
The words had been right at the tip of his tongue to tell her about Klaus, but he opted to tell her about the Christmas he got a new racing kart instead, and how much he loved his family, too. It hadn’t been a lie, and it still wasn’t. He loved his family, even when his dad beat him senseless for no reason. If Klaus hadn’t escalated to nearly killing him, he would have endured those beatings for the rest of his life without complaint.
Now he had to face a future with no family at all, and he still wasn’t sure it was worth it.
“Noah knows my biggest fear is you taking the baby away from me,” David admitted. “I have to do my job as a driver, and I know I won’t be around enough, even if you do live in America. By not talking about it, I can pretend everything will be okay. Noah is asking because he knows I would rather live in my stupid fairytale.”
Caroline’s eyes widened momentarily, then she let out a huff and looked down the hall toward her exam room. She seemed so much older than the smiling girl in a bikini top sitting next to him on the dock. Or maybe he’d just learned to see her as more than a means to an end.
“I’m guessing you think Noah is going to break up with me when the baby arrives, and that’s why you don’t want him involved,” David said. His stomach roiled at the very real possibility, but he forced himself not to succumb to it. “Maybe he will. I plan to marry him someday, but maybe he doesn’t agree. I don’t know. But I love him, and I don’t want him to miss the most important period of my life. So if you don’t want to do it for him, fine, but please do it for me.”
Caroline kept her expression schooled. She dug in her purse, pulled out two more copies of the ultrasound, and handed them to him. “Your extras.”
David took them, staring down at his baby boy, who was safe, healthy, and growing every second. Caroline gently touched his hand, prompting him to look up at her.
“You and I need to talk about this without Noah,” she said. “There are things that need to be said. And once we have discussed it, then Noah can join us.”
David’s stomach fluttered with a shred of hope. “Okay, when?”
“I need to talk to my parents first. Then I will think about what I want to say. How about we speak on the flight to Texas?”
David didn’t know if it would be worse to talk about this before or after the race. He supposed bad news was better right away instead of letting it fester. He nodded.
“Good,” Caroline said, offering him a smile. She leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’m going to go back to Jacob now. Thank you for supporting me today.”
David couldn’t help but notice she hadn’t promised not to take the baby away from him. He opened his mouth to ask her directly one more time, but decided against it.
Babies change things . Noah had tried to warn him.
“Of course,” David finally replied. “Drive safely.”
Caroline smiled. “Thankfully, I will not be driving with my cousin in that ugly American car, so I will be safe.”
David watched her go, fighting down the terror welling in his system. The scale loomed in his peripheral vision, laughing at him. He clamped down on his emotions, forcing all of them back into the crypt he’d spent a lifetime building to avoid his father’s wrath. Everything was temporary, Klaus always said. If he rested on his laurels, all of the good in his life would be torn away from him.
David returned to the examination room and plastered a smile on his face to stop Noah from worrying. He found Noah looking at the ultrasound photos, hunched forward in his chair. He looked out of place with his tattoos and fashionable clothing—too young and bachelor-like to be a future parent, despite him being seven years older than David. Trapping him in this situation felt like stuffing a tropical bird into a colorless iron cage.
Noah rose to meet him, searching his face. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” David said, like he was reading lines from a script. “She thought I tried to sabotage today. I explained everything, and she’s okay now. She wants to talk about it on the plane to Texas.”
“That’s good,” Noah said. He kissed David’s cheek where Caroline’s lips had just been. Noah’s kiss was real, though. Noah’s kiss had a past, present, and future.
David extended the two extra copies of the ultrasound photos. He opened his mouth to ask if Noah’s parents really wanted a copy, but he knew what would happen if he did. Noah would say yes, and then David would find their copy in his apartment later, stuffed in some drawer with an excuse about wanting to hand it off in person.
Noah took the photos and stacked them with his own. “Want to get some smoothies?” he asked. “I know a place that sells blue ones. We can drink them to celebrate.”
David’s resolve cracked but didn’t break completely. He shook his head. “If you want to help me keep today a good day, please don’t make me think about food tonight. Just tonight, please.”
Noah frowned, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he pocketed the photos and put an arm around David’s shoulders. David held the door for him and stole a kiss to Noah’s jaw when he stepped past, earning him a smile. He took one last look at the scale.
He couldn’t make Caroline involve Noah, and he couldn’t make Noah want to be involved. But he could control his calories. He could follow his diet regimen so perfectly that every last bit of nutrition was accounted for. That way, even if his talent failed him on track, he could show proof that he’d done everything asked of him. Proof that Hugh, Kyle, and Pratik would have to accept. No more slip-ups.
David leaned into his boyfriend as they stepped out into the dry heat of Los Angeles. Noah would be proud of him, too. Once he saw how much the weight loss was helping—not hurting—he would want to drive alongside him again. Two talents at the top of their game, racing together and going home together after.
All David had to do was invoke some self-discipline.