Chapter 20 #3
I drop my purse on the plastic-covered floor and press both hands over my face. For months, I’ve held myself together with rules. Don’t answer. Don’t go. Don’t listen. Don’t soften. Don’t tell him. Don’t hand him the one reason he might stay even if the love wasn’t enough.
The rules kept me standing, but they also kept me alone.
“Emmy,” Cade says, barely above a whisper.
I lower my hands. He’s staring at me like the whole world has narrowed to the space between my sweater and my shaking fingers. I could hide from it for one more minute, maybe two, but I don’t.
“I’m pregnant,” I say.
The room empties of sound. Cade doesn’t move. His face goes blank in the way a person’s face goes blank when the mind refuses to do the cruel, beautiful arithmetic too quickly. His gaze drops to my stomach and stops there. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
I put one hand low on my belly, and the gesture breaks him.
He takes one stumbling step backward and hits the edge of the temporary counter. One hand comes up to his mouth, his eyes filling so fast the tears spill before he can do anything about them.
“You’re…” He can’t finish it.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Almost five months.”
The sound he makes isn't a word, and I flinch anyway. He sees it and straightens with effort, dragging air into his chest like it has weight.
“Are you okay?”
The question hits me so hard I almost fold. Not how could you, not why didn’t you tell me.
Are you okay?
I nod, crying too hard to make it dignified. “Yes. The baby’s okay too.”
“The baby,” he says, his hand pressing flat to his chest.
Then he laughs once, broken and wet. He turns away for half a second, one hand braced on the counter. When he looks back at me, his face is ruined and open, joy and grief all mixed together until neither one can stand without the other.
“Emmy,” he whispers. “Honey.”
“I didn’t tell you,” I say. “On purpose.”
He nods immediately, even though the tears keep falling. “Okay.”
“No, listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“I found out after I left. June knew, but nobody else.” My hand curves tighter around my belly. “I wanted to tell you. I almost did a hundred times. But I couldn’t bear it if you came back because of this.”
Pain crosses his face.
“I couldn’t survive being chosen out of obligation,” I say.
“Not after all of that. Not after spending two years feeling like the thing in your way. I needed to know you came back for me. Not because I was carrying your child, and not because you were a good man who’d do the right thing once the right thing had a heartbeat. ”
His eyes drop again to my stomach, then back to my face. “I hate that you carried it alone. I hate every minute I wasn’t there. I hate that I made telling me feel dangerous.”
My knees feel weak.
“I would’ve come,” he says. “If you’d told me, I would’ve come so fast I’d have torn the road up. But I understand why that scared you.”
The baby shifts then. Not imagined, but a small, rolling pressure under my palm.
My breath catches, and Cade sees it. His whole face changes.
“What?” he asks, almost afraid.
I look down at my hand. “He moved,” I whisper. Then I laugh through tears because I don’t know if it’s a he, and because June keeps telling me I’m going to ruin the surprise for myself by deciding too early. “Or she. The baby moved.”
Cade’s lips part.
“Can I…” His voice fails. He clears it and tries again. “Can I come closer?”
That almost breaks me worse than if he’d asked to touch. “Yes.”
He crosses the distance slowly. When he reaches me, he stops with inches between us, waiting again. I take his wrist and guide his hand to the place where mine rests.
His palm is warm, rough, and careful enough to make my eyes close. For a moment, nothing happens. Cade doesn’t complain and doesn’t laugh it off. He just stands there with his hand under mine, breathing unevenly, tears slipping down his face in silence.
Then the baby moves again, small and certain.
Cade drops to his knees. His hand stays where I put it, trembling against my belly.
“Hi,” he whispers.
The word shatters something I thought had already broken clean through.
He laughs once, crying openly now. “Hi, baby.”
I put my free hand in his hair because my body decides before my pride can hold a meeting about it. Cade freezes, then he turns his face into my palm and breaks all the way.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry I made you do this without me. I’m so sorry, Emmy.”
His hand spread, broad and shaking. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you never feel alone again.”
I look down at him. The man who left stages behind before he knew. The man who gave up money before he knew. The man who moved to my town, built my house, saved our bar, and sang to an empty spot for months before he knew there was a baby tucked beneath my heart.
The proof has been here longer than the confession.
I bend carefully until my forehead rests against his. Cade’s breath catches.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too.”
He closes his eyes again, and for once, there’s no audience to cheer for him when he falls apart. Only me. Only the baby. Only the house he built before he knew how badly we’d need somewhere to stand.