13. Ellie #2
“You came back,” he breathed, or at least, I was pretty sure those were the words that came out of his mouth, muffled by my shirt.
But before I could respond, he abruptly stood, and then I was being lifted into Sully’s grasp.
My legs automatically circled his waist while my arms did the same around his neck, and he carted me off down the hallway, into the living room.
“Sawyer,” I said, but it wasn’t a protest. More a shameless giggle, this short burst of levity in a moment that felt like a dream, a reality that I’d never consciously imagined.
None of this was funny. None of this was funny at all, but I was so relieved to have told him, to have gotten it off my chest, to have his strong arms around me.
Sully pulled me down onto his mom’s rust-colored couch, keeping me wrapped around him. He tucked his head into the crook of my neck, breathing deeply. My nose was in his hair, the smell of his minty shampoo so achingly familiar.
“I’ll let go,” he breathed against my skin. “I promise, just give me a second.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Not when I had the urge to tell him not to let go at all. Because I’d badly needed this—this hug, this embrace, this tight hold. Tears once again welled in my lashes, and when they threatened to fall, I didn’t even bother trying to stop them. Not this time.
When Sully heard my sniffle, he lifted his head, searching my face.
“Hey.” His voice was the softest I’d heard in a long time, reminiscent of how it used to be, which only made me cry harder. “Hey, El. Hey, it’s going to be okay.”
I nodded, wiping at my eyes. I knew it would be. I knew now it would be.
“Look, fuck, I’m sorry.” He shook his head, brows pulled together in a look of pain. His eyes were frantic as they bounced between mine, glaring at my tears like he could scare them away. “I’m so sorry, Eleanor. Shit, I—”
“Don’t.” I wiped at my tears, but there were too many of them. “I don’t know why you’re apologizing.”
“Because this is—” He sighed, and it sank me back into reality a bit. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle and maybe a little sad. “Because I know you didn’t want this, didn’t want kids, and I know I should have been more careful—”
“I never said I didn’t want this,” I cut in, needing to set that straight.
But I also didn’t feel like debating who was more at fault for the pregnancy.
It was equally our choice, equally our actions that led us here.
We both should have been more careful, considering I wasn’t on birth control.
And we both had been too caught up in seeing each other again to care. “I said I didn’t know if I wanted it.”
He swallowed hard, nodding. And then, almost as though he suddenly remembered we weren’t together, and why we weren’t together, he slid me off his lap, settling me on the couch beside him. We were still touching, still close, but I was no longer in his lap.
“Do you know now?” he asked. “What you want?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?” He searched my face. “I’ll support you. I know I’ve been an ass. Shit, I’ve been such an ass about you showing up here. But I promise I’ll support whatever you…whatever you want.”
It sounded difficult for him to say, but I knew he meant it.
“I’m sure,” I promised. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him more, to tell him that everything changed the moment I stared at the positive sign on the pregnancy stick and realized that there was going to be a human that might have Sully’s eyes, might have my hair.
To tell him that I couldn’t ever imagine giving that possibility up, not now that it felt so real. “But I’m also…”
His brows furrowed. “What?”
“Scared,” I admitted in a small voice, saying the thing I’d never fully said before.
“Me, too,” he said, earnest, and it surprised me.
I knew things were different now, but Sully had never expressed any apprehensions about becoming a parent. It had always been the opposite.
“You’ll be a great dad, Sawyer,” I said, frowning. “I can’t imagine anyone being a better dad than you.”
And it was the truth.
The reason I was here.
Well, one of them.
“That’s not why I’m terrified, Eleanor.” He lifted his hand to my face, cupping my cheek and letting me lean into his touch. His thumb traced my cheekbone, wiping away any lasting tears. “Have you gone to the doctor yet?”
I nodded. “I went once in California. And then—what?”
Sully was giving me a look like he was about to spiral again.
Raking his free hand through his hair, he darted his eyes away from mine, pained. “I’m just thinking about it.”
“Thinking about what?”
“You in California. I wish…you would have called me, told me sooner. So you didn’t have to do all this alone.
I would have flown out there. I would have gone with you.
I would have helped you move. I would have—” He cut himself off, took an intentional breath.
He released his hair, found my eyes again. “What did the doctor say?”
“That I am most definitely pregnant.”
“Anything else?”
I gave a hesitant nod, not sure if now was the time to go in-depth about it all.
“There are some…other considerations. Some time-sensitive things I’ll need to take care of.”
“Mm.” He dropped his hand from my face but let it land on my thigh. Kept it there. Traced his thumb in slow, steady circles. It was amazing how his touch still had the ability to light me up inside. “Tell me about these time-sensitive things. Please.”
Sully’s calm cadence helped me admit, “I have an appointment later this week with Maternal-Fetal Medicine. At a local clinic.”
His body went rigid. His thumb stopped tracing circles.
“What’s that?” he asked. “What does that mean? Is that something different than normal?”
“An MFM doctor is a specialist.”
“A specialist,” Sully repeated, his tone dropping.
“Yes, generally someone you see for high-risk pregnancies.”
Sully sucked in and then seemed to hold his breath for several long moments.
When he finally decided to breathe again, he muttered “high risk” a few times, as though he needed to process the words, force them into his brain.
Then he stood and began pacing the length of the living room, a deep crease between his brows.
“Why is it high risk? Is it because of what happened in college?” he asked, and I nodded.
Sully swore beneath his breath and continued to pace.
“I want to come,” he said after a heavy pause where the only thing echoing in the room was his footsteps and our heartbeats. “To the appointment.”
I sighed. I should have anticipated this part of the conversation, but my brain had never really gotten past the initial reveal.
“Sawyer…I don’t know.”
He came to a stop in front of me. “You don’t know?”
“The appointment, it will just be informational,” I explained.
“You won’t be missing out on anything, and I think I just need to…
I don’t know, wrap my head around all the important details myself without also trying to navigate this.
Us.” I considered him, giving what I hoped was an empathetic expression.
I knew this was a lot, could see the anxious energy vibrating inside him.
“And I think you need a second to process this, too. About what you want it to mean for you. And for us.”
His lips pulled tight. “What does it mean for us?”
Oh, God. Despite it being a reasonable counterquestion, I still balked at it.
“Well.” I tightly clasped my hands in my lap.
“Like I said, I think it’s something to think about.
To talk about. But it likely means committing to raising a child together.
Committing to having a…working sort of relationship.
But you can let me know what your thoughts are after you’ve had some time to process. ”
Sully was silent for a long time, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he brooded.
Finally, “So you think we should be…coworkers?”
When he said it like that, it did sound sort of cold. That wasn’t what I’d meant, though. It was more that we had to agree to work together, to be a team. But I didn’t exactly trust myself to get into it at the moment, not when my emotions—both our emotions—were all over the place.
“You know what I mean,” I sighed.
I pretended to be unaffected by the thought of keeping distance between us, when in reality, it was so hard not to reach out and pull him back to the couch.
Sully nodded, but he was giving me a funny stare, and I wondered if his thoughts were in the same place.
He didn’t go there, though.
“I want to know the information,” he said, resuming his pacing. “From the appointment.”
“Of course,” I said. That seemed reasonable. “I’ll tell you everything about the baby. And when there starts to be imaging and all that, you can come. You should come.”
I tried not to think too hard about Sully and me at the doctor together, pretending we were nothing to each other but co-parents. Pretending this wasn’t once the future we’d talked about.
“And you,” he said, and I didn’t quite know what he meant until he clarified, “I want you to tell me everything the doctor says about you, too. I want to know about these risks, Eleanor.”
Right.
“I think for right now, the two of us are pretty intertwined,” I said with a soft laugh, brushing it off. “Information about the baby is information about me, you know?”
He steadied his look, unhappy with my answer.
“Yes, I’ll tell you,” I said, giving in. “I’ll tell you about me, too.”
“Thank you,” he breathed, and then he scrubbed his hand over his face.
I badly wanted to walk over and wrap my arms around him again, but I feared the moment for that was over—now that the heavy emotions were draining away and reality was setting in.
“How are you doing?” I asked instead. “How are you feeling about…everything?”