2. Elsie
Elsie
I knew he’d say something like that. It’s exactly why I didn’t tell him.
I look up at him standing in the middle of my half-empty living room, all six-foot-something of him, shoulders blocking out most of the window behind him, jaw locked like he’s already decided this conversation is over.
Even now, furious and terrified and nauseous all at once, some traitorous part of me still notices the way his forearms flex when he crosses them, the black ink of the tattoo sleeve disappearing under his rolled cuff.
I remember exactly what that ink feels like under my palms. I’ve spent five months trying very hard to forget.
“Jesse, I found out I was pregnant three months ago.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I’ve had three months to think about what I wanted to do, and packing a bag and leaving quietly was the plan. Not this.”
“Well, the plan’s changed.”
Of course it has. Nothing about the last five months has gone the way I planned.
I didn’t plan on getting so sick I could barely stand some mornings.
Didn’t plan on twins, though I suppose nobody plans that.
Didn’t plan on the diner’s summer heat making the nausea worse instead of better, sweat sticking my uniform to my back on shift after shift while I smiled and refilled coffee and pretended I wasn’t hiding a whole other life under my apron.
I certainly didn’t plan on Jesse Simmons finding me in a vest and jeans, taking out the trash on a Thursday morning like it was nothing, and seeing everything I’d spent three months trying not to let him see.
I tried moving on in the beginning. Told myself it was smart, healthy, exactly what a sensible woman does after one incredible night with a man who made his terms very clear before he even had his boots off.
I let Rosie set me up with her son’s friend for coffee.
Sat across from a perfectly nice, forgettable man and spent the whole hour comparing his ordinary brown eyes to a shade of green-blue I hadn’t been able to shake for two years.
It didn’t work. Nothing worked. Nobody came close.
I’d been half in love with Jesse long before that night — watching him from behind the diner counter for two years, the way his gaze would find mine and hold a beat too long before he looked away like he’d caught himself doing something forbidden. I used to live for those few seconds.
The rare afternoons he came in with his team, I’d find any excuse to take his table myself, refill his coffee twice as often as anyone else’s, just to be close enough to catch the low rasp of his voice.
They were all muscled, ruggedly handsome men, veterans or martial artists with tattoos to die for, and all the women in the diner ogled them, but Jesse was the only one my heart raced too.
Then, five months ago, he actually looked at me the way I’d been imagining, and everything changed.
I still think about that night more than I should for a man who told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was the only one I’d get.
The way he carried me to the shower as if I weighed nothing.
The heat of the water, of him at my back, hands that could probably kill a man roving over me like I was something worth being careful with.
I’ve never felt more wanted in my life, before or since.
I never expected him to come back. I told myself I understood why he wouldn’t — a man like Jesse doesn’t do anything without a reason, and if the reason for staying away was that he didn’t want more than one night, that was his right.
What I couldn’t accept was the idea of using this baby, our baby, as some kind of leash.
Mom and dad have been married for over twenty years, and they still hold hands at the dinner table, still dance in the kitchen when a song comes on the radio, and that’s what I want.
Not a good man doing the right thing because biology cornered him into it.
“I can’t do this, Jesse.” I press a hand to my stomach, more for myself than for him. “You don’t want this. You told me exactly what you wanted, and it wasn’t a baby, and it definitely wasn’t me long term.”
“That was before I knew.” His voice doesn’t rise, but something underneath it does, something low and rough that makes the hair on my arms stand up. “I’m not walking away from my own child.”
“I’m not asking you to be a deadbeat. I’m asking you to let me handle this without you rearranging your whole life out of guilt.”
“It’s not guilt.”
“Then what is it?”
Of course he doesn’t answer. Jesse’s the type of man who doesn’t hand out his reasons for free; pushing rarely gets one anywhere except further away from an answer. I’ve learned that much about him, even in the little time I ever really had him.
“You don’t even know me well,” I try instead, quieter.
“Before that night, five months ago, we only exchanged a few words. Nothing since then. Not a call, text, or even you walking into the diner for coffee. You don’t get to show up now and start making decisions about my life like you have any right to it. ”
Something flickers across his face. It doesn’t feel quite like guilt or regret, but something more complicated than either.
He takes a step closer, and I catch the scent of him; sun-warmed skin and clean sweat from wherever he’d been before he found me outside, and my whole body remembers things my head would very much like it to forget.
“You’re right,” he says. “I don’t have the right. I’m asking for it, anyway.”
I open my mouth to argue, and what comes out instead is, “It’s twins.”
I hadn’t meant to say it. Not like that, not in the middle of an argument, not as a weapon, but it’s out now, hanging in the space between us, and I watch it land.
His jaw goes slack for exactly one second before it locks again, harder this time.
“Twins,” he repeats, as if the word doesn’t fit in his mouth right.
“Two babies, Jesse. I’m having twins.” My hand is still on my stomach, and for one unguarded moment I let myself imagine what it would be like if the man standing in front of me actually got to be a father to them, instead of just a name on a birth certificate and a check I never wanted.
“So no. I don’t think you understand what you’d be signing up for. ”
“I understand exactly what I’d be signing up for.” He crosses the space between us before I can brace for it, crouches so we’re eye level, and for a second the determination in his face gives way to something that looks almost like wonder. “Twins.”
The way he says it the second time is different. Quieter. Like it’s settling into him instead of hitting him.
I need him to stop looking at me like that.
He must go back to being the man who wanted a one-night stand and nothing more, because I can survive that man.
I don’t know if I can survive the one crouched in front of me with his hand hovering an inch from my stomach like he wants to touch it and isn’t sure he’s allowed.
“You should go,” I say, and it comes out weaker than I mean it to.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He straightens, and just like that the softness is gone, replaced by something harder, more decided. “And neither are you. Not out of Blossom Ford.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Then make me understand.” He says it like a command, but there’s something underneath it that sounds almost like begging, and that’s what finally breaks me.
“There’s a man in LA.” My voice shakes on the words.
Outside, a car passes on the street below, tires loud against the pavement, and somewhere further off a dog barks twice and goes quiet.
Ordinary sounds, an ordinary Thursday, while I sit here about to hand him the thing I’ve been running from for two years.
“His name is Andrei Zidaru. He runs a crime operation; drugs, trafficking, I don’t know all of it.
He used to come into the coffee shop where I worked before I moved here, and he decided he wanted me.
It didn’t matter that I said no. Men like him don’t hear no; they appear to hear a challenge. ”
Jesse goes very still. It doesn’t look like the stillness of a man who’s stopped listening, but that of a predator who’s just caught a scent.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone,” I keep going, because now that it’s out, I can’t seem to stop it.
“Followed me home twice. Sent things to my apartment. I finally told my manager I quit, packed what I could carry, and got on a bus out of LA without telling anyone but my cousin Rosalie where I was going. That was two years ago. I thought if I just disappeared, he’d forget about me, eventually. Find someone else to fixate on.”
“He hasn’t.”
It’s not a question. I shake my head anyway.
“Rosalie said a few weeks ago that his people are still asking around, trying to find out where I ended up. I might have had to leave town at a later date anyway if he tracks me down. Being with me isn’t safe.”
Despite Jesse being a veteran, I expect some fear on his face.
Or, the hesitation a reasonable man might feel while weighing the cost of tangling himself up with a woman who’s got an organized crime lord’s attention fixed on her.
That’s why I told him. I’d hoped the hesitation might buy me enough time to get out of town.
I don’t get either.
Jesse goes somewhere colder and more focused than I’ve ever seen him; the temperature in the room seeming to drop several degrees though nothing’s actually changed except the look in his eyes. They are the coldest blue I’ve ever seen, the green almost gone.
“You’re not staying in this apartment another night.”
“Jesse—”
“Pack whatever you need. You’re coming with me.”
“To where?”
“My cabin.” He’s already moving, already scanning the room like he’s cataloguing threats I can’t see — the windows, the door, the fire escape I didn’t even know was visible from the street.
“It’s on land my boss owns. There are cameras on every approach, a team that knows how to keep people safe, and me.
Nobody gets near you or out babies there. ”
“You can’t just decide that.” Yet, a small part of me is tempted. What if Jesse and his team can protect me from Andrei? They run a security team, so they are experts, right? But what if they get hurt instead?
“Watch me.”
He’s already got my suitcase in one hand before I can form another protest, backpack slung over his shoulder like it weighs nothing, and when I try to stand on my own, my body betrays me with a wave of dizziness that has him crossing the room again in two strides.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re exhausted, pregnant with twins, and a man who wants to hurt you is looking for you.” His voice softens, just enough that I feel it somewhere beneath my ribs. “Let me take care of you, Elsie. Please.”
I’ve never heard him say please before. I don’t think I’ve heard many people say it and mean it the way he does, like it costs him something. As if asking is harder for him than commanding ever could be.
“Alright,” I whisper. “But I’m not sure about this; it’s too sudden. I’ll go with you for now.”
“Noted.” Something that isn’t quite a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, gone almost as fast as it appears, and he scoops me up before I can object to that either.
Outside, the sky has gone that hard, bright blue that means the heat isn’t letting up anytime soon.
I feel it on my bare arms the second we step out, the kind of dry heat that makes the air itself feel thin.
Jesse settles me into the passenger seat of his truck with more gentleness than I’d have thought those hands were capable of, buckling my seatbelt himself when my fingers fumble with the clasp.
“You good?” he asks, low, before he shuts the door.
I’m not. Not even a little. But I nod anyway, because the part that’s been alone in this since the day I found out has already started, treacherously, to believe that maybe I don’t have to be.
The drive up the mountain is quiet. I watch the town shrink in the side mirror; the trees thicken and the road narrow and climb, and realize Andrei Zidaru is no longer in my thoughts.
I’m thinking about the man beside me, strong hands steady on the wheel, jaw still tight with whatever he’s not saying, driving me toward a life I never let myself imagine.