Chapter 3
Chapter Three
WELLS
Wells zoomed off of the highway onto a back road to Fairwick Falls, his heart having been in his throat for the last four and a half hours.
Pop was in the hospital.
He’d fallen during pickleball, and they were worried he might have a hip fracture. Wells had only gotten infrequent updates from Olivia.
Wells gulped, knowing what a hip fracture would mean for an eighty-year-old man.
Reduced life expectancy, nursing home.
And he just started his retirement.
Pop had worked so hard his entire life. Poured everything he had into the town, into others.
I’ve never even told Pop what he means to me.
Icy rain was coming down, making the roads slippery as the sun set. Wells’s eyes scanned the horizon for animals by second nature, and he squinted as his eyes caught on someone walking along the road.
A woman? Walking a dark, empty road in the rain by herself?
He slowed.
He had to get to the hospital, but at the very least, he could call somebody for her.
Long legs strode across the roadside in the rain. Distinct peachy pink hair stuck out from a beanie.
The uptight, stick-in-the-ass gait could only be one person.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch,” he muttered.
She might murder him, but at least he’d know who was murdering him.
He rolled down his window as he pulled up next to the bane of his fucking existence.
“Get in,” he yelled.
She jumped and put a hand on her heart in surprise. Then he heard a muffled curse as she peered into the car.
“No,” she yelled, still stomping down the highway.
So annoying. “Get in,” he said more forcefully. “It’s raining.”
“Sleeting, actually,” she yelled and wiped her nose.
Was she crying?
He growled as he rolled his car slowly alongside her. “It’s freezing, pitch black, and the next house that has people in it and not nineteenth-century barn ghosts is over two miles away.”
“I hate you.”
“I’m not so fond of you either, but I can’t leave you here. What if my mom finds out?”
Allison barked out a laugh. “I can’t wait to tell her. She likes me better, you know.”
Trust me, I know. He’d had his ear blown off from his mother’s lectures after their incident—which he still maintained was an accident—on Thanksgiving.
“I can’t leave you alone out here, even if you are the human equivalent of an inspirational quote on a coffee mug.” He slowly rolled the car as she stomped along.
She had so many facial expressions of rage, he’d expected to see her jaw drop in outrage. That was his favorite one.
Instead, she wiped the arm of her coat over her cheeks and stood straighter. “I don’t need you to make me feel worse.” Her bottom lip wobbled on the last word.
He stopped the car. Luckily, she stopped too.
He sighed, knowing which heartstring to pull to get her in the damn car. “I don’t have time for this. Pop’s in the hospital.”
She turned quickly, her face in shock. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know yet. But I might sometime tonight if you get in the fucking car.” He pushed open the passenger side door.
She scowled at him, thinking.
C’mon, c’mon. We don’t have time for this.
“Fine,” she sighed. She bent down, peering into the ultra-low sports car with a horrified look. “How do you get in this thing?”
“Try being cool for once in your life,” Wells said, gritting his teeth.
She slowly, awkwardly slid into the low seat foot-first. “It’s like I’m sliding”—she grappled with the door handle, half in the car—“into my own casket. Aagh—”
The door opened wider, sending her torso flailing out of the car as she hung on for dear life.
Her lace-up Mary Poppins-style boots kicked at his custom leather interior.
“Jesus Christ, woman. I’ve never met someone”—he grabbed her waist and hoisted her into the car so she slammed back into the passenger seat—“so clumsy.”
Discombobulated dismay on her face, she puffed peachy locks of hair out of her eyes. “I’ve never met someone so rude.”
She shut the door and he took off immediately. This was going to be the longest forty-minute drive of his life.
His car filled with her soft floral scent as she ripped her beanie off and tossed her hair. “Why did it have to be you? I could at least charm a serial killer.”
Wells snorted with derision.
Her mouth dropped open in outrage.
Aha, got it.
“I am so charming,” Allison said, squinting her eyes.
Wells shook his head. “As charming as a lawn gnome.”
Allison snorted but then looked like she regretted laughing. She wiped her eyes again.
He reached into the center console and pulled out a tissue. She yanked it from his hand.
“Crying over your precious car that died?” Wells asked.
Allison blew her nose loudly. It sounded like a constipated goose.
Charming.
“I’ve had a day, okay.”
“I’d ask about it, but I don’t particularly care,” he said, sighing out the window as they curved around the back roads.
“I wouldn’t tell you anyway,” she muttered.
He thought of Pop in the hospital, missing him by minutes before something terrible happened. He sped up, yanking the gearshift into fourth.
Allison grabbed the oh shit handle above her seat. “Slow down. It’s icy; I don’t want to be rescued twice today. My day was embarrassing enough.”
Well now he was interested. A perfect way to distract himself for the rest of the ride. “Embarrassing? Tell me more.”
Allison dabbed at her eyes with the tissue as tears started again. “It’s like the universe doesn’t want me to have this one thing, you know?”
“A personality? A sense of style from this century?”
“A baby,” she said spitefully.
Wells was yanked out of his worries. A baby?
The back of Wells’s neck tingled. Allison wasn’t dating anyone that he knew of. She was going to do it on her own, too? “You want a baby?”
She flopped her arms as if she’d admitted something embarrassing. “Yeah, there you go. You can laugh. Allison wants a baby. Poor, lonely, old Allison.”
“You’re not old,” he said, chastising her. “If you’re going to make fun of yourself, at least do it properly.”
He rolled the idea around in his head, unable to let it go.
No one else he knew was going through this. “You’re trying to have a baby?”
“I was. Am? I was trying this expensive fertility clinic.” She sighed, going off on a tangent.
“I gave them all the money I’d saved for the next year or two so that I could have lots of samples because that was part of the problem—I was only getting a sample once a month, and this whole thing was taking months and months and months, and I only have so many months before my chances go away.
And it turns out, all the samples were the doctor’s.
In bulk,” she said, finally running out of breath.
Wells was putting everything together. Did she say the doctor…? “Wait, so the doctor filled the sperm samples with his own…”
She nodded her head, looking shell-shocked. “Yeah.”
Wells whistled. “There’ll be some good money in those lawsuits.”
“Of course that’s what you would say.” She shook her head, looking out the passenger window. “I would never ask you to be my lawyer, but…if you were going to counsel somebody, would it be worth trying to get my money back?”
“Well, I would never be your lawyer, obviously, but…” Wells pondered it as an academic exercise.
Just killing time on the ride back. “They misled you. I’m sure you thought you were paying for some Bryce Billingsworth the Third, varsity-rowing-team-at-an-Ivy, loves-math-and-puppies-and-good-deeds kind of sperm. ”
Allison sniffled.
And noticeably didn’t respond.
His lips twitched. “Did I get it right?”
“That was it, almost exactly,” she said in a watery voice.
Wells swallowed a smile. “How tall was he supposed to be?”
“Six three,” she said meekly.
Wells bit back a laugh. “And how tall was the doctor?”
Allison glowered. “Not that.”
Wells chuckled.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny. Did he at least have a good head of hair?”
She squirmed in the heated seat, though she was fighting a smile. “…No comment.”
“Look, you’ve got time. Someone might be into your whole”—he’d almost said hot kindergarten teacher but then thought better of admitting she was hot—“….thing. Why not do it the old-fashioned way?”
Allison honked her nose loudly into the tissue.
“It feels like I’m running out of time. I’m in my late thirties, I’m never getting married again, obviously.
” She scowled at him and he could feel the anger rolling at him.
“I’ve only ever wanted this one thing my whole life.
I didn’t care what job I had. I was never great in school.
I just wanted a family. And I’d like the experience of being pregnant.
I’d want someone to either give up all rights or help or something. But that seems like a pipe dream.”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, calculating the odds of someone wanting exactly what he wanted, but said nothing.
The surrogacy agency who’d left a message that morning? Like the first three, they were “unable to accommodate his requirements at this time.”
It had left him despondent and angry, on top of the chaos of Pop being in the hospital hours away.
Allison shifted in her seat, squirming under her seatbelt. “Can you turn the heated seats off?” she muttered, poking at the car’s digital screen.
He batted her hand away. “Stop, you’ll mess everything up.”
She fanned at her face. “It’s just, they made me take these hormones beforehand to increase the likelihood of success, and…”
He rolled to a stop at a single blinking red light in the middle of nowhere where two back roads crossed.
Her cheeks were flushed, a pretty peach blush fanning across the tops of her round cheeks. She bit her pouty bottom lip, and his eyes traced the contrast of her teeth against it. She squeezed her thighs together.
“Oh my god, are you horny?” He snorted.
“No.” She squinted at the road, squeezing her thighs together. “I would just like the heated seats to stop being heated.”
“You are.” Wells let out a roll of laughter as he shifted into second, gaining speed again. “My car is making you horny.”
“I hate you so much.” She rolled her eyes as if what he was saying was ridiculous and not the god’s honest truth. “I am not horn—oh!”
A family of deer suddenly darted out onto the road.
Wells slammed on the brakes and braced his arm in front of her on instinct as her hand slammed over his chest.
He skidded to a stop in time. The baby deer stared at them, blinked twice, and then finally darted out of the road after its parents.
Wells’s heart was pounding somewhere outside his body. His hand had landed squarely on her boob, and he yanked it back. She yanked her hand back from his chest as well.
“You okay?” he said matter-of-factly.
Completely hiding the fact that he’d worried about her safety and accidentally copped a feel.
She nodded, looking shaken. “This is the second time. That’s how my car got in a ditch. It’s just…”
She blew out a long, shaky breath. She looked brittle, as if one more thing might break her.
Maybe ease up on her. He turned off the heated seat on her side. “That’s a lot to deal with two times in one night.”
“It is,” she said, straightening her spine and tugging her shirt sleeves. “Thank you.”
They glared at each other, suspicious.
He’d mom-armed her.
And she’d done the same to him.
He rolled around the idea that she wanted a baby.
Just like me.
Didn’t want the complications of a romantic partner. Wanted someone who would actually help or fuck all the way off, legally speaking.
Just like me.
She slanted a wary look at him. “What? I’m no longer thinking impure thoughts about your heated seats in your BMW, okay?”
“Jaguar. Why do you want a baby?” he said quickly.
She tossed her hands in the air, back to the angry Allison he only ever saw.
“See, that’s what I hate. Nobody asks two happily married people that when they get pregnant.
‘Why did you want a baby? Why didn’t you adopt?
Why didn’t you foster? How many parenting classes have you taken?
’ No, they say, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so nice for you. ’”
“I’m not judging you,” Wells said, shifting in his seat. God, this fucking woman.
“Your tone indicates otherwise.”
“Just passing the time,” he lied.
Lying was Wells’s favorite pastime.
He never lied about anything important. He reported every penny on his taxes, was honest about his STD screenings. But most things in the world were in that murky middle.
Fudge-able, truth-wise.
Allowing him to learn what he needed to learn.
Wells shrugged. “Unless you’d like a serenade of the bottles of beer left on the wall?”
Allison sighed, the breath creating a puff on his windshield. “I want that once-in-a-lifetime experience of being pregnant.”
She looked like she was in her own world.
Sad, and wistful. “Going through a rite of passage connecting me to people before me. I think…I think I’m meant to be a mom.
I’ve always had all of this love trapped inside me that I’ve tried to force onto other people by taking care of them.
It feels like I could actually be really good at it, you know?
Encourage them to be who they are and not make them feel bad about their choices.
And do all the fun stuff too. The parks, first Christmas, take them to the beach, see them eat a lemon for the first time.
” She smiled to herself, picking at her sweater.
“I want to make this world a little better, and I think this is how I can do it.”
Wells nodded, not saying anything.
Her reasoning resonated. It sounded like the same reasons he’d set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars for at the promise of having a kid.
He’d considered adoption, but the prospects of approval were worse for a single dad.
He also liked the idea of being connected to the generations that came before him, having more of his mom in the world.
He slid his eyes to the woman now picking at her cuticles, handling a terrible day while not asking for anything from anybody.
Awareness prickled all over as he let a ridiculous—an impossible—a truly stupendously stupid idea flit through his brain.
No. Stop that.
Never.
It would never work.
Wells had a penchant for crazy ideas, for overcoming the impossible because he could see the vision no one else could. He had the drive and fortitude to see hard things through.
But this?
Only a fool would think two people who couldn’t stand each other should have a baby.