29. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The room was smaller than he remembered.
Not that he’d spent a lot of time within its walls, and the nights he had he certainly wasn’t noticing the square footage.
Thoughts of hushed but passionate nights beneath the fluffy purple duvet painted a vivid picture as he looked at it now.
One such night was responsible for his current task—assembling a crib.
Hope watched from her perch on the bed. “I can help, you know.”
“I’m good. You rest.” He had insisted that he could handle this for her.
After all, he wanted things to be easy when she brought the baby home, and that meant having a space that felt safe and inviting.
He was the father, he could assemble a damn crib.
He wanted to do and be so much more than this.
He’d done his best to demonstrate his excitement and dedication that week despite the awkward tension that lingered after their conversation and the pressure of Hope’s book launch in a couple of days.
He drove her to her appointment yesterday and paid the co-pay at the office.
He held her hand through the ultrasound and made sure she had a well-balanced lunch before he brought her home.
He’d also taken both their cars in turn with two separate car seats to the fire station to have them inspected for proper installation.
He knew they were still eight weeks out, but he was nothing if not prepared.
He liked to think it eased something between them that he’d been so adamant about getting the safety measures in place and the cribs ready in case Bug decided to make an early appearance.
It had saddened him though to remove Hope’s well-loved desk from the corner of the room to make space for the crib.
She’d also insisted on downsizing from her queen-sized bed to a twin, so there was more room for the changing table he would assemble next.
It had quickly gone from the moody cave of a witchy-minded author to a mash-up nursery bunk room.
Her bed hid behind the door, the headboard parallel to the hallway wall that was no more than six feet wide.
Her nightstand piled with her current reads on the low shelf stood beside it with a reading lamp on top.
On the other side of the door stood the armoire that Brayden muscled across the room from where it used to reside in the center of the long wall leading to the window seat.
The corner that shared a wall with the window seat was cordoned off for the crib, and the changing table would take the place of the armoire. It was tight, but it worked.
“Are you sure you want to stay here?” Brayden asked as he finished assembling one of the side rails of the wooden crib that Hope had picked out, its warm walnut finish matching the twin-sized bed she’d swapped her cousin’s daughter for. “You wouldn’t rather get your own place?”
Brayden cringed at how Hope deflated. Like she thought he’d been asking something else.
He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought of having them live together, even if they weren’t together , but that seemed like a bad idea. Still, he should be more careful with how he worded things.
“It will be nice to have support here,” Hope said in a measured tone.
Still, the space made him sad. He had four thousand square feet, a separate nursery, guest rooms, and a primary suite with tile, stain, and wallpaper that Hope had picked out, and here she was in a single bedroom making it work, because he didn’t know how to.
He wanted to take that pained look from her face, but he couldn’t and uphold the plan he’d set forth.
This was how things needed to be. This was how he could be certain he’d do right by Bug and not get left behind.
Brayden gritted his teeth but nodded in acknowledgment.
He got to work attaching the four sides of the crib.
“You picked some nice things,” he complimented. Baby products seemed a safe topic of conversation.
“Your email with links to the highest rated in every category was helpful. As were the safety scores and notes about hidden toxins.” Hope leveled him with a teasing glare.
“Too much?”
“Nooo,” she drawled. “It’s comforting knowing all the ways my baby can suffocate overnight if I buy the wrong mattress.”
Brayden palmed his face in shame. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I’m messing with you . . . kind of. It is scary but it was helpful. Thank you.”
“Of course. I plan on getting this crib and mattress for the nursery too.” They’d tentatively agreed to joint custody, which would look mostly like Brayden spending his days off with Bug until Hope was done breastfeeding.
Then he could have overnights too, but cribs were still needed for nap time, and besides, a nursery made it real.
“The nursery? At your place. You have a whole nursery.” Brayden heard the embarrassment in her voice, which was entirely unwarranted.
It’s not like she couldn’t get a place with a separate room for the baby.
She chose to stay here for the support of it all.
Brayden didn’t want to think about what else she might need support on. That if he’d taken her back . . .
He interrupted his own train of thought. “Do you want to go get some clothes and diapers and things this weekend?”
“Uh, no that’s okay. Effie offered to go with me.”
“Okay.” Brayden tried not to let his disappointment show. What right did he have to hope she’d say yes to that? They still had weeks to get everything.
Hope didn’t want a shower, insisting that she abhorred attending the events, so why would she make other people suffer through hers? She was also adamant that she could afford what she needed without getting gifts from everyone.
They never talked about Hope’s money. It was always extra in Brayden’s mind.
He’d be able to carry the bulk of their finances with or without the cushion of his trust fund, which was significantly smaller in size since his divorce.
He and his lawyer had managed to convince Chloe to take a lump sum that was big enough to have her eyes rolling back in her head and forgetting about the allowance into perpetuity she had originally angled for.
He was glad to see it go if it meant he needn’t have any more contact with her.
But he was still so far in the green that it hadn’t occurred to him to ask Hope about how else they might split the cost of things.
He assumed he’d handle it, but if they weren’t together would Hope want that?
He’d had enough heavy conversations lately and was very much enjoying doing something nice for the woman carrying his baby, so he silenced the string of questions and pivoted to something more lighthearted.
“Have you thought of any names yet?”
“A few, but I wanted to talk to you about them.”
His heart clenched. “I get a say?”
“Brayden, come on. Of course you do.” He shouldn’t have been surprised by her offense, but he still wasn’t sure how to navigate whatever lingered between them. He had to stay practical, smart, level-headed.
“I kind of like Elliot for a boy,” Brayden said.
Hope’s laugh chipped away at his wall. “You think it’s going to be a boy? A Thatcher boy?”
“It’s supposed to be a fifty-fifty kind of thing,” he teased, but it wasn’t lost on him that she thought the baby’s last name would be Thatcher, not Schilling. A whole new wave of heartache waited at the end of that road, so he pivoted again. “But yeah, if it’s a boy, I want Elliot on the table.”
“Okay,” Hope said, her depthless eyes pouring such love and affection all over him, he marveled at his ability to hold her gaze.
If he stayed much longer he might just forget that she’d kept this pregnancy a secret.
Might forget she believed him capable of an affair.
Might forget that she didn’t care enough to confront him when things looked bad.
He might just forget he wasn’t supposed to be giving her his soul, so he tore his eyes from her angelic face and went to work on making the room his baby’s home. A home he wasn’t going to be a part of.