9. Evelyn
NINE
EVELYN
FOUR MONTHS LATER
I swallowed hard as I stared at my reflection. My eyes were bright even if a little glassy, filled with so much emotion I couldn’t stand it.
I glanced down at the stick on the counter and felt a wave of nausea that only confirmed what the little digital window on the test said.
Pregnant.
I was pregnant.
I wasn’t sure how far along I was. My period had always been sporadic and had a mind of its own, but if I had to guess, this little bundle of upcoming joy had been cooking for a while.
My hand covered my still somewhat flat-ish belly.
I’d gained some weight, but I had figured it was because I was moving around less with the bakery closed.
A knock on the bathroom door made me jump.
“Baby, are you okay in there?” Ron’s deep voice sounded from the other side.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Okay. I don’t want to rush you, but we don’t want to be late.” I smiled at the gentleness in his voice.
“Too late for that,” I mumbled under my breath.
“What did you say?” Ronnie asked from the other side of the door.
I should have been freaking out. Scared to death of just how much my life was about to change. Our life.
“Nothing!” I added, trying to calm the tone of my voice. Our life.
Would Ronnie want more than we had?
We’d started fast. Our relationship had gone from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye. We made everything we did about one another. Ron and I had been completely inseparable while he helped me rebuild my bakery on his days off. That’s what we were late to. The grand re-opening.
A grand re-opening I wasn’t sure how I felt about now that I stared at a positive pregnancy test. It was crazy.
Suddenly, something I had been looking forward to so much didn’t seem as important.
I stared at myself in the mirror while I listened to his heavy footsteps move away from the bathroom door and fade out into the distance.
My reflection was frozen in place before my eyes dropped down my body.
I’d always been curvy, not that it had ever bothered me. Never trust a skinny baker. That’s what my motto had been. My hand dropped to my abdomen as I looked at the slight swell. It was going to grow. I was growing with a life Ron and I had created.
I should have been freaking out, scared to death.
Shouldn’t I have?
A baby was a big deal! Huge!
A baby with Ronnie. The thought flitted through my head as I unlocked the door but couldn’t get myself to walk out. The moment I did, it would become even more real somehow. There was no way I could keep this a secret. One look at me, and Ron would know something was up.
But the question was, how would he react?
I sat down on the closed toilet seat instead. I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned forward.
A baby with Ronnie.
A weird yet warm and calm feeling rushed through me. He’d be a great dad. It was fast. We had only been together for four months. The best four months of my life, but still. Four months, and we were going to be parents.
So many things could still go wrong. Will he freak out and leave me all alone to deal with things? Make me a single mom?
No! This was Ron we were talking about. Ron, who couldn’t bear the thought of us even sleeping a night apart from one another. I couldn’t see him walking away. Not because of this. But that soft uncertain what if floated in my head and stayed there like some kind of gray storm cloud.
I shut my eyes while uncertainty made me dizzy. Breathing through my nose, I exhaled slowly. I had a million things to do, and sitting on the toilet while trying to figure out which way was up wasn’t one of them.
“Baby,” I heard him call before I opened my eyes.
Then there he was.
I had opened the door while my head was filled with all sorts of wild scenarios of how he would react.
“What’s going on? You feeling okay?” He kneeled down in front of me and took my hands into his, massaging them probably without him noticing.
“Nervous about today?” he asked. I licked my dry lips.
Everything Ron ever did was to somehow make my day better.
My lip wobbled, and his eyes widened with fear.
“Shit,” he huffed. “You don’t cry. Not even when you went to look at the bakery after everything.
Evie, talk to me. What’s going on, cupcake?
” If he was asking, he had somehow missed the stick right there sitting on the bathroom vanity.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d walked right in, his attention solely focused on me.
The realization of that made him a glassy blur as tears filled my eyes.
“Evelyn,” he growled with a slight edge to his voice.
He picked me up and sat me on his lap as he took my place on the closed toilet.
“What’s up? Is this about the shop? Did you change your mind about the colors you chose?
” I shook my head and sniffled. “Is it about the chairs? You really liked them.”
“I do,” I whispered quietly. With a deep cleansing breath, I found the courage to look up at him. “I need to tell you something.” His brows narrowed.
I swear I felt like he looked like a warrior holding me, ready to go to battle for me, ready to burn the world down to fight whatever was wrong.
“Okay.” His voice was a vibrated murmur that kissed my skin. He wasn’t tense beneath me, ready to bolt. If anything, I realized, his hands gripped my thighs, holding me closer to his body. Ready to shield me from whatever bomb I was about to drop on his lap.
My hands reached for the test stick, and Ronie’s eyes widened, but I could have sworn some of the tension in his body disappeared.
Almost like seeing the test had been a relief to whatever was going through his head.
My hands shook as I handed it to him, setting it in the middle of his huge palm.
Completely captivated by the way his eyes strained on mine before he tore his gaze down to look at it.
Ron didn’t move.
Didn’t say a word or react.
He simply stared at it.
“I’m pregnant.” I felt like Captain Obvious as I broke the silence. “I wasn’t feeling too hot two days ago. I thought it was the yogurt I ate. Maybe it’d turned, but then I realized I hadn’t had my period since…”
“Before the accident,” he filled in the blank, and I nodded.
“I was going to tell you, but then, with the re-opening, I figured I’d find out first, maybe I was worrying for nothing.”
“Worrying?” That made his eyes pop off the test and lock onto mine. “You’re worried?”
“It’s fast,” I blurted out, suddenly feeling a little squirmy. “We just started this, and the bakery and?—“
“Shh,” he hushed, resting his forehead on mine. “It’s going to be okay,” he said so calmly I wanted to believe him.
“How do you know?” My voice was a raspy whisper.
“Because it’s you and me,” he stated as if that made sense. And in a way, it did.
“You’re not freaking out,” I observed and watched as his lips quirked up and up until his face had the biggest smile I had ever seen on it.
“Evie, baby, I don’t know if you noticed, but I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I’m not going anywhere. This news—” His eyes dropped back to the test he had set back on the counter, and when he looked at me, his eyes were glassy and shone with so much love and kindness it took my breath away. “This news is the best news I could have ever received.”
“But we just got together,” I tried to argue.
“So?” He shrugged. “This is where we were headed anyhow.” He said so nonchalantly, it was obvious this was something he had given some thought to.
“We were?” I gaped. He chuckled, then it died, and he frowned.
“Do you not want kids? Or this… right now?” he asked without judgment in his voice.
“I do,” I answered right way and from my heart. It was insane! Crazy to the max. So much was unknown. We knew one another but were still learning about each other.
“What were you worried about?” he asked softly, his hand caressing my face.
“Honestly?” I asked, and he nodded, his eyes locked with mine. “I was worried about your reaction and?—“
“And?” he encouraged me to continue.
I licked my lip, feeling hot and cold all at the same time. “What if you and I don’t work?—“
“Get that out of your head right now,” he demanded, tipping my head back so I would be solely focused on him. “You and I are going to work out.”
“But—" I started to say, but he shook his head.
“No buts. We’re going to have good times and not so good times.
We’re going to love one another even if at times we don’t like each other for a moment.
We are going to fight and argue,” he stated.
I frowned, and when he noticed that, his gaze softened.
“That’s just what happens in relationships, baby girl.
Highs and lows on the rollercoaster of life.
But as long as we’re together, holding each other’s hand, cheering one another from the stands, we can do anything.
We can overcome anything. We’re going to grow and change.
Evolve from who we are in this very moment.
And that’s okay. That’s life. But we’re going to do that together.
” His words were like a balm to my soul and exactly what I needed to hear.
“You really believe that, don’t you?” I asked, suddenly so calm I wanted to cry tears of joy.
“I know it. You think I’m given a chance at something like this with you in my life, and I’m not going to know or appreciate the beauty of it?
That I’m not going to hold on to it with both hands?
” Of course, he would. He’d told me all about his high school sweetheart, and it had broken my heart for not only him but her as well.
I couldn’t imagine the depths of loss and hell he’d gone through, especially as a young nineteen-year-old.
Just the thought of losing Ronnie right now made me shiver with fear. Not when our lives together and the future looked so bright it could blind us.
“I love you,” I whispered. Ron leaned in and pressed his forehead against mine.
“I love you,” he said. “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice cracked.
I felt his palm press against my belly. “Thank you for this. For you. For… giving me a damn chance and making dreams come true I was too scared to even dare to hope for.” He pressed his lips against mine before pulling away to wipe the tears from my eyes.
“Grand opening time,” I whispered.
“You sure you’re up for it? We can ask Kylie“—my new manager—“if she can handle things.” I shook my head.
“I’m sure. I’m ready to launch and get that baby up and running smoothly again so we can have this baby.” I pointed at my stomach.
“Fuck,” he grunted and shook his head. “We’re having a baby,” he said with awe and surprise. I laughed, and he wrapped his arms around me in one of the best hugs I’d ever received in my life up until that point.
We stayed there for a long while.
Just two people who had been through their own share of good and bad times who had found someone out in the world who saw them for them. Who appreciated and loved them and were both now willing to promise their lives to one another and help make a family together.
And it was more than worth being late to my own grand re-opening for a hug!