14. Jake
JAKE
All the air ceases.
Sounds cut off. The wind blows to punctuate the silence, but none of us acknowledge it even as it pushes the hair into her face.
She's looking at me with horror, hand over her gaping mouth as tendrils of her last words linger in the air.
“I’m sorry, did you say pregnant?” I have to ask, because maybe I was hearing things.
Maybe she didn't actually say what I thought she said.
I park my car, right there in the middle of the road, and get out, because maybe my brain just conjured it up for some sick reason, and I heard her say she was pregnant when that was not at all the case.
Right? That has to be it? Any second now, she’s going to tell me that my stupid brain said the wrong thing, and she’s probably going to be offended that I even heard that in the first place.
She turns to me slowly. Her eyes are wide, the pupils looking almost small, surrounded by the whites. Her face is pale, her breath coming out in ratchety pants.
She looks as if she is on the verge of hyperventilating. But she's not telling me I'm wrong, that I heard it all wrong, and that it wasn’t what she said.
“You’re…pregnant?” I try again, tentatively. She still doesn’t answer, she just keeps staring at me with that horrified look of a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding truck. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, and she can see it coming, but she’s powerless to stop it.
“You’re pregnant.” This time, the words are a little louder, a little firmer, more of a statement than a question. Still, I want her confirmation before I fully accept it. I need her to tell me that I’m not tripping here, that I'm not losing my mind, because otherwise I'm going to feel like I am.
She’s not telling me that, so I ask, “Who’s the father?”
That’s when she reacts. She gives me an injured look that tells me that I’ve said something absolutely stupid as she starts to walk away.
I catch her elbow before she can leave. “Wait.”
“For what? For you to insult me again?”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you,” I say. “I was just…Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. I haven’t known ever since you walked into my life.”
She spins her head around and regards me with a withering look. But I take it without protest until she calms down, seeing that I didn't mean the words the way they came out.
Her shoulders relax, and she looks beyond me to where Adam and Sam are still standing. Both of them wanted to come after her, but I convinced them that it would be too much for all of us to go at once. I told them to let me handle it, and they reluctantly agreed to wait.
But now I don't know if I should have sent Adam in my stead. I feel ill-equipped to handle this kind of news.
As wild as my past has been, I've never in my life dealt with a pregnancy scare. I've always been careful and....God.
What the hell do we do now?
“I don’t know who the father is.”
I accept that with a swallow. “Could it be…I mean, could it be one of us?”
“Possibly," She says cagily. “The timelines make the most sense, according to the doctor, although I don’t know which one out of the three of you it is.”
“Do you want us to take DNA tests?”
"No. I...” She breathes out. “Look, I just got the news a few days ago, and I'm still dealing with it myself, okay? I’m not even entirely a hundred percent sure I want to keep the pregnancy, even though it’s looking like that might be the case.
And if I keep it, I don’t want any of you to feel obligated to stay in the child’s life. ”
“What?”
“I mean it. I can take care of it myself. I don’t need anyone. I just…I wanted to tell you guys because I thought you should know, because it seemed like the right thing to do. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s no one else’s problem except mine, so I'm absolving you of any responsibility."
“Like hell it is,” I practically snarl, staring at her incredulously.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
'Absolving us of responsibility'? That doesn’t even sound right. We’re just as responsible for the pregnancy as you are.
Hell, we're even more responsible than you are. It's our fault this is happening."
"No, not it's not."
"Yes, it is. After you left, we found a broken condom on the floor."
Impossibly, her eyes grow even wider.
"We would have told you about it, but we literally had no way of contacting you.
" Then again, we didn't try very hard after she left.
Hell, we could have probably described her better to James, and earlier too, and maybe he might have put two and two together.
He would have probably kicked my ass six ways from Sunday, but we could have found her through that.
Fuck, speaking of James...
He's going to kill us. And we'll deserve it.
"One of us is responsible for the broken condom," I say. "And it was our responsibility to contact you and let you know, but we didn't."
"I didn't leave any contact info," she says stubbornly.
"Still. We could have made more of an effort to find you."
She shrugs. "I'm the one who didn't pay any attention to my missed period. Also, I could have gotten an abortion, and still could, but I’m not sure I want to. But that decision has nothing to do with you. It’s on me if I decide to keep the baby, and I'll take care of it.
I don't need anyone to support or dictate my decisions. "
I bite back my protests, though it rankles that she’s completely writing us off on this. She’s scared. She’s scared and pregnant and worried about all the implications of that, and the last thing she needs is me getting in my feelings about it.
I have to approach this in a way that doesn't set her off, but explains our viewpoint accurately.
“Listen,” I tell her. “I know you don't need it, and I'm not saying you do, but I...we want to support you. Whatever you decide is okay with us, but we wanna be there, and this isn’t me trying to throw my weight around and tell you what to do. This is simply me trying to tell you that if you do decide to keep the child and it turns out to be mine or any of the other guys, I’m sure I can speak for them when I say that we would very much like to take care of the child and be in its life in some capacity. I’m not going to be able to just forget about it and let you raise it all on your own. I would want to be its dad."
“Really?
"Yeah." She looks doubtful, and heck, I’m doubtful too, even as the words leave my mouth. I mean, I can’t believe that I'm saying these things. I’ve never so much as considered being a father.
Seriously. I didn’t think I would have kids for a while, if ever, and I made peace with that.
I’m not anti-children, of course. I just never thought it was in the cards for me, but now…
Well, if I do have a kid, I have to take care of it, don't I? I'm not going to be the deadbeat who ignores its existence or only sends a check every now and then. That will make me as bad as my father, and I refuse to be like that bastard.
My whole life has been spent proving I'm not like him. I'm not going to stop now.
She’s looking at me oddly as though I said something strange. Did I mess up again? I hate that I sometimes can’t talk right around her, can't read her properly. Something about her disarms me, and it weirds me out.
She releases a breath. "I’ll let you know what I decide later. But for now, I would really like us to forget all of this happened. Forget I told you that and forget what happened back in the car."
I smirk. "I don't think I could forget if I tried."
She blushes, but at least a smile curls the edge of her lips, however tired it is.
"At least don't tell the guys yet. Can you do that?"
"I don't know. I'm not great at secrets, but I'll try."
She purses her lips and nods.
"On one condition, though. You let me give you a ride home, or to the office if that's where you're headed."
"That's really not necessary."
"I know, but I want to. Please." I cock my head. "Look, I'm not going to try anything. No flirting, no funny business, alright?"
"Are you sure?"
“Yeah. I can take a hint." I bet the pregnancy is one of the reasons she's been running away from us so much. Because she thought we would be mad at her or something, when it should be the other way round.
But even before that, I'd decided to tone down my pursuit of her, as painful as it was.
I sent her with Sam for a reason. The other night, when he was willing to accompany me to a bar, it made me realize how serious he was about her.
Sam would rather chew his eyes out than do bar crawls and talk to random women, but he truly made an effort that day.
And he made an effort today at the coffee shop, cracking jokes, being charming in that awkward way of his.
I don't know. Something in my gut just told me to let him have this.
After all, what we have is purely physical, but Sam seems like he's halfway in love with her or something.
I was ready to back off and let them have their happily ever after.
But now with the news of this pregnancy, it changes everything.
That familiar possessiveness that I’ve tried to fight my entire life brews underneath my goodwill, even as I struggle to suppress it.
It's stupid. I don't know if the child is mine yet, and she doesn't even know if she's keeping it.
It's senseless for me to feel possessive over her just because of that.
Yet, it's hard to fight the feelings of satisfaction when she nods and says, "Alright. You can drive me to the office, but no funny business."
I nod and open the door for her, closing it when she's situated. Then I walk around to my side and get in the car.
Most of the drive is quiet, with only the pop song on the radio to keep us company. Everything she just said rings in my mind, the news of the baby, and what that would mean for us.
"Stop thinking about it," she murmurs.
"I'm not thinking," I say.
"I can hear you doing it very loudly."
"Well then, you don't know me very well. My thoughts aren't loud. They're barely there at all."
She snorts and turns toward the window, and I watch her reflection, wistfully, a clenching feeling in my chest.
It doesn't stop until I drop her off at the office.
Then I return home.
Once there, I go straight for the bar and grab a drink. I don't bother with a glass, drinking the cognac straight from the bottle.
"What's up with you?" Adam emerges from his study.
I shake my head. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing." I take another swig.
"You sure? Because you only day drink when you have a secret you're trying very hard not to spill."
"Pshhh," I wave my hand. "Secret? Me? I'm an open book."
"What is it?"
"I told you it's nothing."
We go back and forth like that for a while, and I hold out for as long as I possibly can.
But five swallows in, and it all comes pouring out.