12. Unscheduled #2
“I just need one answer.”
Skipper shifted to block my view of Piper again.
“That isn’t your decision.”
He was right, and I hated that he was right.
The bag crinkled beneath my fingers as I lowered it to my side. Pushing past him would prove Piper right about every boundary she had set since I arrived. Demanding access would turn concern into another order.
So I stayed where I was.
“Please, just tell me if everything is okay with Piper and the baby.”
Piper looked at me from behind Skipper, one hand resting near the strap of her bag. The clinic doors stood a few steps behind her, opening and closing as patients came and went. My pharmacy bag hung useless at my side while I waited for somebody to answer me.
“This is a routine check-up, Nolan.”
The word routine should have made everything better. There was no emergency. Nothing had happened overnight. Piper had not been rushed here because something was wrong with her or our baby.
Instead, the word left me standing in the sun with a different problem.
Routine meant scheduled.
Routine meant she had known this appointment was coming while I had known nothing about it.
“Okay.” I shifted the bag away from my damaged palm. “That’s all I needed to know.”
Skipper’s look told me to take the answer and disappear.
“You got your answer, Callahan.”
“I did.”
He waited.
So did Piper.
A car idled somewhere behind me, exhaust drifting across the parking lot before the breeze pushed it away.
I glanced at the clinic doors, then back at Piper.
Six months pregnant, walking into an appointment with Skipper beside her because I had made myself irrelevant long before she ever reached the Keys.
There had probably been other appointments.
Forms. Questions. Measurements. Sonograms.
I had no idea how many.
That ignorance belonged to me.
I kept my place in front of Skipper. “Piper, can I ask you something?”
Her expression gave me nothing. “You’re going to anyway.”
Fair.
The bag shifted against my leg when I turned toward her. “I know I don’t deserve an invitation. But please, just let me stand in the back of the room so I can see the monitor.”
Skipper started to speak, but Piper raised a hand.
He stopped.
Her attention stayed on me.
“You don’t get to parachute in and play the concerned partner after a four-month absence.”
There was no useful defense to that.
I could have told her Reid had convinced me she wanted space. I could have explained the schedule, the travel, the campaign, every stupid piece of advice I had accepted because listening to my father had been easier than admitting my wife might actually leave me.
None of it changed where I had been.
“I know.”
Piper studied me for a moment.
The sun reflected off the clinic windows behind her, making me squint.
Skipper remained between us, but I no longer resented him for it.
He had driven her here. He knew when her appointments were.
He had been present for the ordinary parts of her life while I had been standing beside Sloane on red carpets telling strangers whatever Reid wanted them to hear.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me today,” I said. “I’m not asking you to pretend I belong in there. I just want to see our baby.”
Her expression shifted, but not enough for me to read it.
“You want to see the baby.”
“Yes.”
“And where was that concern when I left?”
I kept my mouth shut for a moment because the first answer that came to me sounded like an excuse.
“I should have followed you.”
“You should have chosen me before I had to leave.”
The words stood between us.
“You’re right.”
Skipper glanced toward the doors. “Piper, you’ve got an appointment to make.”
“I know.”
She adjusted the strap of her bag and stepped toward him. For one stupid second, hope tried to convince me she might tell him to move.
Instead, she stopped and looked straight at me.
“You made your choice the night you took Sloane to McGinnis’s. You can wait inside the clinic, or go back to your motel. But you won’t be seeing the baby today.”
Piper turned toward the clinic doors, and Skipper moved with her.
I stayed where I was for one more second, the pharmacy bag hanging from my hand. She had given me two choices. Go back to the motel, or sit inside and wait. There was no third option hidden in her words, no opening for one more plea, so I followed.
Skipper glanced over his shoulder when I came through the doors behind them. “Give her room, Callahan.”
“I am.”
The cooler air inside carried the clean sting of antiseptic.
A reception desk sat ahead of us, a short hallway opening beyond it.
Piper headed that way with Skipper beside her, and I kept several steps back, close enough not to lose them but far enough that nobody could mistake me for part of her appointment.
That was harder than it should have been.
For years, doors had opened when I approached them. Stadium tunnels, hotel elevators, private lounges, sponsor suites. People checked my name and waved me through before I ever had to ask.
Here, Piper reached the hallway first.
I moved after her on instinct.
“Excuse me, sir, but the back hallway is strictly for patients and authorized support partners. I need you to sign the guest registry to remain in the lobby.”
I stopped beside the reception desk. Authorized support partners. The phrase sat there in plain English. Piper had one.