Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Franky
Five hours later, I returned home to find him sitting at the breakfast bar, scrolling on his phone.
“Hello.”
He smiled, a flash of white through that dark beard. My fingers itched to touch it. I’d seen it online, but the reality was truly magnificent.
“Hey, Doc. Sorry to drop in unannounced.”
“That’s okay. I had to go into the lab to check on my specimens. But I managed to move some things around so I could spend time with you.”
He moved off the stool and closed the gap between us. My heart beat wildly. I still couldn’t believe he’d come to see me right after the series ended. Part of me wondered if it was damage control, because of Everly.
But he hadn’t even brought it up, probably because he didn’t think it was any of my concern. After all, several weeks had gone by.
He placed a hand on my bump. “Are you sure you’re not overdoing it? You’re about six weeks from lift-off, and I worry this might be too much.”
I bit my lip. I needed to say something. I needed to hear his side instead of condemning him in my mind. Love should have no boundaries when it came to communication.
“You never told me that your ex-girlfriend just had a baby.”
“Everly?” He looked genuinely confused. “Didn’t think it was relevant.”
“But … you wanted to settle down with her and have a child? And she didn’t?”
“She did, just not with me.” A flush darkened his cheeks.
“After you split up with her, she met someone and got pregnant.”
“Yeah, pretty quickly, too. Which tells me she wasn’t for me.”
“And you knew about her pregnancy before you offered to be the father of my child?”
He thought on that, probably wondering where I was going. The trap I was setting. My heart thundered while I waited for his answer.
“Well, yeah. But that wasn’t why—Doc, you needed a donor and I needed—”
“A child.”
He bristled. “I’ve never lied about that.”
“No. But now it reads like you’re trying to prove something to Everly. That you can find someone to have a kid with, too. That you didn’t need her.”
We were merely providing each other with the biological means to create a life that we would both share. A baby, nothing else. It made no sense that I would be upset. He had been honest from the start. He wanted to be a father.
Of course he would rather have Everly as the mother. Maybe more. The family package that once made sense until she hurt him. A proper WAG, a glamorous wife and mom, who met his needs perfectly. Young, dewy, fresh, and able to pump out more kids before the bloom was off the rose.
“I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. I want this baby. I want this baby with you.”
“And you’ll have her.” I smiled, though it felt wobbly around the edges. “That’s what the contract says.”
“The contract? I think we’re beyond the contract.”
My lip trembled. “How so? You said you didn’t want a relationship. A marriage. A wife. Has that changed?”
He frowned, not liking my tone. All he had to say was, yes, it’s changed. You’ve changed everything for me.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. “We don’t have to put labels on it. We’re co-parents, with respect and affection. We make a great team, don’t we?”
We did, but one of us had dreamed a little dream. Now she was waking up.
“There’s you. There’s me. There’s the baby. We’re not a family unit, no matter how we try to spin it. Neither of us had the other person in mind beyond what was necessary for this enterprise. Be honest, Jason. If you could have had a baby with Everly, you would have.”
“Yes! That’s what I wanted. Or thought I wanted.” He started pacing, my hotheaded warrior. “But not now.”
“It’s easy to get our emotions mixed up in all of this. I’m hormonal and want the assurance that you’ll be there for the baby, and I’ve mistaken that as wanting you to be there for me.”
“It’s the same thing.”
Oh, but it wasn’t. “You’re excited to be a father and I’m the woman carrying your child.
You’re bound to feel certain things, affection and a bond with your child’s mother, but if the baby wasn’t in the picture, you wouldn’t have looked at me twice.
In fact, you would have walked to the other side of the street to avoid me. ”
Storm clouds skittered across his handsome face.
“The baby brought us closer together and made us both see each other in a different light. I’m not going to deny that.
Those are facts. But I don’t find you sexy and attractive and goddamn infuriating because you’re pregnant with my kid.
Somehow, you’ve managed to come up with that allure all by yourself. ”
I didn’t believe him. He was trying to convince me that this was the case to keep me calm and centered in the lead-up to the birth.
“You’re certainly not what I had in mind,” I said.
“Hell, don’t I know it.”
“You’re still not.”
He looked stricken, or at least his ego did not enjoy that. I hated hurting him, but I needed time apart to get my bearings.
“And let’s be honest, Jason. I’m not what you want either.”
“Why, because you’re going to take a job in Boston?”
I snapped my head back. “Who told you that? Sean?”
“Sean knows?” He grabbed an envelope off the breakfast bar. It was the interview schedule from Harvard’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.
For the job I applied for two weeks ago. Seeing that photo of Jason and Everly had clarified my thinking. I would never be what he wanted and I needed to focus on my strengths. My career and the baby.
“I haven’t been happy at Lakeshore since Dr. Bilson came on board. His actions have been curtailing my research freedom and ability to do things my way.”
“God forbid anything curtails your ability to do things your way, Francesca.”
All these men, looking to control my decisions. “The contract specifically said my career might take me out of Chicago. You knew that, but you still went ahead with the baby plan.”
He was pacing again, hands on hips. “The contract said, the contract said. Sure, I went ahead because I wanted a kid. But I thought we’d still talk about the big decisions, the ones that affect our child.
I thought we’d co-parent like mature adults.
But this has always been your deal, hasn’t it, Francesca?
You’ve never seen me as a partner in this. I’m just the stud.”
He sounded so wounded. Maybe he was right. Maybe I felt more ownership over this because it started with my heartfelt wish. I had the spreadsheet and the thermometer and the syringe. He merely arrived on his white charger, dick out, ready to deliver.
But the last few months had shown me the side of him I craved in a partner.
In the man with whom I had fallen hopelessly in love.
He might say he wanted us to move forward with respect and affection, as a family unit, but that could only take us so far.
My research was important, too. I never planned to be the kind of woman who stayed in the background, supporting the man’s supposedly more important job.
“Of course I see you as a partner. But our child needs stability, and when the parents aren’t a couple, then one person has to step up as primary caregiver.”
His color was high. “And that’s supposed to be you?
The woman who would rather spend time with snails and slugs than the people who are supposed to be the most important in your life?
Mothers are supposed to make sacrifices, but you seem to think you can carry on like nothing has happened.
Move across the country, take a new job, leave everyone you know behind.
You’ll birth a baby and then it’s back to what’s important—your career. ”
As if every choice I made was for me and me alone, instead of with my child’s future at the forefront.
“And I thought you’d be supportive. But what you really want is a hot WAG back home, two steps behind her man, popping out all those babies to make the perfect family your father denied you. The who doesn’t matter.”
He looked like I’d bashed him in the sternum with a hockey stick. His expression shifted from storm to ice.
“Well, it sure as hell looks like you’re right. I don’t mind saying it, Doc. We are not compatible. You’ve had the truth of it from the beginning. I don’t know why I thought we might be more than co-parents, not when you are so damn determined to do it all by yourself and screw everyone else.”
“That’s your job. Off you go and find another incubator for your spawn. This one’s already occupied.”
He shook his head, grabbed his duffle bag, and stormed out, at which point I burst into tears because hormones, and—
Well, there could be no other reason.
It couldn’t be because my heart was broken, and I had only myself and my foolish dreams to blame.