Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
brIDGET
I don't know when I planned on telling him, but it was definitely not now, definitely not today, definitely not like this.
“I can’t—I don’t—”
I don’t even know what to say. He looks as if he can’t quite comprehend.
God above, I know the feeling.
I move to put myself between him and the damning papers and vitamins, but he's already seen it. Already knows.
“Pregnant,” he whispers. His eyes go soft in a way I wasn't prepared for. “Bridget.”
“I swear to god, Declan McCarthy, if you accuse me of being pregnant by anybody else—if you think for one single second that this is anybody's but yours. If you even open your mouth to suggest—” Then my voice breaks off, and my chin wobbles because I'm pregnant with Declan’s baby, and now he knows, and I have absolutely no idea what happens next.
He falls to his knees.
His knees. Right there on the ground in front of me. He throws his arms around me and buries his face against me. I feel his shoulders shudder as my heart does something strange and unsteady because I think—I think Declan might be crying?
I anchor my fingers in his hair and hold him there as fresh tears slide down my own cheeks because I wasn't ready for this either. I wasn't ready for him to be like this.
“A baby,” he says, muffled against me. Not a question. Just the words, as if he needs to hear them out loud to make them real. “Yours. Ours.”
“It was that night,” I say softly.
He lifts his head. “My god.” He shakes it slowly, looking up at me, and his eyes are watery. I’ve never seen him like this. I put my hand on his cheek. “That's why you've been sick.”
I nod, my own voice husky and a bit wobbly. “Aye. That's why I was sick.”
“Are you alright now?” His voice is raw in a way I've never heard from him. Declan, who is always composed, who is always performing some version of fine—there's nothing performative about this. “How are you feeling? Are there risks? Are you—god, Bridget, how much did you go through alone?”
“I’m good,” I whisper, holding him to reassure him and myself at the same time. “I’m alright. According to the doctor, I’m excellent.”
He’s been gentle with me, but this is something else entirely. This is… undone. This is Declan McCarthy on his knees on the ground, and I'm sniffling in earnest now because somehow, deep down, I knew he would react just like this.
“When did you find out?” He frames my still-flat belly with his hands, leaning in to kiss the center. I melt right there. My throat goes all tight, and my nose tingles.
“When you were in the hospital.” I gesture to the paper still lying on the ground. “That's the proof of it.”
He stands, slowly, like a man making sure of his legs. Then his hands are framing my face, and he's kissing me, properly, like a man who has stopped fighting what he’s wanted—I’ve missed this so much.
I taste the salt of my own tears between us. When he pulls back, his forehead drops to mine.
“A baby, Bridget.” He breathes it more than says it. “How? I… I thought you were on birth control.”
“I was,” I say into his chest. “Dr. Rosenberg thinks it was the immunosuppressant I was on after remission? It interferes with birth control. He said he should have flagged it more clearly.” A beat passes.
“He felt terrible about it. I told him it wasn't his fault.” I manage something almost like a laugh.
“I'm not sure either of us believed me.”
“Have you told anyone yet?” he asks, pulling back just enough to look at me. His hands haven't left my face. “Who knows?”
“Me, you, and Dr. Rosenberg.” I shake my head. “No one else. He didn’t even have a nurse in the room because he knew the need for privacy.”
He's silent for a moment. “I don't know what to say,” he says finally. “A baby. A baby that could look like you.”
Oh, Declan.
My hands rest on his wrists. “You don't have to say anything right now,” I tell him. And then, because I can't help myself, “And if you move to America—”
“What? Move to America?” He says it like I've suggested something genuinely absurd. His hands drop to my shoulders.
He lowers his voice when I meet his eyes. “Woman. You are pregnant with my baby. My child. Do you really think I’m the kind of man who walks away from his child?”
Well, when he puts it that way, I feel a little guilty.
“But you’re… engaged to be married.” I hate even saying the words.
He stares at me, his brows knitting.
“Jesus, Bridge,” he says. “I know. But I am absolutely not moving to America.” A car horn beeps in the distance, and nearby, a child laughs out loud, and someone hails a taxi. Around us, the world keeps turning as it always has, while our personal world has been tipped on its axis.
He's pacing, and I've never seen him pace before, not once. Something about that undoes me more than anything else has.
“Declan—”
“Just—” He holds up a hand, not unkindly. “Give me a second.”
I give him a second. Then ten.
He stops, reaches for me, and pulls me to him. His hand rests on my belly, and he inhales deeply, as if taking a cleansing breath.
He stays there for a moment, and whatever was unraveling in him has pulled tight again into something that looks a lot like purpose.
“That's the bitch of it, isn't it?” he says.
“Yeah.” We stay there, his hand on my belly, the street carrying on around us as if nothing has happened. Then something loosens in my chest, and I laugh, just a little, because I love this man, and I am so tired of carrying this alone. “I know.”
But he doesn't move. His hand is warm through my shirt, and he's looking at me with an expression I don't have a name for yet, the one that's been on his face since he read the pamphlet.
The one that says I'm his now in a way I never have been before.
I don't know what that looks like with all the odds stacked against us, but there it is.
His phone buzzes a third time. He exhales through his nose, drops his forehead briefly to mine with a breath I feel in my bones, and steps back. He takes the phone from his pocket, looks at the screen, and his jaw tightens. He dials.
“I won't be making the fitting.” His voice is completely level.
I can hear her from where I'm standing. Cool. Clipped.
“Excuse me?”
“I said I won't be making it.” He's not looking at me. He's staring into the distance, shoulders relaxed, his jaw set—the posture of a man who has already decided and is simply informing the relevant parties.
“Declan,” she says sharply. “This is the third time you've—”
“Cancel it, Valentina.”
“We'll talk about this tonight.” Her voice has gone very quiet and very cold.
I watch him and think, She has no idea what's just happened. She has no idea what's standing on this pavement.
“No,” he says simply. “We won't.” And he hangs up.
He stares at the phone for a moment. Then he powers it off, all the way off, screen going black, and slides it into his pocket. He turns to me.
I let out a breath.
“Declan—”
“Don't.” He says it gently. “If you’re going to tell me I made a mistake, don’t.”
“I was going to say she's going to be furious.” I look at him. “Did you mean to make it worse, or does that just come naturally?”
The corner of his mouth pulls up. “To be fair, it doesn't take much.”
“And you don't care.”
“I care about a great many things. Whether or not Valentina is annoyed with me is not currently one of them.”
My heart does something it has absolutely no business doing. I look away, out toward the street—the ordinary afternoon passing like none of this is happening, like we're not standing on the pavement, with a prenatal pamphlet on the ground between us.
“What happens tonight?” I ask. “When she wants to talk anyway.”
“You let me worry about that.”
“Declan, you can’t just break off an alliance and—”
“It's not going to be tonight that this ends.” He says it carefully, as if choosing each word.
“There's a right way to do this and a wrong way, and the wrong way causes damage I can't take back. I need to find the right way. I need to talk to Seamus.” He meets my eyes.
“Not about the baby. Not yet. But about—” He exhales.
“About the fact that I cannot marry her.”
Cannot. Not will not. I notice the difference. But it’s not so simple that he can just walk away, and we both know that. I’m not naive to how our world works.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask, because his eyes have gone somewhere distant, somewhere I can't follow.
He blinks. Comes back. “What am I thinking about?” He moves closer, dips his head, and kisses my temple—slow and deliberate, his lips warm against my skin. “I'm thinking about what I'm going to do when I finally have you to myself,” he says, his mouth still close.
His hand comes up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, the same way he did on that very first night in that private room, the gold band on his arm and my purple one in his hand. My throat goes tight with the memory of it. “I'm thinking about a lot of things.”
“Are you alright?” I whisper. I feel the sudden urge to protect him because I can’t shake the feeling that he’s going into the line of fire for me, and in our world, you don’t walk away unscathed.
“Aye, never been better. I’ll find a way, Bridget. The question is, are you?” His eyes find mine. Something in them is almost soft. “You used to be trouble, you know. Still are. Tell me honestly, love, are you alright?”
“I genuinely don't know,” I admit.
“That makes two of us.” He drops his hand. “I'm coming to your place tonight.”
“You don't have to—”
He gives me a look. One eyebrow. The full weight of his patience, which is considerable and not unlimited.
“Okay,” I say. “Yes. Please.”
“Good girl.” He says it low, just for me, and kisses me once, quick and warm and entirely too certain of itself, before he takes my hand and walks me to the car. His fiancée's number is sitting in a powered-off phone in his pocket. The prenatal pamphlet is on the ground somewhere behind us.
But right now, his hand is warm around mine, and I want to keep it that way.