The Baby Contract Read online

  When I opened the front door, I was surprised and delighted to see Heather standing there. She had a gift bag in one hand that was vomiting out pink and purple tissue paper. In her other hand was a bottle of sparkling apple juice. She lifted it up and wiggled it.

  “I know our usual broken-heart remedy is a bottle of champagne,” Heather said, “but you can’t have any, so I picked the next best thing. Can I come in?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, stepping aside to let Heather in.

  She slipped in behind me and hung up her coat. I waited as she added her scarf to the hook and then turned to face me. I hoped she couldn’t see through the facade I was putting up. Was it obvious that I had just been pleasing myself?

  “How have you been doing?” Heather asked.

  It was the question I hated more than any other question. This was the one that always brought all my emotions racing to the foreground.

  My afterglow was gone. I was hollow again. I shook my head once before giving in to the tears that I was barely keeping at bay. “I’m not good,” I said honestly as I sniffled and wiped the corners of my eyes with the sleeves of my shirt.

  Heather frowned and then nodded her head toward to the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s go in. I’ll pour us our drinks, and you can go through the goodies I grabbed for you, and we can talk. You need to talk.”

  I nodded and followed her into the kitchen. She had me sit down, and she went about grabbing us glasses and filling them with the bubbly apple concoction. As she did that, I pulled the tissue out of the gift bag and went through what she had picked up for me.

  The first thing I pulled out was a new romantic comedy flick. I knew I would be able to get through it with her company. We always liked to sit and make fun of these kinds of movies, and that sort of light-hearted silliness was exactly what I needed right now. Heather had also brought me a bag of my favorite chocolates, a pair of fuzzy pink socks with little rubber grips on the bottom, and a vanilla scented candle. I twisted the mason jar style lid off the candle and smelled it.

  “My favorite,” I said.

  “I know,” Heather said, rummaging through one of the kitchen drawers until she found a lighter. She lit the candle and brought it with her to the living room. Then she grabbed our drinks and brought those to the coffee table. I followed her over, and we both took up a seat at either end of the sofa.

  “Thank you for the goodies,” I said. “You’re the best friend a girl could ask for.”

  “You’re welcome, and that’s not true. A best friend wouldn’t have checked out on you for months like I did.”

  “This makes up for it,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “You’d do just fine, Dev. I know you would.” Heather put her hand on my knee. “I’m sorry about what Ethan did. I can’t quite figure out how to forgive him. I don’t know if I can.”

  “He’s your brother Heather. You have to. Don’t let this ruin your relationship with him. You guys adore each other. It has nothing to do with me,” I said. It was hard to say the words, but they needed to be said. I believed them. I needed Heather to as well.

  “Still,” Heather muttered as she picked at a loose thread on her jeans. “He’s being a jackass.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with that.

  “How have you been holding up?”

  I shook my head. “Not good.” The tears were surfacing again. Anytime I had to confront how bad this whole mess was making me feel, I crumbled. “I’m so in love with him, Heather. I don’t know how it happened, but it just did. It was like one day we were friends, and the next, I couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else. And I was so stupid to think he felt the same way. My heart is broken.”

  “I know,” Heather whispered. “I know.”

  I wiped my tears from my cheeks. “I never should have let myself fall so hard.”

  “You can’t control that,” Heather said.

  “I should have at least tried.”

  “No,” Heather said. “Your feelings are valid. Don’t convince yourself otherwise. And listen. You’re not alone. You still have me. I’ll help you raise the baby. We would make an awesome team.”

  I laughed through my tears. “I know I’m not alone, and I know Ethan will still make a good father. It just sucks that after everything, he doesn’t want me back, you know?”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. This is how it’s going to be, I guess,” I said.

  Heather stood up with a sigh. “Movie time? I think we need to do something that will get your mind off things. You need a break from all this,” she said, waving her hand in the air and gesturing at all of me.

  “Oh,” I giggled. “how sweet of you. Am I a total mess?”

  “Well,” Heather grinned. “I’ve seen you look worse, but that’s only when it’s three in the morning and you spent the entire night mixing all your hard liquor with your wine and your coolers and ended up over the toilet puking your guts out. So yes, you’re a bit of a mess, but that’s okay. We’re all a mess sometimes.”

  Heather popped in the movie and brought me over my chocolates, which we shared, and I was thankful I was able to keep them down. Sometimes, the only cure for heartbreak was time with someone who loved you and who would never make you feel the way the one person you wanted more than anything else in the world did.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ethan

  I had gone through all the miniature bottles of liquor in the bar fridge in my hotel by Sunday afternoon. Rain was pattering on the window as I stared at the television. I didn’t know what show was on despite having been watching it for the last forty minutes. My mind was elsewhere, and it had been all weekend.

  My mind was on Devon.

  I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since leaving the penthouse on Thursday evening. I also had not heard anything from Devon, not that I’d expected to. I was the one who had packed up and left, not her. If anyone was going to reach out first, I knew it had to be me.

  I also knew there was a timeline involved. I was going to have to confront her at some point. She was going to have my son soon.

  Our son.

  I blew out a breath. Everything was so much more complicated than it had been just days ago. I thought back to the Hamptons. Everything had felt so right. I was so at ease. Devon had been happier than I had ever seen her. Then, she and Heather had reconnected. All the pieces had fallen perfectly into place, and then I’d realized that I was in love, and that was something I wasn’t ready for.

  Liam had helped me realize that.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. My dad was calling.

  “Hey, Dad,” I answered, holding the phone to my ear.

  “Hi,” my dad said. “You busy today?”

  My only plan for the day was to order room service and avoid having to talk to anyone. I tried to think of something I could tell my father I was doing, but no ideas came to mind. I came up empty. “No, not busy,” I said.

  “Good, come on over this afternoon. I need some help moving some stuff around in the garage.”

  “Right,” I said. “Moving stuff in the garage. Got it.”

  We ended the phone call, and I continued to watch the stupid cop show on the TV until it was noon. Then I called Eddison, and he drove me to my parents’ place.

  When I got out of the limo, my mother opened the front door of the house. She greeted me warmly, pulling me in for a hug. I could see what she was desperately trying to hide from me in her eyes. Disappointment. I knew she had wanted me and Devon to work out. I knew telling them of our break-up at this stage when the baby was just around the corner would devastate her.

  But it was what was best.

  Wasn’t it?

  “It’s good to see you,” my mother said, patting my cheek maternally. “Your father is already in the garage. Hurry along and go give him a hand before he hurts himself, will you?”

&n
bsp; “No problem,” I said. “I’ll come back in before I go.”

  “Okay, sweetheart.”

  I joined my father in the garage. He was pulling boxes down from the attic and piling them in the corner behind his toolbox. When I stepped under the raised garage door, I knocked lightly on his ladder, peering up into the open space in the ceiling.

  “Dad?” I called.

  “I’ll be just a second, Ethan,” my dad called back. I could hear him pushing something heavy toward the opening. “Can I pass a box down to you, son?”

  “Yeah,” I said, waiting as he inched closer to the opening, his whiskery face appearing over the edge. He gave me a smile and then eased the box through the opening. I grabbed it, surprised by how heavy it was, and walked it over into the corner with the other boxers.

  “What is all this?” I asked, peering at the boxes.

  My dad climbed down the ladder and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Just old stuff your mother wanted me to get down. She’s in one of her cleaning phases. You know the ones.”

  “Where she goes through every room and throws out a bunch of junk?” I asked.

  My father nodded.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m familiar with it. Last time she did this, you were laid up in bed with a broken leg, and I had to do all the work.”

  My father grinned. “That wasn’t such a raw deal on my end. By the time I was on my feet again, the house was clean, and she was filling it up with more shit from her shopping addiction. Don’t tell her I said that.”

  I pretended to pull a zipper across my lips.

  “Good lad,” my father said, slapping me on the back.

  “So,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Actually, let’s have a seat. I’ve been working my fingers to the bone all morning, and I need to take a breather.”

  I followed my father into an addition he had built on the side of the garage eight years ago. It was a heated room with windows, and it was his official man cave. It had a television mounted on one wall with two couches on either side. I dropped down into one, and my father went to the mini-fridge he had in the corner. He grabbed us each a beer, tossed me mine, and sat down across from me.

  After popping the tab on his can, he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “So,” he said officially. “Give me the scoop on what all went down with you and Devon. Heather told us about the mess you made.”

  I should have known there was an ulterior motive to cleaning the garage. I sighed and leaned back on the sofa. “There’s nothing to tell. Things aren’t working out, and we needed some space, so I’m staying at a hotel for a few nights.”

  My father raised his eyebrows and sipped his beer. “So, she’s all alone in your penthouse? What do you imagine she’s doing with her time?”

  I shrugged. “Watching movies and hanging out with Heather. I don’t know. She spends a lot of time reading, actually. She’s probably curled up on the couch with a book right now with the fire on. I’d bet money on it,” I said, unable to help the small smile that tugged the corner of my mouth.

  “Why did you need space from her?” My father asked.

  “It’s complicated, Dad, I don’t really want to get into it right now. It’s still fresh.”

  My dad leaned back and shook his head disapprovingly at me. “You don’t want to talk about it because you can’t understand why you’ve done it.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Listen, Ethan, you’re a smart man. No, you’re a brilliant man, and I’m so proud of you. You’ve built an incredible life for yourself strictly out of sheer will and determination. But what you have isn’t what you need. You’ve been missing that final piece, that piece that makes you whole and makes everything feel small. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “So what? Devon is my piece?” I asked, a little irritated at the analogy.

  “That’s not my call to make. All I know is she makes you incredibly happy. I see the way you look at her when she’s around, and I see the way she looks at you. The love you have for one another is obvious to everyone but you. Even just now, when you told me Devon was probably at home reading, you lit up like a Christmas tree. I’m not blind, and I’m not stupid. You’re in love with the girl, Ethan.”

  I looked at the beer in my hands.

  “If you’ve nothing to say for yourself, I’ll keep going,” my father continued. “If you don’t man up and tell her how you feel and tell her what you want, you’re going to lose her. Women like that don’t come around often. You’re lucky one came around even once. And not to mention, she loves you, Ethan. Not your money or your house or your cars. You. Now you have to decide what you’re going to do. Staying at a hotel for a few nights is not a solution. It just delays the inevitable. Step up. Talk to her. Tell her what you want. Stop lying to yourself.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair and finally met my father’s eye. I could feel the truth of everything he had just said in my bones.

  “I’ve never felt this way about someone before,” I said, “and it scares the hell out of me.”

  “It should,” my father said with an assertive nod. “This is an all hands on deck kind of situation. We don’t talk much about your other female pursuits, for lack of a better word, but those are a crutch, Ethan. You can’t get hurt when you only give someone two percent of yourself. Giving one hundred percent is a lot. It’s terrifying. But believe me, it is so worth it. If you let this girl get away, you will regret it for the rest of your life. I know you.”

  “How do I even know if this is real?” I asked, standing up and pacing back and forth.

  “What if I only feel like this because she’s carrying our son? What if this is temporary? What if the baby is born, and all of a sudden, everything goes back to how it was and we’re just friends?”

  “I don’t know,” my father shrugged. “You tell me.”

  I rubbed my temple. “She moves out. I raise my son. I go back to how things were.”

  “And if you end things now?”

  “Same thing,” I said quietly.

  “Exactly,” my father said. “Go for it. The outcome is the same regardless of whether you try and fail or don’t try at all. You both deserve to give this a real fighting chance. That girl is head over heels in love with you, my boy. She isn’t going anywhere. Not if you fight for her.”

  I sat back down and rested my elbows on my knees and my forehead in my hands. We sat in silence together for a while until my father cleared his throat, stood, and joined me on my couch.

  “This right here,” he said, “this feeling of anxiety and fear and doubt? This is proof enough that Devon is the one for you. This is how you know it’s right. When you’re so scared, you can hardly think straight, but you’re so damn excited that you want nothing more than to tell the girl you love her.”

  He was right, of course. He was always right.

  “I can’t just walk back into the house and tell her I’m over it. I can’t say I was just freaking out and hope she’ll understand,” I said.

  “No, you can’t,” my dad said. “I guess you’d better start thinking of some ways to make it up to her. You left her alone at your place for three days when she was pregnant with your son.”

  “What should I do? I’m no good at romantic gestures and big surprises.”

  My father shook his head. “You’re overthinking it. In my experience, the best way to make it up to a woman who’s too good for you is to tell her exactly how you feel. Don’t hold back. Show her your soul. She’ll forgive you before she remembers she was ever upset with you.”

  I arched an eyebrow.

  “Ask your mother,” my father said, before giving me a wide, whiskery grin and slapping my knee with a laugh.

  Chapter Thirty

  Devon

  When I finished all my classes for the day, it was nearly eight o’clock in the evening. As I walked from the front doors of the main campus building, I couldn’t stop thi
nking about getting comfortable on the couch with my new fuzzy socks and a good book. My brain felt like mush from six hours of lectures, and my feet were throbbing painfully. All I wanted was to relax and turn my mind off for a couple hours.

  Ethan’s limo was parked at the curb, as per usual. When I was about fifteen feet away, Eddison got out of the driver’s seat, walked smartly to the back door, and opened it up for me with a curt nod and a wave.

  “Thank you,” I said, giving him a warm smile as I ducked my head and climbed awkwardly into the back of the limo. Being pregnant made even the simplest of tasks more difficult, so it took me a while to actually get inside the vehicle.

  Once inside, I sat in stunned silence.

  Ethan was sitting on the long bench seat up the side of the limo. He had a bouquet of white and pink roses in his lap. Once I was settled, he handed them to me. I looked from the flowers to him and then back to the flowers.

  When I opened my mouth to speak, he shook his head. I waited, anticipation swirling in my gut as I considered the words he might say.

  “I should never have walked out on you on Thursday,” Ethan started. His eyes were locked on mine. “You were right. I was lying. It wasn’t about Liam or anything he had said, but it wasn’t about you sleeping in my bed either. I like when you sleep in my bed. I like waking up next to you, even if it means my arm is asleep and I have a mouthful of hair.”