Out On a Limb(24)

“I was just bored, you know? Figured maybe I could get a free cup of coffee out of it. But it’s not worth it. You’re far too annoying.”

He licks his lips. The mischievous gleam in his eye tells me he’s thinking of his next quip. I wait impatiently, remembering how fun this rapport between us is. Then he blinks and shakes himself, wiping the expression from his face entirely.

“When did you find out?” he asks softly.

Oh, right. I suppose we’ve got more important things to discuss.

“Last week. The baby is due July twenty-fourth.” I look at the emptied plate between us, covered in sugar dust and crumbs. “And I have an ultrasound booked for next Friday.”

“Friday?” he asks, pulling out his phone. “What time?”

“Yeah. Four.”

“Where?” He looks up, thumbs poised to type.

“The clinic on West Ninth—it’s a blue building.”

He types that into his phone, nodding, then tucks it into his front pocket. “Want me to pick you up?”

“You… you’re coming?” I ask.

“Obviously.”

“No, uh, I’ll meet you there.”

“So…” He smiles weakly, taking a breath that seems to calm him some. “What happens now?”

“Can you get us more snacks?” I point to the graveyard of pastries. “I’m hungry.”

The abruptness in which he stands and walks over to the counter to order makes me shake my head, a small smile forming.

A dangerous feeling erupts in my chest. A goofy, body-possessing type of affection for this man. I shove it down and blame the hormones, some primal part of my DNA telling me to stick close to the man I procreated with.

At least, given that we’ll have to spend—you know—forever in proximity, he’s not entirely intolerable.





CHAPTER 9





Ten Weeks Pregnant. Baby is the size of a strawberry.





“Happy tears?” Sarah asks, flipping a chair onto a table for me to sweep under. She’s been stopping by the café at the end of my shift for years. Returning like a stray cat, knowing the leftover pastries must go somewhere. But she usually ends up cleaning alongside me. I like to tease her that she’s cosplaying as a woman who has to pay her own bills. She jokes back, disturbingly, about how she earns her lifestyle in the bedroom.

“Happy tears, Sar.” I flash my eyes at her, hand resting at the top of my broom. “Truly the last thing I was expecting.”

“But that’s good, right?” She lifts the opposite chair, placing it upside down on the table.

“It felt good in the moment but—”

“But you went home and started overthinking,” Sarah interrupts me. I glare at her. She sighs, her eyes mustering some amount of patience, but her expression tired. “Win, sometimes good things are just good things. Bo was happy about the kid. Let’s celebrate that.”

I make a sceptical whining sound from the back of my throat. “I thought Jack was sweet at first. He did all the right things too.”

I notice it each time. The little flicker Sarah’s eyes do when I bring up Jack. She performs a quick surveillance of my face to determine how upset I am just at the mention of his name. My own mention, mind you.

“Bo is not Jack,” she says carefully.

“You haven’t even met Bo,” I point out.

“Caleb vouches for him, and I trust my man,” she says, reaching for another chair to stack for me.

I stop sweeping, thinking about how wrong I’ve been before. How well some men hide their ugly side and how quickly they can turn. “I need to get to know him more, right? Like, he wants to be involved and come to all the appointments and stuff. But we’re basically strangers. What if he wants to be in the delivery room? He’ll see everything,” I say, grimacing.

“Bo seeing everything”—Sarah gestures wildly with an open palm toward my hips—“is how you got into this situation.” She takes the broom from me, as I’ve apparently lost the ability to speak and sweep at the same time. “I think you’ll be fine.”

I shudder. “There’s a difference between a dimmed bedroom after a few drinks and a handsome stranger standing between my stirrup-parted legs and looking into the eye of the storm.”

“Did you just refer to your vagina as the eye of the storm?”

“In that delivery room? Yes. That is what it will be.”

“He doesn’t have to be there if you don’t want him to. But for the record,” she pauses, putting a firm hand on my shoulder, “I love you, but I will not be there.”

“Sarah, you faint at nosebleeds. I won’t let you near me while I’m in labour.”

“Even just thinking about it makes me ill,” she whispers, her attention lost over my shoulder.

“Yes, thank you.” I stare at her blankly. “That’s very helpful.”

She rolls her eyes, then follows me to the next table, sweeping around the counter next to it as I wipe the table down. “The ultrasound is Friday afternoon, right? If he’s free afterward, you should invite him to our place. We’ll do a game night. If we all team up, we can see how he reacts to losing. That’s like a fundamental test of stability.”