“So yes, I am responsible for that kid growing inside you, and you can’t control me. You can’t tell me I can’t help with doctor bills and paying your personal bills and shit, so you don’t have to work so hard while you’re pregnant. And I’ll be there. I’ll be there when that kid is born. I’ll be a dad.”
He said all the perfect, right things, speaking directly to my heart. But I had to shut it down. Had to do anything it took to keep him from taking some of my control. He wanted me to give up my control. Something I absolutely could not do. No matter how lovely his offerings sounded. What I was about to say would bring me lower than I’d ever been, but it absolutely had to be done. To protect me. To protect my baby.
After biting down on my tongue, I took a deep breath. “You know, maybe I was mistaken.” I cleared my throat. “I have slept with a lot of guys. There’s a good chance it’s someone else’s.” The words were like acid. I didn’t want to hurt him. But he wanted me to give up my control.
“Is that so?” he asked after a long silence.
“Yeah. I really can’t say for sure.” My voice sounded lifeless, hollow. Exactly how I felt inside. “Ava was probably right. I just clung to it being you because you’re the only guy I’ve ever been with and talked to afterward.” Every single word was like a razor blade slicing through my tongue. I squeezed my eyes shut, tears rolling down my cheeks, but I held in my sobs.
“Interesting,” he clipped. The tears kept coming, my shoulders shaking with every sob I held at bay. “Tell me, Kate. You ever fuck anyone without a condom before me?”
Crap. I hadn’t ever. Not before him. I may have been with an army of guys, but I never ever got with them if they didn’t have a condom.
I stayed silent. If I tried to say any words, it would just come out as earth-shattering sobs.
“Yeah. Thought so,” he rumbled. I could almost picture him with his lips pressed together, stormy eyes scrutinizing me. “See, I know you. Know how you like your control. Which you just confirmed. There’s no way in hell you would relinquish that power to any putz who wanted to get in your pants. But with me? That was real. You call it fucking, sex, a one-night stand, whatever the hell you want, but. That. Was. Real. Probably the first and only moment in your entire life you let someone else have the reins for a minute. Despite everything, you enjoyed it. Because for once, someone else was taking care of you rather than themselves.”
A whimper escaped me, despite my efforts. Which then released the dam. And I was sobbing. On the phone. With the father of my child. Hard, heartrending sobs. The last time I’d cried that hard was the night before I ran away. He said he knew me, but he really had no idea. Absolutely no clue who I was and where I came from. But I couldn’t keep him from being involved. I couldn’t do that to him or the baby. Because the baby deserved him as a dad just as much as he deserved the baby. And out of all the one-night stands, none of the guys I’d been with were half the man he was.
“It’s okay, Kate.” He spoke over my blubbering. “It’s all right. I’ll take care of you, I swear it. Letting me in won’t end the way whatever made you the way you are did. I won’t hurt you.”
That brought on even more sniveling, just when I thought I could get it under control. He was so freaking observant, even from thousands of miles away. How would I keep my secrets protected when he was right there with me?
“I can’t,” I gasped. “I can’t do it.”
“You can. We’ll get through this together.”
Together. That sounded amazing and terrifying all at the same time. “Together,” I breathed, the crying jag finally calming.
“Yes.” He sighed. “I’ll be there in a month. I’d like it if you would wait for me to find out what it is.”
There was that amazing guy. The one I cared so much about. Who I emailed every single day for months, then shut out when it got too personal. He was right there on the phone with me. He wanted me to wait to find out the gender until he could be there. My heart fluttered and pounded, fluttered and pounded. Something had to be wrong with it.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Then what?” I needed to at least have a plan for what my life would look like when he was around.
“Well, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about. I reenlisted the day after you told me, so I can take care of you both.” He paused.
The fluttering ceased. He would take care of us, but from a distance. Wasn’t that what I wanted?
“It isn’t ideal, this lifestyle,” he continued. “But there are great benefits. And I requested a job over there, in Ohio. So I won’t be too far.”
Over here. In the States. He would come all the way back this way just so he could be by his kid. That was so foreign based off my experience with parental units, but I understood it because I would do anything for the little person inside me, be the opposite of those who raised me. And he’d done that the day after I told him. He’d taken responsibility, and I’d ignored him for two months because my feelings were hurt.
“Okay” was all I could think to say. There was no way to make up for the time we’d lost, the time I’d wasted.
“Okay? You’ll let me be a part of it? You’ll keep me updated and talk to me and shit?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I chuckled, sucking on my bottom lip.
“All right.” The
