Unbreak My Heart (Unbreak My Heart #1)(20)

“I can’t leave you here alone.”

“I’ll be fine. Seriously. You need to get home to the kids. Sage is probably freaking out by now.”

“I just called her. She’s fine.”

“Well, I bet Megan is losing her mind with all those kids.”

“I just talked to her. She’s fine, too.”

“I don’t want you here,” I finally said, looking away from the shock on his face. “I’m not sure what you’re doing, but let’s be honest here, okay?”

“I’m being honest.”

“No, you’re feeling guilty or something, but you’re sure as f*ck not being honest.”

“You’re being a bitch.”

“Ah, there’s the honesty,” I replied drily to cover how his words had stung. “I know you don’t want to be here, okay? You’re fidgeting and sighing and looking at your watch, and frankly, it would be easier to enjoy this glorious anti-nausea medicine if I didn’t feel like I was keeping you from wherever it is you want to be.”

“I want to be here,” he argued stubbornly.

“Why? Why would you want to be here?”

“Because you’re sick and you’re pregnant. I can’t just leave you.”

“Why is it your problem?” I stared at him, silently pleading with him to acknowledge the child in the images next to his elbow.

“I guess it’s not,” he finally said, rising from the chair.

“Are you going to just keep pretending that I got myself pregnant?” I asked tiredly, looking up into his face. “The dates are on the ultrasound prints you keep staring at. I’m sure even you can do the math.”

“I already have four kids,” he said roughly, reaching up to scratch his jaw. “With my wife.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I whispered back, feeling like I was being sliced open.

“Look, you’ve had a couple of days to process this shit, all right?” he snapped back. “I’ve had hours, and most of those hours have been spent peeling you off the floor and taking you to the hospital.”

“I’m sorry for being such an inconvenience.”

“Can you just for one f*cking second give me a little space? Fuck, Kate, just give me a minute to process the shit storm that has become my f*cking life!”

I nodded once, then slowly rolled until I was facing away from him.

“Right, because this is so much easier for me,” I replied flatly, refusing to look at him. “Take as much time as you want.”

I could feel his eyes on the back of my head for a long time, but I clenched my teeth and controlled my breathing until I heard him open and close the door.

Then I burst into tears.

Stupid pregnancy hormones.

*



They only kept me for a few hours more, letting me rehydrate with their nifty little needle in my vein, then sending me home with a prescription for anti-nausea meds and some prenatal vitamins.

Shit. Prenatal. It was really happening. I was really going to be a mom. Or was I already a mom? I sure as hell already felt protective of the little sea monkey curled up somewhere between my hip bones.

I took an expensive-as-hell cab back to my apartment and climbed the stairs, thankful that Shane had thought to bring my purse to the hospital. After losing my keys eighteen million times, I’d finally gotten into the habit of keeping an extra house key in my wallet.

When I got inside, something was off. It took a second before I realized it was the scent of lemon. What the heck?

Shane had cleaned up the bathroom.

Oh my God.

I sat down heavily on the sparkling-clean toilet and chastised myself until the tears I felt coming to the surface subsided. It was such a nice thing for him to do. But I couldn’t let myself think that it was done out of anything but kindness…or guilt. Guilt was probably the reason.

I grabbed my phone out of my purse to call him, but stopped short when I saw that my mom was calling my silenced phone. Shit! Anita must have opened her big mouth.

“Hey, Ma!” I answered cheerfully, shuffling toward my bed and crawling between the—did he wash my sheets?

“Hey, baby! Whatcha doing?”

“Not much, just hanging out at home.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I was pretty sure that she knew I was pregnant, but she wasn’t going to ask. I swear, she and Aunt Ellie had perfected the whole you-know-I-know-but-I’ll-wait-until-you-tell-me-as-long-as-you-tell-me-right-now routine. They’d caught many a child with that strategy as I grew up, kids who’d been impossible to understand and less trusting than an antelope surrounded by Siberian tigers.

Yes, I had a thing for exotic animals as a kid. Sue me.

My aunt and uncle had found out pretty early in their marriage that they couldn’t have children and, being the awesome people they were, had immediately decided that they wanted to open their house and their lives to foster children. It couldn’t have been easy—hell, I’d seen firsthand how not easy it was—but they’d never once faltered in what my aunt later told me they’d felt called to do. From the time I was two years old, I’d had cousins coming out of the woodwork—quiet, loud, calm, destructive, sad, and angry cousins. Some didn’t last long; most didn’t last long. But there were two that my aunt and uncle had been able to adopt—Trevor and Henry—and a few who’d stayed in touch even after they’d gone. Shane had been one of the foster kids who had seemed to hold tight to Ellie and Mike Harris’s family, even though he’d been one of the oldest ever to be placed with them.