Well Suited (Red Lipstick Coalition #4)(12)

She’d be angry with me. Furious for being irresponsible. Upset for bringing a child into a home that wasn’t stable, that wasn’t filled with love. Because she knew that pain after being abandoned by my father.

We all knew that pain.

I’d loaded a dozen arguments, all the ways I’d make it right, all the things I’d do to make sure that history wouldn’t repeat itself. I wouldn’t abandon Katherine, and I wouldn’t abandon my kid. And I’d make sure she knew it.

I’d do everything in my power to make my mother proud.

When her hand fell away, it wasn’t anger I found.

Her smile hit me square in the heart.

“Oh, Teddy. You’re gonna be such a good dad.”

I found myself in her arms, hanging on to her with relief and gladness. “I’m gonna take care of her, Ma.”

“I know you will, honey. I know you will.” She didn’t let go until I did. “You’ve been taking care of us since always. I put too much on you when your dad left, let you take on too much.”

“Don’t do that, Ma,” I said quietly. “I wanted to help. The thought of you having to do any more than you already were woulda killed me. Plus, I like folding laundry.”

“And cooking,” Tommy added helpfully.

Ma cupped my cheek, her eyes brimming with tears. “You are a giver, honey. The most loyal, the most dependable—”

“Hey,” Tommy joked.

She laughed. “Teddy, I know you’ll do right by her. I’m just so happy!”

She flung herself into my arms again, and I closed my eyes against my emotion.

I’d been granted a chance to rewrite my past, erase my pain by providing a future for my child.

And that was an opportunity I’d take gladly.





6





Destinations and Doorways





Katherine

5 weeks, 4 days

The squeak of the cart wheel echoing in the expanse of the silent Rose Room was blasphemy.

I cursed Eagan for giving me this one. He’d probably done it on purpose.

My lips flattened, and I picked up my pace. The squeak picked its pace up and its pitch, too. The library patrons looked up from their tomes with accusatory glares.

I decided then to make sure Eagan got stuck on card catalog organization. In addition, I decided to shuffle them before he got started.

My anxiety eased marginally once I was through the room and into a quieter, less traveled part of the library. I wound through mazes of shelves, towering sentinels of knowledge containing countless words, the results of millions of hours of combined work, of strategy and planning, of research and thought.

What lived in these rooms was more valuable than all the riches in the world.

When I pulled to a stop in front of my destination and the squeak ceased, the quiet wrapped around me, a cocoon of sound, heavy and warm. And I took to my task.

Someone had been busy researching Mesopotamia. I had stacks of books about Babylon, Gilgamesh, and Sargon and the Akkadians. Gods and myths, legends that had spawned stories to be retold in religions all across the world. As I shelved a few and wheeled the noisy cart around the corner, I imagined what the reader might have been doing. Writing a paper for school perhaps. Or researching to write a novel. Maybe a fantasy with roots in history. Or, —even more impressive—they’d just wanted to learn for the joy of learning.

I smiled at the prospect. There was nothing I found more appealing than a person who loved to learn.

When I reached my next shelf, my smile faded. Someone had put books back incorrectly. Not only were they in the wrong section of the library—we were in nine hundred, geography and history, and these belonged in the three hundreds under social sciences and folklore—but they were flipped upside down.

Eagan, I’d put money on it. I’d bet he’d set the whole thing up, that lawless bastard.

With a magnificent scowl, I cleaned the shelf up. What Eagan didn’t know—and what I’d never tell him—was that fixing the shelf actually sent a shot of dopamine and adrenaline through me.

There was little I enjoyed as much as putting things in their place.

It had been three days since I discovered my uterus was occupied, three days since Theo asked—demanded?—that I move in. He wasn’t wrong. I knew it would be easier together than apart, especially with everyone moving on. If things were the way they used to be, maybe it’d be different. Because it used to be me and my friends and no one else. We’d have raised the embryo together.

Don’t get me wrong—I was happy for them. They’d all found exemplary men, and the progression was natural. But I found myself unexpectedly mourning the idea of the four of us essentially sharing a baby.

I brushed the thought away and shifted it to reality. Being so deeply alone and pregnant was not ideal. As much as I loved solitude, I was unused to it. Our house had always been full. Someone had always been home. Now it was as silent as a tomb, and as lively as one, too.

But the thought of living with strangers was enough to make me wildly uncomfortable.

As I shelved a book about the Assyrians, I considered the man who would father my child, as I had so many times over the last few days. Really, I’d been thinking about him far longer than that. Since that first night. The only night.