“Wait,” Marco said. “We were at your house for four hours that day.”
Brady nodded. “She came over about an hour after you left.”
“Oh. Oh. Oh, shit,” he said.
“Right.”
“So, not long after you learned of Joseph’s death, she told you you were going to be a father?” Nick asked. Brady nodded, but couldn’t meet his gaze. “And you didn’t react well?”
Brady chuffed out a humorless laugh. “She called me a prick, and she was right.”
“I like her already,” Marco said. “Wait, this isn’t…is this your neighbor, uh, uh…”
“Joss. Yeah.”
“I knew it,” Marco said, the hint of a grin playing around his lips.
Brady rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Einstein. Whatever.”
Nick stepped in front of Brady, his expression as serious as he’d ever seen it. “You’ve lost your mother and father, Brady. But, this woman? Do you love her?”
“I don’t even know what that—”
“Bullshit,” Nick said, his bright blue eyes intense and inescapable. “You love Alyssa as fiercely as any brother ever has, and you always have. You know what love is.”
Brady stared at the man a long moment. Emotion welled within him, tightening his chest, kick-starting his heart.
If he could let go of the anger, he would have something left after all, wouldn’t he? Joss could be there. And their child. But only if he did some serious manning up. And that started with being honest, with Nick, with himself.
“Maybe. Probably.” He swallowed, hard. “Yes.”
…
Joss knew the knock would come. Once she left her little refuge at Christina’s, she knew it would. But as she lay in bed reading a book at ten thirty Sunday night, she still found herself unprepared for it.
She debated not answering, but when it continued, she decided there was no use in avoiding this conversation. Whether it was tonight, tomorrow, or next week, she knew down to her toes she’d have to face it sometime.
She slipped on her fluffy pink robe, cinched the belt around her waist, and padded downstairs. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.
Brady’s big body filled the rectangular space of the doorway, and he stood before her in full dress uniform. Rows of ribbons and badges decorated the space over his heart. The beret he wore bore an orange shield with a sword atop crossed arrows. She soaked him in from head to toe before meeting his gaze. God, he was so freaking gorgeous. Even if he’d broken her heart.
There was a depth in his brown eyes she didn’t remember seeing before. Or maybe that was just her emotions talking. She seemed to have more than her fair share, lately. “What’s the occasion?” she finally asked.
“Funeral.”
Joss frowned and drew a breath to speak—
“Before you say anything,” he continued, “may I please say something?”
She steeled herself. “Okay.”
“May I come in?”
“No.” She didn’t have that much steel, not with her body reacting to the presence of his.
Brady pressed his lips into a line and nodded a single time. “I could not regret more the way I talked to you and the way I treated you. You didn’t deserve it, not at all. And I know I reacted horribly to the news that you’re…that you’re pregnant. And if I could take it back, if I could do it over, I would. In a heartbeat.”
She held up a hand, his words slinking around the outsides of her defenses. “Brady—”
“Please. Please let me finish.”
She couldn’t resist the earnest expression, the pleading eyes. She nodded.
“Thank you. It’s just…I’m not good at this. At any of it. I’ve never done it before, and I—”
“Done what?”
His eyes blazed at her and he swallowed roughly. “Fallen in love.”
She gasped and the room suddenly closed in. “You have to go.” She grabbed the door and pushed it.
Brady blocked it with his arm. “Joss.”
She stepped back. “No. I can’t…you can’t… Everything about you terrifies me, if you want to know the truth of it. Your temper. The hot and cold mood swings. Running every time things get too real. And I can’t handle that, Brady. Not after the life I’ve led. I can’t handle the fear, the uncertainty. I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to. And I sure as hell will not subject my baby to it.”
“Our baby.”
“What?”
“You said ‘my baby,’ but he, or she, is mine, too.”
Joss wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to hold it together, in an effort to stay in place. Because all she wanted to do was launch herself into his arms, bask in the warm promise of his words, and never let go.
Oh, God, he said he’s fallen in love with me.
Instead, she shook her head and embraced the knife slicing through her chest. “It doesn’t matter. Not what you want. Not what I might wish I could have. None of that matters. The only thing that does is this baby’s safety and well-being. He’ll never think for a single, solitary moment that he wasn’t wanted.”
“But I do—”
“Go. Now. Please, just go.” Grief choked her throat, made it hard to say the words.
“Joss—”
“Go. And, Brady, please. Make this easier on the both of us. Don’t come visit. Don’t talk to me. Okay? Let’s just—” Tears pricked at her eyes.
Such a handsome, masculine face shouldn’t bear such sadness, she thought as she watched him struggle with her requests.
“I’ll go,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m here. Do you hear me? All you have to do is knock, and I’ll be here for you, Joss. All you have to do is knock.”
Chapter Fourteen
Joss stood in the doorway to her small home office and stared at the mess. The bookshelf still lay in pieces on the floor. At first she’d left it because she planned to take Brady up on his offer of help. And then she’d felt too tired and sometimes sick to deal with it.
In the irony of all ironies, she needed to disassemble the pieces her blood and sweat had managed to get together in the first place. Now that her office needed to transition into a nursery, she no longer had room for it.
Down on her knees, Joss wrestled the half-constructed shelf into submission. An hour later she had the shelves stacked flat inside their boxes and all the dowels, screws, and nails back into their little plastic zipper bags. She shoved it all to the side of the room and reveled in the return of her workspace and of a floor she could walk on without breaking an ankle.
Staring around the small room, she imagined how she might decorate it for the baby. She already knew she didn’t want to know the sex, so that probably ruled out pink and blue. But maybe…yellow? Bright, warm, happy. Yeah, yellow would be the perfect color to welcome her son or daughter into the world.
“Our baby,” she heard Brady’s voice say again.
“Thank you, conscience. Duly noted.”
Two weeks had passed since she’d asked him to leave and not come back. And that’s exactly what he’d done.
She couldn’t deny that his words still tempted her. In fact, she believed he meant them into the very center of her being. But that didn’t mean he would live by them when the going got tough. And if she gave him a chance, she would always wonder when he was going to blow up or walk out the door.
She just couldn’t stomach the possibility.
After a quick shower, she ran to the store. Already her appetite had picked up—and she craved milkshakes like water. Chocolate, of course, made with vanilla ice cream and lots of chocolate syrup. And she was out of both. It was a crisis that couldn’t be ignored a day longer.
When she got home, color drew her gaze immediately to her front door.
Flowers—pink roses—awaited her return.
Forgetting the bags of groceries for a moment, Joss approached the surprise gift like someone might jump out from behind it. There was no card, and…how odd. Th
ere were eight of them.
She lifted the vase and carried it in. Were they from Brady? And why eight?
She centered the arrangement on the dining room table and gave the beautiful flowers a curious glance every time she passed them until, finally, their drooping faces and falling petals forced her to throw them away.
At least the mystery of the flowers helped pass the days until her doctor’s appointment. She’d been anticipating it like crazy because she’d get to see the first picture of the baby.
On Friday afternoon, she took off work a little early to make the appointment. Christina came with her—a feat of scheduling they’d managed when Joss finally informed her director that she was pregnant and had her first ultrasound. Her boss agreed to cover Christina’s position in the preschool room on the condition that Joss brought in the picture.
“You make that paper gown look good,” Christina said as they waited for Dr. Charles.
“Shut up.” Joss chuckled, the paper crinkling as she shifted.
“Jus’ sayin’.”
“Uh-huh. Your time will come, my friend.”
Christina grinned.
A knock sounded at the door and Dr. Charles entered. She was a beautiful woman with warm brown skin and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Hey, ladies. How are you?”
“Good,” Joss said.
“How have you been feeling, Joss? Any morning sickness?” she asked as she washed her hands.
“Occasional, like two or three times a week, and usually at night.”
“They should call it all-day sickness.”
Joss smiled. “Right?”
They talked through some other questions for a few minutes while the doctor tugged the ultrasound machine closer to the examining table. Thank God Joss had been reading her pregnancy book so she knew to expect that this ultrasound involved a wand, a condom, and some lubrication, otherwise she might’ve been traumatized by how the doc needed to do it this time around.
Christina grimaced.
“Why are you grimacing? I’m the one the ultrasound machine is getting fresh with.”
Christina smacked a hand over her mouth to hold in her laughter.
Dr. Charles grinned. “Go ahead and laugh. It’s an important part of this whole process as far as I’m concerned. Do it as much as you can. Now…”
Joss turned her gaze to the monitor.
The doctor made some adjustments down below and then…
Joss gasped. “Is that—?”
“Your little peanut? Yes.”
The doctor pointed out the head, the body, the beginnings of the arms. Peanut was a totally apt description, and Joss was immediately head over heels in love. She didn’t even mind when her eyes filled with tears.
The doctor took some measurements. “Looks like you’re at right about eight weeks and five days,” she said. “This is predicting your due date at May 24th.”
Eight weeks. Eight. Eight.
Goosebumps erupted across her skin. The flowers. She couldn’t stop the whimper from spilling from her lips.
The doctor smiled. “Pretty cool seeing this for the first time, isn’t it?”
Joss nodded. It was, it truly was. But she couldn’t share the real reason she’d lost control of her emotions. It wasn’t just the baby. It was that, apparently, Brady was paying enough attention to know just how far along she was.
That night as she lay in bed and tried to fall asleep, it took everything she had not to knock on the wall.
…
The gifts continued to arrive.
Brady had kept his word not to visit or talk to her, but she hadn’t asked him not to leave her things, had she? Such a pain in the ass. The thought forced her to smile every time.
Usually, the gifts came on Saturdays, marking the weekly anniversary of their first time together.
The day after her ultrasound, she’d opened the door in the morning to find a handled bookstore bag sat between her interior and storm doors. She pulled out a popular pregnancy book she’d already bought for herself, but that fact didn’t detract one bit from the thoughtfulness of the gift.
The following Saturday brought no front-door surprise. Not in the morning, nor in the afternoon. Joss buried herself in fund-raiser phone calls and e-mails to distract herself from the disappointment. By the end of the weekend, Joss had convinced herself she was glad for it—it bolstered her determination to stay away from the man who’d been slowly but surely weakening her resolve and tempting her heart.
That whole next week, the center was a madhouse of childhood excitement. Wednesday was Halloween, and everyone was looking forward to the annual costume parade they hosted at the end of the day. Parents took off from work early to cheer their kids on, and then they partied until the last kid went home. It was fun, but exhausting. An abundance of chocolate gave her a boost.
Joss drove home that night excited for trick-or-treating. Since she was a child, she’d always loved Halloween—it was the one day of the year you could pretend to be anything or anybody. And because the houses were so close together, Fairlington was prime trick-or-treating territory—she had dozens of kids to look forward to entertaining her all night long.
When she pulled into her space, her eyes were drawn immediately to her front door. There, amid the three carved pumpkins, cobwebbing she’d wound around the columns, and large skeleton she’d hung on her front door, sat a cardboard box.
She glanced at Brady’s townhouse and pushed out of the truck.
Inside, she carried it to the kitchen counter and couldn’t get the box open fast enough.
The picture on the plastic packaging made her grin as she ripped it open and unfolded the material within. She burst into laughter.
He’d sent her a baby Halloween costume—and not just any costume, either. He’d sent her an official US Army baby costume. It was made of a camouflaged fabric and the attached “helmet” and sleeves were lined with soft fleece. It had canvas detailing and a black army patch sewn on the front.
She hugged it to her chest and laughed until she cried. And then her tears were real. He was doing everything he could think of to show her he was in this, that he cared.
Was she really doing the right thing in excluding him from his child’s life?
…
Brady had just plated some scrambled eggs when a knock sounded at the door. Sucking grease from his thumb, he made for the front of the house.
A princess, a pirate, and a cat stood on the other side. “Trick or treat!”
“Uh, oh, right. Halloween.” Oh, shit. He had not prepared for this. What the hell was he going to do?
The pirate held out his sword. “Trick or treat or ye walk the plank, matey!”
Brady scrubbed his hand over his hair. “Well, you see. I didn’t remember to get any candy.”
The cat’s lip trembled.
The pirate scowled.
“Okay, hold on, now.” An idea came to mind. “Just wait here for a sec.”
He ran upstairs to the coin jug he kept on the corner of his dresser. He grabbed a handful of money, uncertain what the going pirate ransom rate was these days. But the last thing he wanted was to be branded a Halloween cheapskate. He’d been a kid once. He remembered what happened to the houses that gave out health food or a single petrified Tootsie Roll. And he had his pride.
Back at the front door, he picked through the coins and dropped four quarters in each of the kids’ buckets.
“Thanks, mister,” the pirate said. The girls grinned. And then they all turned away.
Pleased with himself, Brady almost shut the door, but then he remembered the box he’d left on Joss’s porch. Easing the screen door open again, he peered over the small garden that separated their porches. The box was gone. Hell, yeah.
He returned to his dinner with the warm weight of victory filling his chest. What would she think of the costume? Would it make her laugh? Would it make her talk to him?
He missed her like a thirst he couldn’t
quench. After his admission to Nick and Marco at the cemetery, his feelings gained a clarity he wasn’t sure he’d ever before experienced. He wasn’t deluded enough to think he had all his shit squared away—something his subsequent therapy appointments had made crystal clear. But he had a vision for the kind of life he’d like to have and, even more important, he had discovered the beginnings of enough faith in himself—in his ability to become the man he wanted to be—that he’d found a kernel of hope.
And damn if hope wasn’t one of the most powerful forces he’d ever experienced.
Didn’t mean he wasn’t terrified within an inch of his life of fucking it all up. Because he was. After Joss had sent him away that night, he’d walked through the next few days sure a Humvee had taken up permanent residence on his chest. He’d replayed their conversation in his mind over and again, turning it upside down and inside out. Maybe he was missing the forest for the trees, but his brain had zeroed in on two comments that seemed to justify the tenacity of his hope: her saying there were things she wished she could have, and that it would be so much easier for her if they didn’t talk.
Was he what she’d been wishing for? You know, if he hadn’t proven himself a hothead and a Grade-A coward? She’d been right to the bone on that assessment. And wasn’t that just a slap in the ass. Still, there was a part of her that wanted him, that felt the magnetic pull that had first drawn him to her on that sunny September afternoon, that wished things could be different. He would bet his life on it. And, since he couldn’t change the past—a bitter pill he was finally learning to swallow—he was determined to apply every part of himself to earning back her trust, to deserving her faith.
Thinking her words into the ground and building them back up again, Brady had come to a realization that had nearly taken him to his knees—he was more afraid of never trying and living a wasteful, regretful life of what-ifs than of failing in a spectacular crash-and-burn.
The question was, how to earn her trust. How to make her see that, this time, he would control himself, he would stick. How to make her understand how deeply he needed to be there for her and their child.
The first thing he had to do was honor the requests she’d made and the promises he’d given. Despite the ragged hole in his chest only she could fill, he hadn’t talked to her. He hadn’t visited. It had taken a reserve of strength he wasn’t sure he had, but for her, he found he could be so much more than he’d ever before believed.