Chapter 6: Finding Forever: Chapter 5

“Iwasn’t drunk… just not completely sober,” he clarified, as if that made it somehow better. He peered at her intently before sighing. “I’ve offended you.”

She folded her arms over her chest and glowered at him.

“What makes you think that?” Her voice was dripping with saccharine. “It’s not like you were being offensive or anything.”

He sighed again and this time the sound was long-suffering and—nuh uh! She glared at him. Nope… no way!

They had not been married long enough for him to whip out a sigh like that in her presence.

“I just meant to say that sex won’t be on the list of complications we need to worry about. And if I do decide to have my needs met elsewhere, I’ll be discreet. As I’m sure you will be.”

“Right. Sex, off the list,” she repeated, her voice curt, she unfolded her arms to lick the tip of her index finger and draw a gigantic check mark in the air in front of her. “Got it. Then we need to address the other matter. The one you refused to discuss last night.”

God, had it only been last night? It felt like a lifetime ago.

His eyes narrowed and sharpened on her face.

“What matter?”

She gulped in a deep breath. She couldn’t will this away. She didn’t want to. It was her entire reason for proposing this mad venture to him in the first place. The past twenty-four hours had been crazy and distracting enough to shove it to the back of her mind, but it had never been completely gone. How could it be? When it was so precious to her.

“I didn’t want to push it when you’d so vehemently rejected the notion. I was afraid you wouldn’t help me and I couldn’t risk that, Cade.”

He swallowed and his eyes involuntarily darted down to her stomach, before he jerked them back up to her face. His expression had hardened into stone.

“I wasn’t lying about being pregnant,” she whispered, hating that she sounded so apologetic. She wasn’t sorry about this pregnancy. Not one bit. It had given her hope and a reason to fight. She loved the tiny flicker of life in her uterus fiercely and she’d already taken massive, life-altering measures to protect it.

She picked up her purse from the seat next to her and scratched around in the untidy interior before she pulled out her journal and flipped it open to retrieve the grainy ultrasound image that she’d tucked between the pages. She unfolded it and smoothed her palm lovingly over the crease in the center of the paper, before leaning forward to hand it to him with a badly shaking hand.

He stared at the offering blankly for a few long, agonizing seconds before—with clear reluctance—grasping a corner gingerly between his thumb and forefinger and taking it from her.

“You can’t see much, I know,” she whispered, her voice thready with anxiety. “It’s a six-week ultrasound, taken a couple of weeks ago. I had to sneak out to a clinic to have it done. Just a little blob at that stage. An embryo really. But it’s there. It exists.”

He stared down at the image, as if not entirely certain what he was looking at. His expression was still stony, but there was a fine, barely noticeable tremor in the hand holding the picture.

“It’s definitely mine?” he asked, his voice filled with gravel the size of boulders.

“Yes,” she whispered, uncertain of his reaction and a little resentful that he was able to disguise his feelings to such an extent.

His eyes snapped up to hers, pinning her to the spot.

“I used a condom. Are you absolutely sure?”

She fought not to be offended by what—to a man like Niall Caden Hawthorne—was a very fair question.

“Yes. I wasn’t… I’m not very experienced. There hasn’t been anyone since you.”

“What about before me?” he asked and she flushed and tugged at the high collar of her blouse in an effort lessen the restriction at her throat.

“No. Never.”

“Ever?” His voice was incredulous. “How is that possible? You’re twenty-seven.”

“I told you, I was isolated from the outside world and rarely left unsupervised.”

“Fuck,” he murmured beneath his breath, his fist closing around the ultrasound image, crumpling it. She bit back a protest at the action—reminding herself that she had a copy—and fought back the urge to snatch it away from him. “Fuck.”

The second fuck was loud, angry…and finally gave her some insight into what he was feeling. And it wasn’t anything good.

“So that was your first time? That night?”

“Yes.”

“Goddamnit,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know… I could maybe have made it better for you, even if⁠—”

“Even if you weren’t into it?” she completed and he grimaced. She rolled her eyes and continued. “Let’s forget about the sex, okay? It’s not the most important part of this conversation. I’m sorry your pride was bruised because you didn’t deliver peak performance, but that’s not⁠—”

“Terrible virgin sex that left you pregnant. Fuck me, it’s the world’s worst cliche,” he muttered beneath his breath.

Fern was starting to wonder if all this deflection was because he wasn’t quite ready to deal with the reality of her condition yet.

“Cade,” she prompted gently. “About the baby.”

“I don’t know what—” He swallowed, his fist tightening around the crumpled paper in his hands. “I never gave much thought to fatherhood.”

“I’m not asking you to be my baby’s father, Cade. I don’t expect that. Or want that. I just thought you should know the truth. Because I couldn’t let you continue believing I would lie about such a thing. Not when I’ll start showing soon.”

“And you’re definitely having it?”

Her hands went to her stomach protectively, as if to shield her baby from even the suggestion of any possibility other than absolutely wanting him.

“Yes,” she asserted. “The only reason I’ve done any of this was so that I could keep this baby.”

His jaw tightened and he pushed to his feet, stepping into the aisle of the plane.

“Where are you going?”

“I need a minute,” he snapped.

“Cade, we should⁠—”

“Just a moment, alright?”

“Look, it’s fine if⁠—”

“Fern, I said I need a fucking goddamn moment to process, okay? Just give me a second to fucking do that.”

It was the first time she’d seen him lose his cool and it was pretty spectacular. He was bristling with fury and impatience but at the same time she could see the fear and uncertainty lurking just beneath that incandescent rage and she clamped her mouth shut. She nodded and sat back.

He stalked off toward the sleeping quarters in the back and she strained her neck as she tracked his movements until he disappeared into the separate room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Rolling her lips into her mouth, Fern settled uneasily into her seat, not sure what—if anything—to do.

Cade sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the muted beige wall of the plane for a long, fraught moment.

He shouldn’t have lost his temper like that. He wasn’t usually so transparent around others. Especially not around people he wasn’t sure he could trust yet. He always kept a cool head, regardless of the situation. But this was⁠—

He bowed his head, unable to even complete the thought.

Fuck.

The word had been circling around his brain on repeat for the last five minutes. He couldn’t break free of the downward spiral of echoing fucks cascading all around him.

The crumpled edges of the paper in his tightly closed fist, jabbing uncomfortably into his palm jerked him back to reality when he recalled exactly what it was he held clutched in his hand.

His gaze slowly shifted downwards and he uncurled his fist to stare at the balled-up wad of glossy paper in his hand.

“Shit.” The word was soft, vehement, and at least different from the litany of fucks that were slowly fading into the background. He pressed the paper flat on his thigh and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of it. Some of the creases had left white lines in the black ink, but he could still see the tiny blob in the center of the image. He stared at it, transfixed, unable to reconcile the image on this piece of hopelessly crumpled paper, with the less than spectacular act that had apparently led to its conception.

Weren’t babies meant to be conceived in memorable, glorious acts of love and affection?

Okay, that was an embarrassingly naive thought. Of course, he knew better than that. He’d never really considered having kids but if the thought had fleetingly passed his mind at some point, it would have been within the context of something similar to what Gideon and Beth had. Love, marriage, the whole shebang. Not an arrangement with a stranger. A stranger whom he felt indifferent toward at least and slightly contemptuous toward at most.

He stared at the blob for a long time, not sure what to do for it. Not sure if it even was his place to do anything. She’d made it more than clear that she didn’t want or need his involvement. But the reality was… he was going to have a front row seat to this pregnancy. She would be living in his home, growing bigger and bigger with a baby that she called hers but that was actually theirs.

How was he supposed to remain unemotional and detached from that? Was it even possible?

He didn’t want to get attached, he didn’t want to love it… then again, that eventuality was probably highly unlikely. He felt a distant, vague sort of recognition currently. This wasn’t something he’d gone looking for. It wasn’t anything he’d ever wanted. And maybe that was how it would remain. Maybe he would watch her grow bigger and bigger with her baby, in distant and uninvested interest.

If nothing else the pregnancy added viability to their fabricated love story. The ultimate happy ending. The whole world would know him as the father of this child and eventually that child would know Cade as his father. A child that would have expectations of its father. And Cade—in his effort to remain distant and uninvolved—would disappoint the kid and hurt it.

The pounding echoing invocation of fucks started up again… soaring and swooping all around him. And this time, there was no goddamn way to silence them.

Cade—after remaining cooped up in the bedroom for nearly two hours—joined Fern for dinner but remained mute throughout the meal. She was beginning to recognize that he was an innately quiet man who spoke only when absolutely necessary, but this silence brimmed with everything that he deliberately left unspoken. Possibly because he thought the words were unnecessary, but more likely because he wasn’t quite sure how to say them.

Fern didn’t want to push him. There really wasn’t anything that needed to be said. She’d conveyed a crucial piece of information that did not at all change their current situation or their immediate futures. The baby was here. It existed. Everything else remained the same.

So, they ate in silence, after which she retreated to the bathroom for a shower and a change of clothes. While Cade—who had showered and changed during the two hours he’d been hiding from her— caught up on his business correspondence.

They didn’t speak at all for the rest of the flight and when their plane landed a little after one-thirty am Saturday morning at a private airfield, they were both exhausted and not really in the right frame of mind to talk anyway.

It was close to three in the morning when Cade and Fern wearily trudged into his luxurious apartment in Clifton. Fern was so exhausted, she only vaguely registered her airy surroundings, absently noting a lot of white on white on beige. Cade, who’d driven them from the airport himself, gently deposited her one suitcase on the floor just inside the front door, and shrugged his own larger, heavier tote bag from his shoulder, carelessly dropping it with a thump.

“There are two spare bedrooms,” he told her stifling a yawn as he spoke to her for the first time in hours. “Choose whichever one you want.” He jammed his hands into his charcoal gray trouser pockets and stared at her broodingly. “I haven’t slept since this all began; I’m going to bed.”

Before she could respond, he picked up his bag again, and stalked down the softly lit hallway. He turned into what she assumed was a bedroom and shut the door with a quiet snick.

Fern stood just inside the front door where he’d abandoned her, staring after him and knew that this was a small taste of what was to come over the next thirty-six months. She’d known not to expect friendship, but she’d hoped for at least some kind of amicability between them. This wasn’t a very auspicious beginning and she couldn’t help feeling hollow and a little despairing.

“Stop it,” she admonished herself impatiently, wrapping her arms around her quivering body. She couldn’t keep telling herself—and him—that she expected nothing from him, only to turn around and feel sad and sick to her stomach when nothing was exactly what she got.

She was being ridiculous and childish and stupid and she needed to grow the hell up fast. For the sake of her sanity and for her baby’s well-being.