Authors: Erin Nicholas
“No.”
“San Diego.”
She studied her nails.
“Vegas.”
She put her arms overhead and stretched.
“New Orleans. You’d love it there.”
She put her hands on her hips and started humming.
Marc came toward her, his eyes stormy, jaw tight. “Then
I’ll
decide.” He took her upper arm in a firm grip that was unbreakable and started again toward the counter.
Sabrina tried to dig her heels in, but he was strong and determined. She tried to pull free from his grip, but he held on. So she tried pleading.
“Come on, Marc. You don’t know the whole story. I have a good reason. A few months. Let me get back on my feet. I’ll stay away from Luke…” But he wasn’t listening. They were in line at the counter behind two businessmen, three college-aged girls and a family of six. There were also four security guards.
It was Marc’s own fault. He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t being rational.
He left her with no choice.
“No!” she suddenly shouted. “You can’t make me go!”
Heads turned—including Marc’s—and conversation stopped.
“I’m pregnant! You can’t just put me on a plane and forget about me!”
Marc looked down at her in shock. His lips barely moved as he said, “Not. Funny.”
“I’m not joking! I need to stay! This baby deserves a good home!”
“Knock it off, Sabrina,” he said tightly.
“No, I won’t shut up! You can’t do this. Please don’t make me go!” She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist and burying her head in his chest.
Marc dropped her bag and his hands went to her shoulders. He started pushing as she heard, “Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to come with us.”
She turned her face so that she didn’t have to look up at Marc but could see the two security guards standing with their hands on their guns.
She felt Marc take a breath, readying a response, so she jumped in. “I didn’t mean to get pregnant. It was an accident. But he can’t make me leave. I want to be home. I want to raise my baby in my hometown.”
“Ma’am, you need to settle down. We’re going to help you, but we need to talk to you both. Quietly and calmly.”
She gripped Marc tighter, feeling his anger in the tension through his whole body. “I want him to take me home, where I can be with my friends and family. Then he can pretend to know nothing about this. I just want him to take me home.”
“Ma’am, you need to calm down.” One of the guards stepped forward and reached out a hand. “I need you to come with me. We’ll straighten this out.”
She didn’t look at Marc as she extricated herself and let the guard take her arm, but she turned back and said to the other guard, “He’s going to tell you I’m not even pregnant. You watch. He’s going to say he knows nothing about this.”
She let the guard lead her away but she could feel Marc’s anger stretching across the distance even as it widened.
It was his own damned fault. All he had to do was drive the car east and not give her any opinions and everything would have been good.
Marc had most definitely wanted to strangle Sabrina in the past. But never as much as he did when he saw her sashaying her way toward him down the airport hallway an hour later.
An hour during which he tried to convince the guards about his real relationship with Sabrina, what they were doing in Laramie and that she was lying about being pregnant.
Unfortunately, the story sounded hokey even to him after a while and he finally admitted that Sabrina was his girlfriend, he’d knocked her up and he promised to take her to Justice so she could be with her family.
He didn’t—couldn’t—say a word to Sabrina as she got in the passenger side of the car and strapped on her seatbelt. He drove out of the parking garage, got onto the road leading to the interstate, merged with the interstate traffic and headed for Justice.
In fact, it was thirty minutes before he said a word.
“Unbelievable.”
She didn’t seem surprised that he’d finally spoken. “I told you I wasn’t getting on a plane. You should have listened.”
“They were ready to call the real cops.”
“But they didn’t.”
“I thought your talents were limited to singing. You missed your call as an actress. Of course,” he continued. “Actors basically get paid to lie. Shouldn’t surprise me that you’re good at that.”
“I didn’t lie.”
He snorted.
“You
were
trying to put me on a plane against my will.”
“And what about the part about my being the father of your unborn baby?”
“They jumped to the conclusion that you were the father. I never said that.”
“But you did shout out in the middle of the airport that you were pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t a lie?”
“No.”
“See, so…” He glanced at her sharply. “What did you say?”
“I said no.”
“No what?”
“No that wasn’t a lie.”
“No
what
wasn’t a lie?”
She took a deep breath, then let it out. “I am pregnant.”
They drove in silence for nearly half an hour, both lost in thought after Sabrina’s confession.
Finally she asked to pull over to apply more cream then offered to drive—demanded actually—and he gratefully took the passenger seat, tipped it back and slept for almost an hour. The unconsciousness was a relief. He was exhausted, but even more there was no talking and he was unaware of scent of her body wash, the smooth expanse of her thigh and the absolute inability to keep his eyes from straying to her stomach every few minutes.
He awoke to her singing along with Faith Hill on the radio. The song transported him back to high school, where things had seemed impossible but were really impossibly simple. He glanced at Sabrina. She seemed comfortable and relaxed. He could have sworn he even saw a small smile on her lips.
He still couldn’t believe it. She was pregnant.
And from here on out
everything
would be different.
He felt himself frown as he stared at the yellow dashed line flashing past them on the highway. Sabrina had never taken good care of herself. She was too skinny, too worried, too angry all the time.
How was she going to take care of a baby? She was used to late nights on the road, smoky bars, loud music. She’d always been a night owl. How was she going to get up in the middle of the night with a crying infant? She also couldn’t cook worth a damn. In college she’d survived on delivery pizza and microwave dinners, or the things she ate at his and Luke’s house. Baby food would get her through for awhile, but eventually the child would be older and would want real food.
She hardly ever spent money on herself. She would wear her shoes right out, a fact that used to drive her father crazy. Luke had once believed that she never bought new clothes to annoy her dad, but Marc couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t because she felt that clothes were too trivial to worry about.
She needed someone to take care of
her
while she took care of the baby.
Someone. Like, oh, maybe the father of the child?
“Who’s the father?” He couldn’t believe the question hadn’t occurred to him before this.
Sabrina looked over at him, seemingly startled. “No one you know.”
He waited but she seemed to be content leaving it at that. He wasn’t content, however.
“And when will he be joining you in Justice?” he asked with mock nonchalance.
Marc irrationally and vehemently hated the idea that there was a man who would be sharing all of this with Sabrina. It was the most asinine thing he’d probably ever felt, but there it was.
“He won’t be.” She stared at the road.
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
Okay. That was something he couldn’t help but be curious about. “Why not?”
“We aren’t together, a couple, whatever. He’s just a guy I met one weekend and this was totally unplanned. And I don’t want him to be involved. End of story.”
Marc felt relieved and intensely interested at the same time.
“Is he—”
“It’s really none of your business. You don’t know him, you’ll never meet him, he’s not in the picture. End. Of. Story.”
Fine. He could live with that. For now.
“Have you thought about how much work a baby is going to be?” he asked.
Sabrina looked at him then back to the road. “What?”
“The baby. He or she will be a lot of work. Do you know anything about babies?”
“There are lots of books.”
Sabrina was smart. She’d aced every class she’d taken in college for her business degree. She picked things up quickly when she set her mind to something. Her music had been like that. She played four instruments well and many others better than most. She read music but she could also play almost anything by ear after hearing it a few times. She had amazing range and tone when singing and she loved nearly every kind of music. It was the one thing that gave her complete joy and the thing that made her proud.
He was sure she would pick up many essentials from parenting books, but that wouldn’t necessarily replace years of bad habits.
“You won’t always have time to run and look something up. What happens when the baby gets a fever or starts throwing up?”
Her eyes widened. “I’ll call the doctor.”
“What happens when the baby is crying but isn’t sick? What happens when you can’t figure out what’s wrong?”
She looked a little worried now. “I’d probably—I’ll probably call Karen.”
Marc smiled at that. Karen would love that. And that was a good answer. Karen would know. She was a great mother.
“What about the first time he gets called into the Principal’s office?”
“My child will
not
get called into the Principal’s office.”
“You don’t know that. What about the first time she asks you where babies come from?”
She groaned. “What are you trying to do?”
“Just pointing out that it won’t be easy.”
“Thanks, that’s very supportive.”
His grin died. Supportive? He was supposed to be supportive? They were friends now?
Then why did he still want to see her naked?
She was
pregnant
and about to turn his best friend’s life upside down and he still wanted to know what color her nipples were.
This was not good. It was getting less good by the minute in fact.
“Luke is going to freak out.”
“I know.” She said it quietly.
“I would recommend not telling him right away.”
“I’d prefer to never tell him.”
“Actually, I’d prefer that too.”
They sat in silence, Luke’s pending reaction dominating their thoughts. After a moment she asked, “How far is it anyway?”
“Three and a half hours or so.”
She sat up even straighter and swallowed hard.
Three and a half hours until she would be back in her hometown for the first time since leaving without a look back, vowing not to return until she was successful, rich and famous.
So much for that idea.
Sabrina settled back into her seat with the weight of what was happening and what she was doing suddenly overwhelming her. She did, however, fight the urge to curl her knees up to her chest and feel sorry for herself. She would handle this. She had to. She glanced over at the man sitting next to her.
The knot in her gut loosened as she studied Marc’s profile.
That was stupid considering that he didn’t like her, thought she was a screw up and didn’t want her anywhere near Justice. But having him next to her made her feel better.
She was clearly delusional.
They listened to the radio without conversation for a long stretch, then stopped for the bathroom, food and to change drivers. They made small talk about Justice and the people who lived there. Marc told her about the restaurant and some trips he’d taken. She told him about the cities she’d seen and some of the funny stories that being on the road, in clubs every night playing live music, had produced.
Finally, Sabrina got her first look at her hometown in four years. They came over the top of the hill to the west of Justice and she looked down on the scene that she’d seen more times than any other she could think of. When she’d thought of Justice while away this was the picture her mind conjured.
She felt her throat tighten and tears prick the back of her eyes as they passed the city limit sign and started down Main Street. It was ridiculous that the sight of the swimming pool where she’d learned to swim could choke her up, but the nostalgia was crashing over her in waves. She was overwhelmed that the good memories from Justice were outnumbering the bad.
“It doesn’t look like Kat’s home yet.”
They rolled past her best friend’s house. A house Sabrina had never seen but that she knew Kat was crazy about.
“How can you tell?”
“The newspapers are still on the porch.”
“Ah.”
Now what? She couldn’t go to her dad’s and—
“You should come to my place.”
She whipped her head to the side so fast that her neck hurt. “What?”
“Where else are you going to go?” Marc asked, his eyes still on the road. “Hell, we already stayed together last night. What difference does it make?”
It sounded simple enough.
But nothing about this was simple.
This wasn’t just a visit. This wasn’t just a long holiday weekend. This was going to be her life. For now anyway. For long enough, though, that everyone would know about the baby.
Only Marc and Kat knew she was pregnant. They were both still talking to her. She should cling to them.
“Okay. I’ll stay with you until Kat gets home.”
Marc carried her bag into the house through the back kitchen door and she had to smile thinking about how different this was than when he’d carried it into the airport.
“Guest room is second at the top of the stairs. I’ll take your bag up.”
She wasn’t going to need the room for at least ten hours or so. “’Kay.”
“Towels and stuff are in the bathroom.”
Marc seemed uncomfortable for some reason. Good to know. “Great.”
“Help yourself to any food in the kitchen.”