***
Easing myself up to the hotel bar, I ordered two huge servings of sake and started double-fisting them. Somehow, we’d gone from having a dream vacation—okay with a few bumps—to having the biggest fight we’d had in years over a completely hypothetical question. She’d asked me something honest, and I’d tried to be sincere back. I was fucked up, damaged goods with a horrible family life. Yes, I’d love a little girl or a son, but I was scared I’d be no good for the kiddo, that I’d be as shitty as my dad was to me.
Draining my second glass of sake, I waved to the bartender for two more. It was going to be a long night. “Domo arigato,” I said, rubbing at my temples. A headache was moving in already.
A soft hand was on my shoulder and, for a moment, hope flickered through my chest before it died out again. It wasn’t Belle, just Mrs. Johnson. “We need to talk.”
“I need to drink,” I said, guzzling down the third and fourth glasses that the barkeep set down beside me. “Two more and a couple for the lady. If you’re going to stay, you need to have some sake, too, Penelope.”
She nodded and sipped an offered glass. “You just stormed out on Belle.”
“Correction,” I said, my words slurring just a little. It was probably the fifth sake I’d started nursing. “She freaked out for some reason, couldn’t handle the truth about me, and then she locked me out of my bedroom. I knocked on it for a while and she still wouldn’t let me in. What was I supposed to do?”
“I think that getting drunk was hardly the right idea,” she said, shaking her head. “No, you need to take a few moments out from your pity party and put the pieces together.”
I frowned back at her. “I don’t get it.”
“Of course, you don’t, Drake,” she said. “You might be a marketing wizard in L.A., but you can make so many mistakes otherwise. I swear if you didn’t have me and Leonard to look after you, I don’t know where you’d be.”
That made two of us.
“True, but I don’t get it. She’s been a little sick, sure, but she’s on the pill and…”
“She missed a few while under graduation craziness. When she got sick for the third day in a row and sent you out, Belle called me. We got two different kinds of pregnancy tests. Both were positive. She even had the hotel make a doctor’s appointment for her tomorrow in the city to be sure. She’s pregnant, Drake, and you’re going to be a father.”
I blinked, unable to process the words. I couldn’t be a father. I was the last person on Earth who should have the job. No, wait. Second to last person who should have the job. I was going to nominate my own dad for the top spot.
My hand shook as I set down the sake glass. I needed to be sober to try and wrap my head around it. “She’s what?”
“Pregnant. With child. Expecting,” Penelope supplied, gesturing to the waiter and ordering two club sodas. She waited to talk until they arrived again and shoved one over to me. “I think you need this very badly. Drake, do you understand what I’m telling you? You’re going to be a father.”
“No, I think it’s finally starting to sink in,” I said, gulping down my water greedily. The cool liquid did little to calm the fire bubbling up inside of me. “I’m not good enough for Belle. It’s one thing to be her husband, but you know she deserves more for the father of her children. I honestly thought this would never happen, that she’d be perfectly happy for it to be just us forever.”
“Can I ask why you think you’re not cut out to be a father, and we both know your dad’s a class A jerk,” Penelope added, winking back at me.
“That was a big one.”
“But if you think it’s because of having been in a war… Tons of soldiers come home and start families. You have heard of the ‘baby boom,’ right?”
“Yes, but I just… the last thing I want to do is take a little life and ruin it. I’d try my hardest, but what if I did have a flashback? What if I had a moment where I just couldn’t keep that part of me tamped down? I don’t want to expose some innocent little kid to that.”
Penelope nodded and sipped her drink. “You know what I wouldn’t want?”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t want to have a beautiful little girl of Belle’s grow up without the best man I’ve ever met protecting her, the way he has her mother. That would be the biggest crime you could ever commit, Drake, to walk away from this. This child is a gift, and they’ll need you. The best thing you can do is step up for them.”
“How do I do that?”
She pulled up a quilt work bag to the bar and set it down. Fishing inside, she pulled out a card. “Tomorrow, noon, at the Nakimi Tower. We’ll be there to see how far along she is. You start by being there, sir, and the rest will take care of itself.”
I took the card from her and realized it felt heavier in my hand than my purple heart ever had. Penelope always seemed so sure of herself, so calm in her inner wisdom. But I didn’t have that, and I could never be truly sure.
And the last thing I knew was if anything could take care of itself.