Wheeler
I felt like I was having a panic attack.
I could feel the doctor looking at me expectantly and I knew Kallie was fidgeting nervously on the table as we both stared at the black-and-white screen that showed a weird-looking blob that definitely had identifiable human features. The nose poked up in the air as minuscule fingers waved on the end of a tiny little hand.
This was real. So real.
I was going to be a father.
That was my kid growing inside the woman that had shredded my heart and annihilated all my previous dreams of happy-ever-after.
I felt like I was suffocating. There was no air in the room, and each time the small heartbeat, strong and loud, filled the silence, I felt mine race.
The doctor cleared her throat and shifted her questioning gaze between me and my ex. The tension between the two of us was palpable and I’m sure the situation was as uncomfortable for her as it was for us.
“Well, everything looks exactly like it should at sixteen weeks. At this point in your second trimester you’re going to be seeing more significant changes in your body and you’ll be coming in to see me more frequently. In a few more weeks we should be able to tell if you’re having a boy or a girl. That is, if you’re interested in knowing the sex beforehand.” She nodded at the ultrasound screen and gave a reassuring smile. “We’ll get you a printout of your very active baby so you can take it with you today. Do either of you have any questions for me?”
Kallie turned her head to look at me and I immediately looked away. I was having a hard time keeping myself in the chair I was sitting in and not making a mad dash for the door. I heard her sigh as she took the offered towel to wipe off the clear gel that was smeared all over her mostly-flat stomach. I couldn’t believe our baby was living inside there. I couldn’t believe that in all the years we’d been together, seemingly happy and planning a future together, we hadn’t had so much as a scare when it came to pregnancy. That included all the years when we were stupid teenagers fucking without much thought to safety, sex being the first thing on our minds when we were alone. It felt like some kind of ugly joke that it was when our fairy tale fell apart this new life was created. All I ever wanted was a family and a forever of my own. What I got was this clusterfuck that made my chest hurt and my head pound.
“Thanks, Dr. Ehrhardt. I think we’re good. If anything comes up I won’t hesitate to give you a call.” I looked up at the woman that had sent my entire world spinning off its axis and flinched when I realized she was staring at me with open and obvious disappointment. She expected more from me because I had always given her everything, but this time … well, I wasn’t sure I had anything to offer her. She swung her legs off the exam table and straightened her clothes as she got to her feet. I followed suit and paused as the doctor stopped in front of me and extended her hand for me to shake.
I gave it a quick pump expecting her to immediately let go but instead she gave my fingers a tight squeeze and offered me a soft smile. “It can be a lot to take in. Don’t worry, Mr. Wheeler, you’ll get used to the idea of being a father, and before you know it you’ll be anxiously awaiting the moment when you can hold your baby in your arms. You’re here. That’s a huge step, one a lot of young men don’t bother to take.” She looked back at Kallie, who was now standing directly behind me. “Take care of each other. That’s my best advice to both of you, regardless of your circumstances. You’ll need one another going forward and your baby will need both of you.” She finally let go of my hand and gave a cheerful wave as she left the room.
I gave Kallie a hard look over my shoulder as she let out a dry laugh. I lifted a questioning eyebrow at her as she stepped around me and reached for the door. “My first appointment with her, when I showed up with my mom, she told me that plenty of young women my age had babies without a partner in the picture. She told me that being a single mother was challenging but completely rewarding. I think she has a pep talk in reserve no matter what the situation might be.”
I followed her down the hallway silently and paused when she stopped at the checkout desk to schedule her next appointment and to collect the grainy black-and-white image of our baby. When she handed me my own copy all I could do was stare at it numbly. That was my baby. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Outside, I was ready to tell Kallie good-bye so I could find the closest bar and shoot back some whiskey and hide from my problems like the mature, rational adult I was. Unfortunately, Kallie had other plans. She put a hand on my arm as I started toward the Eldorado and pulled me to a stop.
“Wheeler …” Her voice was strained and the look on her face was one that would have made my heart bleed before. “I hate that things are so tense between us, that other people can tell you don’t want to be around me.” She blinked and I realized there were big fat tears in her eyes. “You have always been my favorite person in the whole world and it hurts that you’ve completely shut me out of your life.”
I opened my mouth to tell her I was doing the best that I could but the words wouldn’t come. I was hardly trying and we both knew it.
“Listen, Kallie, you have a lot of people at your back to help you with all of this. Your mom and dad, Dixie, and even Roni, if you come clean about what she means to you.” I pointed at the center of my chest where that lone wolf lived. “I’m navigating this on my own. I’m trying to figure out my new place in your life and in our baby’s life with no help at all, so you need to let me work this out whatever way is easiest for me.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. I’m right here, Wheeler. If anyone knows how hard this is, how complicated it is, that would be me.” She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at me. “I get that this isn’t the ideal situation for either of us but I wasn’t alone when this baby was made.”
I shook her hand off and moved toward my car. “I loved you then, Kallie.” I saw the way my words cut into her. “I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about you now.”
She sniffed a little and stepped away from me. “I love you, I always will. It’s a different kind of love than we had before, but that doesn’t make it any less important.” A single tear slipped out of her eye before she could blink it away and it made me clench my fists at my sides. I’d spent so much of my life trying to be the guy that never hurt her and here I was making her cry. “I always knew I was going to have a family with you, Wheeler. I always dreamed about the babies we would have and how they would have your hair and those amazing dimples. This isn’t the way either of us wanted it to happen but I refuse to be sorry that it’s happening. Some things were meant to be. You and I might not be one of them, but you and I being a family sure seems to be. That family might not look the way you wanted it to, but it’s going to be our family regardless.”
I stared at her, letting her words sink in. She’d always been the spoiled one, the pampered one, in our relationship. I never expected her to be anything else but that. However, when circumstances changed, when she was suddenly responsible for another life, she had finally stopped being so self-indulgent and coddled. She was growing up and behaving far more maturely and reasonably than I was.
Sighing, I stepped up the curb and wrapped my arms around her in a hug that was awkward and stiff. I used to hug her and feel like I was home; now there was so much distance between us that it felt like I had my arms around a stranger. She tucked her head under my chin and wound her arms around my waist. It should feel familiar but it didn’t. It felt foreign and strange.
“Give me some time, Kallie. I swear I’ll get it together and be the guy you need me to be.”
She gave me another squeeze and stepped back. Her cheeks were wet and her face was flushed but she was no longer looking at me like I had let her down. “You’ve always been the guy I needed you to be, Wheeler. I know you will be the man this baby is lucky to call daddy.” She rubbed her face with the back of her hand. “You were always so patient with me. You never called me on any of my bullshit and you forgave me when I hurt you time and time again. You might not be driving this time but I promise I’m not going anywhere without you.” A weak smile tugged at her mouth. “You can be the navigator. You’re good at making sure no one gets lost.” She nodded at the Eldorado. “The Caddy is gonna look really cute with a car seat in the back.”
I choked a little and looked at my car and back at the former love of my life and current mother of my child. “Shit. I just got used to the idea of having a nursery in my house. I didn’t think about my car.” I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck and sighed. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be the minivan type.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes at me. “Who’s asking you to drive a minivan? As long as you can belt a safety seat in the back you’re fine, and if that doesn’t work you own a garage. You can borrow a family-friendly car on the days you have the baby and keep the Caddy for the days you don’t.”
I felt both of my eyebrows shoot up as I considered her thoughtfully. “You’ve been giving this a lot of thought.” I was surprised she was the one making all the sense. The screaming she-devil that had made the last year of my life a living hell was nowhere to be found. In her place was the girl I fell in love with all those years ago, but this version was even better than that one. It made my heart hurt for everything that could have been if Kallie and I were different people.
“Well, Roni won’t talk to me until I get things squared away with Mom and Dad, Dixie is stupid in love and has her hands full settling into her new life in Mississippi, and up until today my best friend was ignoring me and pretending like I didn’t exist.” The last was a jab at me and I felt it slide right under my skin just like she intended it to. “All I’ve done is go over and over the best way to make all of this work and I know that asking you to change or expecting you to be anything other than the guy who I made this baby with is not the answer. You spent our entire relationship trying to be the guy you thought I wanted you to be, but the reality is you couldn’t be who I wanted no matter how hard you tried. That scared the crap out of me, and instead of dealing with it, I put you through the wringer and made you jump through endless hoops. I was terrible to you, Wheeler, and I’ll never be able to make up for all that wasted time.”
I grunted and pulled open the door to my car. “You wasted a lot of years on me, Kallie. Don’t make the same mistake with the person you really want to spend the rest of your life with.”
On my way to the shop I paused at a stoplight and pulled the sonogram picture out of the back pocket of my jeans and stared at it. I let my thumb rush over the little nose and tapped my fingers on the minute-sized hand that was barely detectable. Out of nowhere, images of a little boy that looked a lot like me playing with plastic tools and banging on toy cars flooded my brain. I’d never had anyone to show me the way when I was young, never had anyone to teach me how to be a man and do the right thing. I wanted to kick myself for not realizing exactly what it was going to mean to be a father. I’d never had one and I was standing in front of an opportunity to give someone else everything I’d missed. I was an idiot for squandering any of that, for telling myself that if it didn’t happen the way I wanted it to, then it wasn’t good enough.
Someone honked behind me and I turned my attention back to the road. It was still early afternoon, so I should head back to work, but instead I found myself headed downtown toward the vet clinic where Poppy worked.
We’d been spending a lot of time together over the last week or so. She didn’t flinch or move away when I got close to her anymore, in fact she moved closer when she could. There were stolen kisses here and there and sometimes they led to heated embraces and seductive touches that had me spending a lot of time in the shower with my fist wrapped around my cock.
Wordlessly she was asking for more, her touch getting braver, her eyes getting bolder, but she still wasn’t ready for everything we could do to each other. She never complained when my clothes started coming off but she also wasn’t in any kind of hurry to remove hers. I’d never seen those pert breasts or that silken, hot place between her legs. I knew the strangled sounds she made when she was close to breaking apart and I heard the way she gasped my name when I made her come in my dreams almost every single night.
She let me touch her while she crawled all over me, rubbing, arching into me, begging me for release, but she never took it further. I hadn’t had a girl grind on me and ride me over my clothes since I was in high school. I also hadn’t come inside my jeans from those kinds of innocent ministrations since I first figured out how good girls felt pressed against me. Everything with Poppy was some kind of perfect torture, and while my dick was more than ready to know what kind of pleasure her body held, my heart knew that if we went too far too fast, all the trust I’d meticulously cultivated would crumble. She trusted me to touch her, to take care of her needs, and I wanted her to know that I always would even if it meant I drove home with a hard-on so stiff that felt like it was going to break off. I didn’t ever want her to think that my taking care of her meant I was expecting her to return the favor.
She wasn’t being rewarded for her performance. It was my privilege to pleasure her, my honor to be allowed in her bed, and I never wanted her to question the fact that I appreciated her allowing me to be there after everything the men before me had put her through.
She’d yet to go into detail about what had happened after her husband pointed the gun at her sister and forced Poppy to go with him. But I’d spent the night next to her on more than one occasion and she couldn’t keep the horror away and locked behind her walls when she slept. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that he had forced her, hurt her, and terrorized her. She screamed “no,” “stop,” “you’re hurting me,” and “don’t do this” over and over again. She was loud and thrashed around on the bed like she was trying to get away. I was surprised her neighbors didn’t complain because it was obvious her outbursts were a common occurrence and she slept through them all.
At first, I thought I should wake her up and try and settle her down, but as soon as I touched her, she curled into me and burrowed as close as she could. I wrapped my arms around her and held on to her as she shook like a leaf for the next hour. Eventually, she went still and melted into me, but throughout the night she would let out these little whimpers like a trapped animal, and they tore my guts to shreds. She didn’t need to relive what that bastard had done to her by giving me the words … the memories were clearly alive and well inside of her. She told the story without words and I heard every gory, awful detail of it.
When I got to the clinic, I texted her that I was outside and wanted to show her something. She shot back a message that said she was in the middle of an exam and would be out as soon as she could. I left the car running because it was cold, and while I waited for her I sent another message, this one to Zak, telling him I was in with the Hudson. I’d always wanted one and Kallie was right, no one was expecting me to be a minivan guy just because I had a baby on the way. I was the only one thinking my entire life had to change because of my new addition, and while my priorities were going to be rearranged for sure, there was no denying that getting my hands on one of my dream cars was an opportunity I would be an idiot to pass up. I got an immediate response that he was on it. He assured me again that he would score the lowest price he could, even after he told me the bottom-line price was fair. I was slightly bemused because the guy seemed more excited about the project than I did. I assumed he was stoked that the car was going to be in Denver, where he could visit it instead of shipped off to parts unknown.
I was still wondering about the guy and why I was so certain our paths must have crossed before when the passenger door swung open and Poppy slid into the seat next to me. She was shivering as the outside chill followed her into the warm interior of the car, but there was a small smile on her face and she leaned toward me with no hesitation when I crooked my finger at her. Every time her lips landed on mine it made my entire body come alive. My nerves sparked with sensation, my skin tingled from head to toe, and without fail my dick twitched and reminded me that there were other parts of my anatomy that really wanted a shot at touching her besides my hands and my mouth.
“I only have a second. There was an emergency case that came in a couple hours ago and that pushed all the appointments behind.” The tip of her tongue traced the curve of my bottom lip and her eyes gleamed gold at me. “What did you want to show me?”
I pulled the sonogram picture out of the dash and handed it over to her. Her tawny brows dipped in confusion as she looked at the odd little blob that was eventually going to be my baby. I saw her mouth turn down and watched the blood drain from her face as she silently handed the picture back to me. The gleam in her eyes went dull as she stared at me blankly.
I frowned at her and tucked the picture back into my pocket. “Kallie had a checkup this morning and I went with her. We had a come-to-Jesus meeting afterward about the baby and being a family even if we’re no longer together. She said some things I didn’t know that I needed to hear and it helped me get my head out of my ass.” I crossed my arms on the steering wheel and rested my chin on my folded hands. “I’m all in. I guess I didn’t realize I wasn’t before. That’s the first picture of my kid, I wanted to show it to you.” She wouldn’t look at me, and the longer she sat in silence, the more confused I became. A littler harsher than I meant to I snapped, “I thought you would be happy that I’m finally on board with all this baby stuff.”
She curled her hands into fists and tucked her chin into her chest so she wasn’t looking at anything but her lap. Vaguely, I recalled the way she almost fell over the day she showed up with the dog at the garage and I told her I couldn’t take him because of the baby. There was something going on with her that I didn’t understand, and if we were ever going to get to a place where we were all in with each other, then she needed to trust me with more than just her body.
“Poppy …” I waited until she looked up at me. It took a hell of a long time. “What’s going on? What’s your deal with babies? You’re telling me to man up and be the best dad I can be one minute and in the next you look like me having a kid is the end of the world. I know it’s not the best situation for me to be in while I’m trying to start something with you, but I can’t change it, and honestly, I wouldn’t want to.”
She stared at me and I could see her trying to figure out what she wanted to say. I watched her weighing how many of her secrets she wanted to share with me. Finally, she uncurled her hands and rubbed her palms back and forth on her thighs. She turned her head so that she was looking out the windshield and her voice was barely audible when she spoke.
“You and I wanted similar things out of life, Wheeler. I had two parents and a roof over my head but I often wished I was anywhere else but home. I wanted a family that loved me. I wanted a home that was full of happy memories, bursting with laughter and children. I wanted the opposite of everything I had ever known … just like you.”
I felt my shoulders stiffen as a frown fell over my face. I hated that she knew how hard it was to be the kid that was lonely and lost as soon as the school bell rang at the end of the day.
“When I went away to college I picked the one that would get me as far away from my father as possible. I had stars in my eyes and big dreams. I was so sure that without his constant disapproval, without his unrelenting judgment, I would be able to spread my wings and fly. I was convinced it was going to be just like the movies. I was going to find a guy that was the opposite of my dad, he was going to sweep me off my feet, we were going to get married, have babies, and live happily ever after.” She snorted and pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes as she tossed her head back onto the vintage leather of the seat behind her. “Rowdy went to the same school on a football scholarship. He kept an eye on me and he told me over and over again that I needed to stop being so naive. He told me college boys were waiting for pretty freshman girls exactly like me.” She turned to look at me and I could see some of those things that chased her in her dreams wide-awake in her tragic gaze. “He was right. The first boy I agreed to date told me everything I wanted to hear. He promised me the sun and the moon. He assured me that I was special, and that he wanted something serious and lasting. I liked him so much and I was so smitten that I let him get away with pretty much anything. Including having sex without a condom. He knew I wasn’t on birth control, I told him over and over again we should be safe, but I was in love and he told me we would be together forever. I wanted it so badly, I ignored Rowdy and I ignored my own common sense.”
“Poppy.” I wasn’t sure if I was saying her name to get her to go on or to get her to stop. It didn’t matter, she kept going even though I had a pretty good idea where the story was headed.
“I was so excited when I found out I was pregnant. I was too young, barely eighteen, and I’d just started school, but it didn’t matter. We were going to be a family. All my dreams were coming true.” She started to cry. Silent tears that rolled down her face and dripped off her chin. I couldn’t handle the space between us anymore and pulled her into my arms. She curled an arm around my neck and I felt the moisture from her cheeks on the side of my throat as she pressed her face tightly into my skin. “When I told him I was pregnant, he laughed at me and told me I was stupid. He also told me I was one of many. He had a different girl for each day of the week. He wanted me to get rid of the baby, told me he would pay for it, and I refused. He attacked me.”
“Motherfucker.” The word ripped out of me before I could stop it. She hugged me tighter as anger made my entire body shake under her.
“He hurt me really badly, so bad that I lost the baby and I lost myself. Rowdy found me, did his best to put me back together, but it was too late.” She sobbed quietly into my skin. “I loved my baby, Wheeler. It was the only thing in my life that I ever wanted that I actually got and then it was taken away. I know I would have been a good mom. I would have loved that baby and taken care of it so much better than my mom did with me and Salem.”
Feeling helpless and furious, all I could do was hold her while she grieved for a little life that had been snatched away from her.
She shuddered and pulled away from me so that we were eye to eye and nose to nose in the close confines of the car. “I’m proud of you for realizing how great the gift you’ve been given is, Wheeler, but every time someone close to me gets to celebrate bringing a new life into the world, it takes me back to a time when that chance was stolen from me.”
I dropped my forehead down so that it was resting against hers and gently kissed the tip of her nose. “Give me the college guy’s name. I’m gonna kill him.”
She grinned and put her hands on either side of my face, her fingers tracing the spot where my dimples were hidden by my fierce scowl. “Rowdy already tried. That’s how he lost his scholarship and ended up a drifter.”
“I’m going to buy Rowdy every single drink he ever has from here until the day I die.” I wasn’t kidding.
She lifted her head and returned the kiss on the tip of my nose. “You’re going to be a great dad, Wheeler.”
“Honey.” She locked her eyes on mine and I told her quietly, “You’re going to be a great mom, too. That was not your only shot at having a baby.”
She blinked long and slow, her breath escaping on a harsh breath. “Yeah?” She didn’t sound like she fully believed me.
I chuckled a little and touched my lips to hers. “Yeah.”
She climbed off my lap and scooted to the other side of the car. Her hand was on the door handle as she asked like she hadn’t just ripped my heart out and handed it back to me torn to shreds, “I have to go back to work, but I’ll see you later tonight, right?”
Like anything could keep me away from her after she trusted me with some of the monsters that chased her in her sleep. “Absolutely.”
She smiled at me and rubbed her cheeks to clear away the evidence of her tears and I couldn’t help but imagine pretty little girls with gold eyes and honey-colored hair standing right next to a little boy that looked just like me.