As fun and romantic as moving in together sounded, the actual process of moving in together was another story entirely. They enlisted the help of Moose and Cindy, who was back to full health, her bruises and bumps and wounds were a fading memory of something terrible, like it seemed Ben’s entire existence had become. The bribe, of course, was pizzas and beer for the helpers but it was a small price to pay to get in and out of Hannah’s apartment as quick as possible.
They had to avoid the gang members stationed outside her place. Who thought moving would involve so much danger? It took a few days of recon to figure out their pattern. The biggest window was in the middle of the day when they broke for lunch and left the apartment unattended for an hour so to get some kind of sloppy sandwich down the road at Cluck’s Diner.
They pulled up to the street, this time in Kat’s van, and pretended to park at a building a few stretches of the sidewalk down the way. They watched for twenty minutes before the men got on their bikes and moved to leave, chuckling about something as they sped down the road, right past them, and never once seeing them.
They quickly sped over, pulling up in front of the apartment building and Hannah fumbled with the keys to get the right one out as she trotted to the door and hoped those BD idiots weren’t smart enough to change the locks on her. She got the door open and shuffled inside, Chance and the others soon following.
Everything was virtually how she left it. There was no sign Gabe had been here in a while and she felt her clench slightly over that. There was a bit of a rank smell from the kitchen where she was sure the garbage that hadn’t been taken out and the leftovers in the fridge were battling for dominance in the air. She avoided that area. She really only need clothes and books. She wanted to finish her degree and she wasn’t going to let a bunch of imbeciles on glorified bicycles ruin that for her.
“Get as many clothes as you can in that bag from my dresser,” she instructed Chance. “I’ll get the stuff in the closet.”
“Panty raid,” he smirked, walking past her and she gave him a shove for good measure but he chuckled his way into the room.
Moose and Cindy were grabbing her school things and running them out to the car. Hannah picked through her closet of clothes quickly, grabbing several essential pairs of shoes and some business outfits she had been meaning to have ironed and pressed for some internship interviews. She shoved them in the bag, she could worry about how they looked later.
Chance had managed to shove the vast majority of her dresser clothes into the two ply garbage bag and even snagged her hamper and whatever was left in it when he nodded for her that it was time to head out. She took her own bulky bag and moved out of the room, going through the living room one last time and allowing herself some nostalgia over the days when she would be up all night at that coffee table doing homework. She let it pass and moved out the front door, locking it again.
They moved quickly to the van and shoved all the things they could in the back hatch before getting back into the seats and Moose hitting the accelerator almost instantly, driving off with them.
“Not a bad heist for some fucking girl clothes,” he said and Chance gave him a dead arm.
Hannah ignored him, picking through the pile of books and school things that Moose and Cindy had managed to grab for her. It was enough. She never thought her entire existence would be rooted down to a couple garbage bags of clothes and her school books, but here she was, technically homeless until she walked through the door of Chance’s apartment. Then things would turn positively magical.
***
Chance’s apartment was a bit of a shit-hole, he hadn’t been lying about that. He claimed that he did some clean-up work after she agreed to move in with him, as a way to get the apartment ready for her but if this was the clean version of the place she was terrified to know what the unclean version looked like. It didn’t smell too bad at least, it was all tobacco and the twinge of weed. The trash was mostly picked up, though he’d missed a few beer bottles and bags of chips. But movies and old DVD cases and half used cartons of cigarettes were sitting around. His shoes were drooped wherever he seemed to take them off.
The kitchen was sparse; all take out boxes in the fridge, beer, and some packets of condiments from various Chinese restaurants he’d gone to. It at least had the benefit of the kitchen itself being clean; no dishes were used so none were sitting in the sink, growing mushrooms while they begged to be cleaned. His bedroom was a mess as well. The bed was unmade and the comforter was contorted from his sleeping patterns, never fixed. He had more clothes on the ground in here, more empty cigarette containers, and the window was permanently stuck open and he had yet to have a handyman come in and fix it.
It was a bit of a mess and seemed to belong more to some college frat boy than a grown man but she wasn’t exactly complaining. She could see the clean version of it, some new paint, maybe a Febreeze can ready and waiting on the windowsill. She could see herself cooking them dinner or breakfast in the kitchen, could see herself making that bed in the morning after they positively destroyed the sheets in the night. She could see a bookshelf in the corner where she could put all her things, the closet filled with her clothes. She could even see herself in the morning walking out in one of his t-shirts, just slightly too big for her, and making coffee to bring back into bed to cuddle the morning away.
She could see a glorious future for them in this place and she tried not to be too obviously giddy about it because Moose was already on the teasing warpath and she didn’t need to give him more fuel.
“If that’s it then I’ll leave the unpacking and cleaning to you two and go get the food and beer,” Moose said.
“Bring back that hot sauce they have.”
“Hot sauce on pizza is disgusting, but will do, boss.”
Cindy and Moose walked out the door and Hannah’s first thought was to rush forward and kiss Chance like there was no tomorrow. This was their home now. She lived here, with him. They’d go to bed together tonight and wake up together tomorrow morning. They’d make love on that bed and on that couch. They’d have Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations and a New Year’s Eve party and maybe a Fourth of July barbecue on their patio where a small grill was sitting.
They’d have a home here, and God if that wasn’t an amazing turn on for her.
But they really needed to get some of her stuff put away and the rest of the place a little more habitable before they went around desecrating it. So she held in that impulse to rip off his clothes and his him everywhere on his body and in the apartment. She gave him the job of organizing her school things since she didn’t trust him to put her clothes in any conceivable order that she could decipher. Eventually Moose returned with the pizza and beer and Hannah scarfed down two slices happily, having not eaten anything since Kat insisted she have some toast before venturing out to sneak into her apartment. Moose and Cindy stayed late into the night as everyone drank and ate and laughed through games of cards and music on Chance’s old record player.
In a lot of ways, it was better than fucking him senseless for the night. She had friends; she had a found family that supported her, that liked her, that wanted to help her. Her own family had sold her out and the ones who once loved her were gone forever. But she could have this, a group of people surrounding her with love and not even realizing what they were doing. They were a hard group of people, and maybe even a little dangerous but she didn’t care.
This was everything she could hope for from a group of friends and family. She’d take it and then some.
***
In the morning something was off. She hadn’t had very many beers the night before. In fact, she’d only had the one after her two slices of pizza. Yet as soon as she woke up, she wasn’t able to revel in the feeling of being in Chance’s arms. Instead she sat up and felt everything her stomach shift dangerous close to feelings of nausea. As soon as she was up right she hurried to the bathroom where she only just managed to vomit into the toilet without making a mess of the tile on the floor.
She flushed it and took a minute to brush her teeth, swirl her mouth with wash, splash water in her face. She looked in the mirror at her pale face. Maybe it was food poisoning, maybe it she should warn Chance when he woke up that the pizza was a little bit dangerous the second time around. But she didn’t have time to think on it more as a second wave of nausea hit and she once again desecrated the pristine toilet she’d spent a half hour scrubbing clean the night before.
She performed the Hannahe ritual of brushing out her mouth. She gripped the edges of the sink tightly and waited to see if another wave would come. But ten minutes passed and her stomach remained settled. She rubbed more water in her face and massaged at her temples. She took out the cleaning supplies and scrubbed the sink, removing evidence of her sick and making the bathroom smell like lemon cleaner once again. It was her own need to vomit that had woken her up that morning but Chance was sound asleep and perfectly content. Perhaps it wasn’t food poisoning. Maybe she’d caught a stomach bug. That would be the worst way to spend her first few hours of her first morning in her new home. She took a couple bites of some bread that didn’t have mold on it in the kitchen and drank some water to see how her stomach would react.
After twenty minutes it was clear there was no danger. So what the hell happened?
She decided to take a walk. The sun was up fully now, castling golden morning light over the streets. She could go to the drug store and get some things they needed for the apartment that she talked about getting. She zipped up a hoodie to combat the slight chill in the morning air and walked outside. The overzealous runners were already making their way around the blocks of the neighborhood with vigor. A couple of moms were out pushing their children in strollers. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning, no matter how much Hannah’s stomach was looking to betray her. She walked down the street and even managed to wave at some people who waved to her.
She’d never really been friendly with people before but these were her neighbors now, people she might see regularly on this side of town. She wanted to shout at them that she just moved in and was incredibly happy but settled for kind waves and smiles in the morning air while everyone was still trying to get themselves fully awake.
She went to the drug store and grabbed some cleaning supplies, that bottle of Febreeze she’d thought of yesterday. She went to one of the medicine aisles and got herself some Tums in case her stomach tried to have a repeat performance later in the day. She went to the bathroom aisle to get some things for that and then to the feminine hygiene aisle where she giggled at how Chance had balked at the idea of having tampons in his apartment for the first time in his life.
Then her eyes caught something. Next to the rows of tampons was the “family planning” aisle that consisted of various condoms in brightly colored boxes and pregnancy tests. She felt something start to form in her stomach, like a lead ball or a black hole. She was considering the possibility before she even knew consciously that that was what she was doing. She was staring at the several different brands of pregnancy tests, all of them claiming 95% accuracy or above.
That couldn’t be it…could it? She remembered the night a few weeks ago when she’d told Chance not to pull out and she felt what it was like to have him reach climax while still inside her, no barriers in their way. Perhaps…
No. That wasn’t it. She wasn’t even due to get her period yet. She could give it another week before she started jumping to crazy paranoid conclusions. When she’d been a teenager and went to the doctor for so much as a stomach ache they always asked her if she thought she might be pregnant and she always turned red with her mother right there though she knew it was a ridiculous question with an obvious answer. Now the answer wasn’t so obvious and she was feeling the slight gnaw of doubt in her mind. But she walked to the counter and paid for her things, she could leave things like pregnancy tests for another day.
She walked back, the morning sunlight casting less of a magic spell than it had before while her mind was reeling with possibilities and then scenarios. She saw herself 9 months pregnant and running from Ben. She saw Kat and Link playing with a newborn baby and Scout finally getting her spirits back up at the possibility of being an aunt.
This was ridiculous. She wasn’t pregnant. She had some bad pizza and lack of sleep was going to her head. So when she got back to the apartment, Chance still very much asleep, she curled up and back into bed, trying to will herself to forget the whole thing for a while. Eventually she got herself to fall back asleep to the sounds of Chance breathing soundly next to her, his arms unconsciously wrapping around her in his sleep.
***
When the end of the following week came and her period, which was meant to have started days before, was nowhere in sight, she began to panic. It didn’t help that she’d thrown up three more times since the first day. She’d managed to hide it well from Chance but she could tell he was starting to notice that something was off because he looked at her strangely each time he woke up. She had a feeling he wasn’t as asleep as he made it seem in the morning when she rushed out of bed to go to the bathroom. But he wasn’t saying a word and she refused to as well until she knew for sure.
One morning she went to the drug store again, deciding that this time she needed to grow up and just do it, take whatever consequences were waiting for her on the other end of that pregnancy test. She could handle it. She was a grown woman, she had an apartment with her boyfriend, she was going to be a lawyer. She’d faced down gang members and terrifying threats, she could handle peeing on a stick.
She bought the tests and did not look the cashier in the eye as he scanned them. To make it a little less obvious she always bought a bottle of soda for the road and a pack of paper towels. Just some regularly old house hold items she needed to pick up that morning. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
She walked home and guzzled the soda. She had been sure to get caffeine free, non-diet, already prepping for the possibility of what she was slowly starting to think was inevitable. By the time she got back to the apartment she was so nervous and full of caffeine-free Pepsi that she was practically ready to burst right there in the kitchen. But she went to the bathroom and pulled out three sticks, taking turns giving them each a Hannahple.
And then she waited. The test kit said it would take up to 20 minutes for the results to come through completely on the test and she didn’t watch them as they did their work. It was like the world’s most anxiety-inducing pot of water, waiting to boil and tell her if her life was about to change completely in an instant.
When the time came she pulled out all three at once, letting her eyes scan over them. They all said the Hannahe exact thing: three pink plus signs.
She was pregnant with Chance’s child.
***
She had no idea how to tell him. It was different when you were married, when you’d talked about children, maybe even picked out some baby names. But they’d only just moved in together, they met two months ago. Her deep connection to him was there but she felt the burdens of society and the social norms of the people around them weighing in.
What if they weren’t ready? What if he was ready but she wasn’t, and vice versa? What if he threw her out, not wanting to deal with a child? What if, three months from now, they decided they weren’t the people they thought and broke things off. She’d be left with a permanent reminder of him and a burden to care for.
It was a lot of what ifs, and the longer she took to figure out what she wanted to do, the more they started piling up on top of her.
“Are you okay?” Chance asked over dinner one night. She’d order club soda with a lime and he’d raised an eyebrow at her but did not question it. “You seem a little off.”
“I’m just thinking about school,” she said. “Getting back into it, it’s a lot to catch up on.”
“Well I can help you study,” he said. “I know this is your dream. I want to support you.”
That was the other problem. He had become Mr. Beacon of Support for her in the past few days and it made her feel absolutely terrible. He was so kind and gentle and wanted to be there for her and she was keeping a massive secret from him because she didn’t trust him. That was the crux of the problem. She didn’t trust Chance not to run out on her, not to stay by her side. He gave her no reason to think that way and yet there she was, assuming the worst of him. For that, more than the baby, she had a feeling he might never forgive her.
“That would be nice,” she said, smiling and meaning it. “We could make a date night of it.”
“I think you need to look up the meaning of the phrase date night,” he said.
“Well if we light some candles and have some wine and a fancy cheese plate, why can’t it be date night?”
“Touché.”
The air was warmed around them, a least for a little bit. Her resolve was cracking when he offered her to try the wine he ordered and she declined. That, he noticed, was off and she was sure he had to suspect. She was making her condition somewhat obvious now but all he had was concern in his eyes. He reached out his hand to hold hers on the table and she wanted to yank away because she didn’t deserve his comfort but she also needed him to know her feelings hadn’t changed. None of this had to do with him. It was all her.
She decided, as they walked home from dinner, she would just tell him. She would just rip of the Band-Aid. After all, she was pregnant now and she would only get more pregnant as each day went on. Soon there would be no time left to waffle on decisions, she wouldn’t be able to hide it from him anymore. So it was better to get it out now.
“Chance, I need to tell you something,” she said, letting out a breath she had not realized she’d been holding onto but there it was.
“Everything okay?”
He immediately went into defense mode. She knew that face well. She felt awful for making him wear it but the best way to make it go away was to tell him the truth. She was there now. She needed to just keeping going. It wasn’t like in movies where she could just turn back by mumbling something about how she just wanted to ask what he wanted for dinner or what laundry detergent she should buy.
“I’m pregnant, Chance,” she said.
It was such a plain sentence. It was only three words. But in her experience three words were sometimes the most painful and difficult to get out of all. But there she was. She sat there and waited, looking down because it would be too hard to look him in the eye right at that moment. She wanted nothing more than to let the Earth swallow her up as she heard her own words echoed back at her. It would be the end of their happiness, their contentment. She’d fundamentally changed something about their relationship by telling him.
But he had to know. He deserved to know and she deserved to share the burden with him. She wasn’t sure how many seconds went by without him saying a word while she looked down at the ground. When she finally willed her eyes to look up, there he was looking right back at her. But there was no fear there, not really. In fact his eyes were almost glassy, like he was ready to cry. He was looking at her with pure adoration.
“You mean it?” he said. “You’re pregnant? Really?”
She nodded, biting her lip tightly hoping that this wasn’t a dream, that he really was looking at her like that, that he really was that excited about it. Then he smiled. His face broke out into a large, boyish grin and she couldn’t keep her own from mimicking his. Okay. So it was out there. This was happening. And he was smiling.
“You’re not mad?”
“Why would I be mad? I’m the one who got you pregnant…right?”
“Yes, you idiot.”
He walked over to her and held her tight, like she might disappear at any moment.
***
With them, intimate contact never stayed all that innocent for long. And it seemed being pregnant was something of a real turn on for Chance. Not that he was one of those weird guys into pregnant lady porn or anything like that. But knowing that his kid was growing inside this woman, knowing that they were going to share something between the two of them that no one else could have, that got him excited in every way possible and his anatomy wasn’t immune to it.
“You’re going to be such a hot mom,” he growled against her neck, nipping at the skin there.
She chuckled as she pushed him back and into their bedroom, toppling over and on top of him when he fell back against the bed. He secretly loved when she got on top and nothing was hotter than her doing it right now, glowing with pregnancy. She moved her hips over his crotch with a practiced glide. She was always so measured and smooth in her movements that he wondered if she hadn’t been a stripper at some point in her life. That, of course, was a line of thought that took him down a strange road and suddenly he found himself imagining her dressed in her lawyer duds, stripping them off piece by piece, just for him.
God, one day she was going to be a hot lawyer, too. Adulthood and maturity should not be turning him on so much but she brought out a different side in him. He wanted a family life and a family to share it with and he couldn’t hide it when he was around her. She was everything he ever wanted and he was going to show her.
So he laid back because he knew she liked this part. She popped open the buttons of his shirt one by one, letting her nails rake down the skin on his chest as she went. It was just light enough to be felt. A tease to how, soon, it would turn to red, angry welts on his back as she pulled her clawed hands down his back tight and hard. She opened his shirt, moved the fabric, and replaced her fingers with lips as she kissed every heated part of his flesh that she could reach.
She nipped here and there, giggling at the way he jumped from a mixture of tickling and pain. Eventually he started in on his own work with her clothes, getting them loose and peeling them off as she continued to leave marks all over his body with her tongue and teeth. She used them with great skill and familiarity. She knew the path from his pecs to his belly button well. And she even knew the trail from his belly button down below.
She peeled off his pants, flicking open the button and pulling down the zipper and he lifted his hips to help her pull them off and down his legs. This left only his tented boxers as the final barrier between her and her prize. She took the moment to slip her own yoga pants off, leaving her in nothing but her black panties which, luckily, hid how wet she really was.
Eventually those went too and together they moved once he was inside her. He held her at her hips with such care and softness. She moved over him with such grace. They reached the peak of their pleasure very nearly together and sighed as one when it was all over. They were going to be parents, it wasn’t scary, or wrong. It was perfect.
***
All things tend to have their downswing, however. If passionate sex was the high of them celebrating a baby on the way, having to tell the rest of the family was something of a bummer. They’d find out eventually, and Kat deserved to know that she had a grandchild on the way. Even Link had that right too. Hannah understood that. She also knew that Chance was so close with them, he’d want them to know, demand that they find out as soon as possible. It was a family that didn’t keep secrets from each other. She wondered what that must have been like but also respected it a great deal.
“I think they should know sooner rather than later,” he said as his fingers lightly traced patterns on her back.
She wanted to remind him that most women didn’t even tell people until they were three months pregnant. But she didn’t think this was a battle she was going to be winning against Chance. So she sighed and stayed quiet, feeling him leave a trail of goosebumps across her skin like the wake on the water or a jet in the sky.
“Whatever you think is best,” she said. “I have no family I need to tell so whatever you need to talk to yours.”
It took a darker turn that she’d intended but it was also true. She had no family that she needed to break the news to. It almost made her bitter. She was jealous of what Chance had, his ability to see his family, the freedom he had to talk to them. The only person she had was Gabe and he was currently locked up in some rehab Chance got him into up north. He might even get out until the baby was born and he was already an uncle.
“They’re your family too,” he said. “I know it’s not the Hannahe as having people of your own, people you’ve known your whole life and have trusted your whole life. But found family is a big part of life too. They found you, you found us. They’re just as much yours as mine and I promise that they see you the Hannahe way.”
She smiled into her pillow, hiding her red face from Chance as his light touches turned into a full blown massage. It was relaxing. And she was sure she was going to need quite a few of these massages before all was said and done considering how sore her body already was and there wasn’t even a sign of a bump yet.
“We should make a doctor’s appointment,” she said. “I should have made one the second I realized I was pregnant but I was afraid doing that would make it too real and I needed to tell you first.”
“Your health is more important,” he said. “I’ll find you one. The best one in town—unless you have a doctor in mind.”
His concern and readiness to help was adorable and she hoped he didn’t lose that as time went on and she got a lot more difficult to be around with the pregnancy. She placed a hand over his and told him that she had an OB/GYN since she was fifteen and she planned on going to that one. He nodded and took a breath and said okay and went back to rubbing her back.
She stretched out on the mattress, not unlike a cat, and smiled and sighed. It was probably one of the best nights she could remember having. She was more than satisfied from their celebratory tumble in the bed. She felt all her muscles start to relax and loosen as Chance’s hands worked her over and over. She felt excited at the prospect of moving forward with all this baby stuff. She was no longer alone and running her mind through all the paranoid things that could happen, the fake situations she was creating for herself by overthinking.
She could have fallen asleep right there. It was always better in life to be on the precipice of something, to be on a total high, waiting for life to take its next step and seeing no path but a bright and sunny one. She hadn’t known a feeling of optimism like this in a very long time, maybe even since she started law school.
“We’ll need to baby-proof this place,” she said.
“I may have already been Googling the best brands for that,” he said and she could hear how sheepish his voice sounded.
“What would everyone do if they knew you were a big softy?”
“Nothing because they won’t find out.”
“Oh please, even if I keep my mouth shut this baby won’t let you hide how smitten you’re going to get.”
He didn’t say anything but she could almost feel him smiling from over top of her. The energy in the room was calm and quiet and perfect. Ben hadn’t been heard from in over a month, Gabe seemed to be doing okay up in his rehab, Cindy had healed nicely and was even back to smiling and hanging out with others, Scout was coming around. Everything seemed to be falling into place for the better. Hannah almost believed, in that moment, they were completely done with Ben. She believed the worst parts of this whole situation were over. The BD would back off when they realized their man on the inside was out of the bag and everyone would go about their lives happy and normal once again (as normal as a group of loan sharking bikers could be). There’d be a new baby in this apartment and a new light in the world. Hannah’s mother, where she rested in the cemetery, would be smiling at her new grandchild. Kat would love the baby to the fullest extent possible, Link would teach it everything he possibly could, even when Hannah told him it was too early to get it on a motorcycle.
She saw no way how this future could go bad.