John thought by the time Augusta came from the closet, he would be more even-keeled about the pregnancy. He was when he headed over here, so what changed? He saw her beautiful pregnant body, watched it contort in pleasure…caused it to contort in pleasure. And when they were both sated and snuggled in the afterglow, that’s when it hit him once again—a woman he loved, pregnant with a child he wouldn’t get to have in his life. Not in the capacity he expected, anyway. Marco and Andy pretty much considered all of them aunts and uncles and godparents.
Augusta deserved to know why he had pulled away, why he was so conflicted, and he deserved to speak of it and let it go. It had claimed enough of his life, stolen too much of his joy. He looked her way and found her utterly adorable in some long shorts and a shirt she was swimming in. He also found her terrified and uncertain. There was no guarantee of how she would react to his childish behavior and inability to separate past from present, but he could do away with her uncertainty.
Patting the bed beside him, he silently invited her into his space. He found pleasure in sharing his bubble with her, but he didn’t want to obligate her to accept his explanation. So he stood after she sat, opting to pace a bit then sitting cross-legged against the wall opposite her. This was a good position for him—far enough away but still within reach—and he could look directly into her eyes, even when she cast her attention toward her toes. Which she was doing now while twisting her fingers in the hem of the tent she wore as a shirt.
Time to just dive in. His intent was to tell her about Deborah and the child first, but apparently, his issues didn’t start there, because when he opened his mouth, that was not the story that came tumbling out.
“When my parents died, I felt helpless, even though I was an adult. Then, I felt guilty. Guilty that I wasn’t a better son, guilty that Stacy, even as a teenager, felt that she needed to mother our brother, instead of just being a girl. Then, when Troy started spiraling down and I couldn’t help him, I felt helpless again.”
“John,” her voice was soft and soothing, “I can only imagine what you went through losing your parents. I won’t insult you by pretending to understand. I do know a lot of what happened with Troy, and you cannot blame yourself. Even had your parents been alive, they likely would have missed it, too.”
In his head, he knew Augusta had a point. It’s not every day a teenage boy is raped by a girl. It’s not every day the tables are turned and the victim is sent to prison. But when Troy took his own life, it had broken both John and Stacy in an unimaginable way.
“But what if I had just loved him enough to see something had happened to him. That he wasn’t the same, maybe—”
“No.” This time, her voice was sharp and angry. “You will drive yourself crazy with the what ifs in life. You can do everything right and shit can still go to pot. He was your brother, and you were left in a situation that no one, not even the great John Roberts, could plan for.” John got the feeling she was talking about more than just him at this point. As much as he wanted to hear all her words, drink them in and digest their meanings, he got hung up on her fiery beauty. She was spellbinding in her anger, and he was getting a little turned on by her potty mouth.
A defeated sigh pierced the silence, and Augusta deflated a bit. “You can’t control everything, John.”
And there it was. The heart of the matter. While all those things marked his past and marred his future, it was the things he couldn’t control that haunted him.
“I know that now, Gussy Girl, but the memories are still cemented in that part of me that feels like a total failure. I was an out of control mess, if I had just…I don’t know. And that just makes it worse.” John brought his knees up, rested his elbows on top of them, and dragged his hands over his head over and over. Suddenly, he stilled his movement. Turning into himself was the last thing he needed. He needed to soldier through, get it all out and maybe, just maybe, find his control and possibly a measure of happiness, too.
“Stacy changed so much over everything with Troy. So, I not only failed my parents and Troy, I failed my baby sister, too. She—”
“No.” This time, her anger wasn’t sexy at all, it was intimidating and unlike anything he had ever witnessed with Augusta. She rose and took a dominate stance; her voice brooked no argument. “You do not get to blame yourself because your sister is an amazing person. In the first place, it makes no sense, and secondly, the implication that she is less now than she should be is insulting. Not only to her but to you. People change, our experiences mold us for better or for worse, it’s called life. Stop focusing on the causes of everything and look at the effect. She is an amazing woman, a crazy good step-mom, the perfect sister to you, and a friend that is unequalled.”
Augusta approached him and, with his assistance, lowered herself to the floor beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder and spoke low and reflectively, “How is it you can so easily shoulder the blame but refuse to accept any credit? You grasp the burden of your failures, both real and perceived, so tightly, do you ever wonder what you hold in the other hand? You should open it sometime and look. The results of our actions come in two flavors, blame and credit. Most people choke on the blame and never savor the credit.”
Warm tears pierced his shirt and stung his heart. John brought his hand to her cheek. As he expected, it was warm and wet. He knew the tears were not just for him but for the guilt she carried over January. The depths he felt toward the woman at his side were overwhelming. Love? Hmm, it could be, I can see that. It was the first time he almost admitted it to himself, that he might have felt more than a physical attraction for the woman who filled his thoughts both day and night.
At first, it scared him. Loving another meant relinquishing control. But the longer he sat and the deeper their conversation delved into the pivotal moments of his life…and hers, it was like taking some control back. He decided it wasn’t losing more control but exchanging some.
“So should you, Augusta.” As he spoke, he took her hand in his and brought it up in front of their faces. He opened his hand and encouraged her to do the same. He stared at both of their palms. Then, he intertwined his with hers. “So should you.” Once she had time to examine their hands and grasp his meaning, he allowed them to rest on her thigh, still together, still holding on, and let the silence speak to them louder than a voice ever could.
“We are so much more than our past and stronger than we think,” Augusta whispered, and the room fell silent once more.
A sense of peace and contentment took him by surprise. It started at their joined hands and flowed up his arm, eventually filling his entire body. John knew there was still more she deserved to know, and now, he finally felt that he deserved to unburden himself. But he was loath to break the atmosphere of the room just yet. Augusta beat him to it. John would have been content with a few more minutes of simply sitting there and being connected to her in such a meaningful way, but she was more perceptive than he was. Augusta probably knew he would chicken out if he didn’t get on with it.
“Are you ready to tell me about whatever it is that has you freaked out about this pregnancy?”
There it was, his freshest wound. One that was still raw and angry. A wound so deep, it may never heal. The one reopened by the woman he loved being pregnant by another man.
“I was a father once.” John was unsure how to explain this to Augusta. The story seemed small and insignificant to someone who hadn’t experienced it. How can I make her understand?
“Oh, John.” The tone in her voice told him he hadn’t said enough, and she misunderstood.
He patted their joined hands with his other and let it linger there and focused on that spot. The feel of her palm connected to his. The visual of his hand eclipsing her delicate one.
“Not like that Augusta, my…the child is still alive. He’s almost three years old and lives with his biological parents.” Augusta’s confusion was apparent when he glanced at her face and in the feel of her body next to him. He was screwing this up; it seemed impossible to explain clearly.
“I was with Deborah for about six months when she became pregnant. I was over the moon but scared shitless. After losing Troy, I had always thought I would make a horrible dad to another kid, but a part of me always wanted to give it a shot. Maybe it would be different if I raised them from the start, you know? Anyway, I cared for her, I think I even loved her in my own way.”
John paused to collect his thoughts, and Augusta didn’t attempt to fill the silence. “I watched her belly grow every day. I read every book, and I could tell you what size the baby was and what was growing at any given time. I had the room decorated and furnished before the first ultrasound. I was a man obsessed. I was going to be a father. I bought one of those Doppler devices you can order online, and I listened to her heartbeat every day. I was convinced she was a girl.”
For a moment, John got lost in the good memories. He relished them, because he knew they were about to darken. “When we had the first ultrasound appointment, I was beside myself. Arrived forty-five minutes early. When her heartbeat became a visual thing, I couldn’t imagine a world where I didn’t love that little girl. Then when the doctor said she had a penis, I never laughed so hard in my life. It was a combination of shock and terror and awe that I was to have a son.”
Augusta did interrupt then, just as he had expected. “Did you have to repaint?”
“Yep. But I loved every second of it. And as time went on and I watched the outline of his tiny hands and feet push against Deborah’s skin, I realized I couldn’t love him more than I already did. He had yet to draw breath, but he was already my son. A life I created and would be responsible for. A person who held my heart in that tiny hand, and once it was there, it would remain forever.”
The darkness was damn near visible to John as it crept in and stole the happy memories right from his heart.
“It was a cloudy Tuesday morning when her water broke. On the drive to the hospital, I was babbling on about ‘my son this’ and ‘my son that.’ I probably should have been more concerned with helping her breathe or something, but I was so focused on little Troy, that’s how I thought of him. When we arrived at the hospital, we argued about how to enter. I wanted to pull up at emergency and shout she was having a baby, and she wanted a more dignified entrance.”
Pausing yet again, John tilted his head simply to ground himself by looking at the beautiful woman resting her head on his shoulder. “We settled on parking outside of admittance. I went in for a wheelchair while she made all the phone calls alerting her family she was in labor. As I pushed her toward the front entrance, I asked her a question I had been dying to, if his middle name could be Troy. That is the last untainted thought I had about my son, his mother, and the whole damn experience.”
A familiar wave of anger crashed over him. “She asked why she would do that. Before I formed a pitch, we had entered the lobby and were at the admittance desk. She was signing papers, and they put that plastic bracelet on her wrist. Things were moving in slow motion but also way too fast. When the nurse came around to wheel her to labor and delivery, she asked if I was the father. I opened my mouth to answer, proudly proclaim to the world that I was, when a cruel, ‘No, he’s not,’ cut me to my very soul.”
Augusta awkwardly leaned around and took John’s cheeks in her hands. She looked like she wanted to speak, but she remained silent. Instead, she kissed him—a closed mouth kiss with tears raining down onto their joined lips. They stayed that way for a while, until John pulled his lips back, knowing he had to finish.
“She then reached back for the baby bag, which I let go of easily. I don’t know how I didn’t drop it. She spoke an apology, but her face didn’t hold any sorrow whatsoever. When she turned back to the nurse, she asked that I be excluded from the delivery room. The nurse seemed more apologetic than Deborah, but that was it. It was over, except it wasn’t. It would never be over for me.”
“Of course not, how could it be over for you. You’re his father, are you fighting for custody? I don’t understand, how…oh.” It was written on her face the moment she comprehended that biologically, it wasn’t his son.
“Exactly, I was not his father, biologically anyway. I proved that with a court-ordered DNA test, but I didn’t need it. The moment I saw him through the security glass, I knew he was not the child of my body, but he was, is, the child of my heart. I was there for every moment of the pregnancy. I was there when his eyes formed and when his hands grew fingers. It was me,” John thumped his chest, “me, who touched his hand through the barrier of skin. Me. I was the first to hear his heartbeat and see him hiccup on the monitor. Me. I was the voice who spoke to him each day and sang to him each night. He was mine. And until the day I leave this Earth, he will be my son. I don’t care who raises him, whose DNA made him, or what anyone says, he will always be my son. Even though he will never know a thing about me.”
It had been a while since John had cried, even longer since he had done so in front of another person. The next words out of Augusta’s perfectly pouty lips almost crushed him and left him weightless at the same time.
“I understand now. Your actions make perfect sense. I just wish I would’ve understood earlier. Just because my brain comprehends it now, my heart still bore the pain.” She released his jaw after what felt like an eternity and leaned back against him. “Not that I’m blaming you or want you to feel bad, but we still experienced what we experienced no matter the reasoning. I know things changed after, well after.” She waved her hand toward the bed. “But we were friends before, and I can’t help but be a little hurt that you didn’t trust in that enough to at least let me know there was a reason for the distance you put between us. I’m sorry, I hope that doesn’t hurt you, but I want to be honest.”
And there it was, the pressure, the guilt, the loss of control. He had to tell her he didn’t think he could see her through the rest of her pregnancy or be present when she gave birth or maybe even after. There was a lot of uncertainty. Maybe he could do it; maybe he couldn’t. Either way, he needed her to understand he didn’t know yet. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
She tensed beside him. Familiar with the way her mind worked, he had a pretty good idea what was coming. He knew the burning question she had, one he feared she already suspected the answer to, one that would change things for them. No doubt, she could deal with his absence during the pregnancy. If she thought that’s what he needed, she wouldn’t deny it, even if she hated it. What she couldn’t deal with was him kissing her when it wasn’t truly about her, just him getting caught up in that moment, needing to prove to her she belonged to him when in his mind, he didn’t belong to her yet.
Of course, that changed for him the minute he laid her on the bed. He solidified her ownership of him with each glimpse of her body he revealed. Because for a woman like Augusta, every inch of skin correlated to a piece of her heart and a bit of her soul.
What would she say when she learned why he came over and why he allowed himself to make love to her. Sure, the outcome was pleasantly unexpected, what with him admitting his feelings for her to himself and entertaining a more permanent possibility, but it was his motive that would devastate her.
“I accept everything you’ve shared with me tonight and your past’s place in the decisions you have made. I can even accept that sharing doesn’t equal acceptance and coping, and that in my current condition, that is an issue we will have to address. Those things I understand, but I need to ask a question, and I can accept any answer if it is one hundred percent honest. No matter how bad you think it will hurt me, okay?”
And here it comes. John braced himself.
“Why did you choose to make love to me…now?” Even though he was expecting it, the punch to his heart was painful and caught him by surprise.
John was an asshole, but he wasn’t a deceptive one. He would have to tell Augusta that he came over because he thought she could do casual. He had no intention of sleeping with her but had to erase all thoughts of her going out with another.
Basically, I marked my territory like an animal, and she is not the kind of woman to just accept that. Hell, he wouldn’t be in love with her if she were.
Before he spoke, he studied her features. He needed to remember this last unspoiled moment, because once he answered this question, there would be a scar between them—a dirty, ugly scar, one he hoped would fade and be virtually unnoticeable with time.