Chapter 22
Brent
I spent the night at Rena’s place. I never spent the night. The moment I cuddled the woman I was sleeping with, she’d usually expect something more of me. I hadn’t spent the night when Rena and I had been in Boston. After we’d done the dirty, I had gone back to my own hotel room.
This time was different. This wasn’t about postcoital bliss. It was about taking care of Rena. After she’d been sick last night, she had looked so terrible I stayed to take care of her. I fetched water when she needed it and cuddled with her in bed. She had looked like she could use someone to look after her. She had a slight fever, and I was worried about her.
I asked her to get dressed. When she was sick, I didn’t want any kind of temptation. I tucked her into bed and stayed up until the early hours of the morning, making sure she was okay. Finally, I fell asleep next to her, our limbs tangled together.
The last time I had shared a bed with someone for the night where nothing R-rated had happened had been while I’d still been with Gina. Things had come full circle.
When I woke up the next morning, Rena wasn’t in bed with me. I sat up and listened for her. Retching sounds coming from the bathroom told me she was throwing up again. I had hoped that last night’s episode would be the only one, but food poisoning and stomach bugs often lasted forty-eight hours.
What could she have eaten that had upset her so much?
I climbed out of bed and walked to her in the bathroom. She hated me seeing her like this, but this was part of life. I couldn’t only see the good side of her and ignore anything that wasn’t sexy as hell. What kind of a man would that make me?
The kind of man I had been with every single woman I had met until now, I realized.
That didn’t matter right now. I wet a washcloth for her neck, filled her glass with water, and kneeled next to her, rubbing her back while she dry heaved.
“God, I hate throwing up,” Rena said, talking into the toilet bowl. Her voice echoed off the ceramic.
“Me too,” I said. “What can I get you?” I was willing to run to the pharmacy to get something to make her feel better.
“Bed,” I said.
“Coming right up.”
She wiped her face with the washcloth and sipped some water before I scooped her up and carried her to bed. Under any other circumstance, I didn’t think Rena would have let me do this for her, but she was vulnerable and her guard was down. I would take advantage of that and be the man I wanted to be for her while I could.
When she was tucked in, her eyes fluttering shut, I sat down next to her and watched her. Her eyelashes were long on her cheekbones, her lips naturally pouting, and she looked so much younger than she already was.
I tried to think what she could have eaten to be this sick, or where she could have picked up a stomach bug. I didn’t remember anyone at the office being sick lately.
Then it hit me. The broken condom. Was it possible she was pregnant?
I tried to calculate when we had done it last, and I anchored the date along with when we’d flown home from Boston. That had been ten days ago. It was enough time for her to get sick from it, wasn’t it? I didn’t know much about pregnancy, but I did understand morning sickness and I was starting to think that this was what was happening.
What was I going to do if Rena was pregnant? I waited for the panic to come. I waited to freak out and head for the hills, promising money but nothing else. I watched Rena and envisioned a life where everything had to change for the sake of a baby and waited for me to realize how much I hated it.
But it didn’t come. I wasn’t freaking out, and I didn’t hate the idea at all. Was I ready to be a father? Was I ready to commit being in this woman’s life in one way or another for the rest of my life? I had no idea. The thought had come up a few times since the condom had broken, but never so completely.
This was a whole different story, and I didn’t understand it. My whole life, I had run away from commitment, from women who wanted everything for me and didn’t care about what I felt. I had been married to my work so that I didn’t have to fill a void with something like a relationship. But now, everything was different. Rena was in a space where she might change my life forever. And I didn’t hate the idea of it. I didn’t hate it at all.
There was a chance Rena wasn’t pregnant, of course. But I didn’t know if that was a chance I wanted to take. I wanted to know for sure. I wanted to find out what was real so I could figure out how I felt about it. And if I didn’t feel rotten about it, I wanted to know why.
I made sure Rena had everything she needed. I put a glass of water on the nightstand, along with her phone and a note that I was running to the store.
Before I left her apartment, I found her house keys so I could let myself back in again. I had never done something like this, but there was a first time for everything. I walked through the aisles until I found the baby aisle. Condoms, pregnancy tests, and diapers were all next to each other. How ironic. Either it was grouped that way for convenience, or it was a warning.
Why were there so many tests to choose from? They ranged in prices and ink color, and I had no idea what I was looking for. I wanted something that would work. I wanted something that would be accurate.
“Can I help you?” someone asked, and I turned to find a shop assistant behind me. I scratched my head, feeling a little out of place.
“I don’t know which one to take,” I said.
“These are pregnancy tests,” the shop assistant said.
“I know that. I’m not stupid. I just don’t know which one to get.”
She nodded slowly. “I find the red-ink tests aren’t so reliable. The blue ones are better, but it really depends on the brand. These over here are early-detection pregnancy tests.”
“Early detection?”
“They pick up the smallest levels of HCG in the mother’s blood. It gets stronger the further along the pregnancy is. At first, the pregnancy hormone is hard to detect.”
“So I need this one, then.”
The shop assistant shrugged. I would have been pissed off at her if my mind hadn’t been on Rena and what was going on with her. I had left her alone, and I wanted to get back as soon as possible.
I stood in line to pay. A few people glanced my way. The cashier looked at me strangely when I put the test down to pay for it. I didn’t give a shit. I was here for a reason, and it was my business. There were no laws against men buying pregnancy tests.
When I finally left the store, I headed back to Rena’s apartment and let myself in with the keys I’d taken. I opened the front door and put the keys back where I found them before carrying my packet of treasure to the bedroom.
“What did you get?” Rena asked. She was sitting up in bed when I walked into the room, and she had color in her cheeks again. She looked much better, and I was relieved.
I reached into the bag without answering her and produced the pregnancy test.
Rena’s features darkened. “That’s not funny,” she said.
“It’s worth a shot. You’ve been throwing up. If it’s negative, that’s one less thing to worry about.”
She stared at the pregnancy test. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered.
“I’ll be right here,” I said. “No matter what.” And I meant it. Rena looked up at me with those big brown puppy eyes, and my heart went out to her. Whatever it was she was going to go through, we would deal with it together. I vowed to myself that wouldn’t leave her to struggle alone.
Rena sighed and walked to the bathroom. She closed the door, and I waited in the room. It felt like forever before she opened the door again.
“We have to wait a few minutes,” she said.
I groaned. She sat next to me, twisting her hands together, fidgeting. She was nervous. I put my hands on hers and calmed her.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said.
Rena nodded, but I didn’t think she believed me.
It felt like another million years passed before it was time to check the test. Rena walked to the bathroom and brought the test out.
“I can’t bear to look at it,” she admitted. “Do it with me?”
I nodded. She took a deep breath and turned the test over so we would both see the results. In blue ink, in the small box provided, the test read “Pregnant.”
I glanced up at Rena. She had gone pale. She looked like she was going to faint, so I jumped up and guided her to sit down on the bed.
“This can’t be happening,” Rena said in a dull voice.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Rena shook her head. “I’m not ready for a baby. My life is perfect the way it is right now. I can’t do this.”
I put my arm around her and pulled her closer to me.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” Rena said to me. “You understand that, right?”
I nodded. It hadn’t been planned at all. But sometimes, shit happened. And apparently, it happened even to the cream of the crop. I was rich and well-known in the business world, I made logical decisions, and I had still had a condom rip. I had still gotten a woman pregnant.
“Listen to me,” I said. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I will be there for you, no matter what. We’ll make this work. Together.”
Rena shook her head. “You don’t get it. I’m about to meet my sister, a person I didn’t know existed a few days ago because my mom didn’t want me and gave me up for adoption. And now? How can I do the same thing without a guilty conscience?”
“You’re not thinking of giving the baby up, are you?”
Rena covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.” Her voice was muffled through her fingers. I had to admit, I had no idea what I was thinking, either. This hadn’t been a part of the plan. I wasn’t panicking, but this scared the shit out of me in a lot of ways.
But I couldn't just let her give the baby up. I wanted to be a part of it all. I didn’t know why or how. Where had the sentiment come from?
What I did know was that I wanted to try to do this, if I could. I wasn’t the type to commit, but this was different.