He hung his head. “Look, if you want to stay here, finish up school for the semester, I’ll organize security for you. Take care of everything. It’s your choice. I don’t want to push you into anything.”
“Security?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.” I patted my stomach, my smile not quite staying in place. “I keep forgetting I’m carrying a famous person’s baby. The next-generation Stage Dive.”
He spread out his hands, a helpless kind of look in his eyes. At least he was here trying.
It was up to me. “All right, I’ll come. I was thinking of dropping out of school. I’ve missed so much, with morning sickness, and days can still be hit or miss. I don’t like my chances of catching up with everything going on.”
A nod and a smile. His thick shoulders slumped like he’d finished fighting a war.
“You want me to stay with Lena and Jimmy?”
“I want you and the baby safe and looked after. Not that I’m not willing to be the one looking after you. It’s just—”
“It’s fine. It’s complicated with us not actually being a couple and everything. I get it.” I leaned back in my seat, turning it all over inside my head. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer.”
His serious gaze revealed nothing. “Liz…”
“Mm?”
I waited, but he didn’t continue. Thank goodness Bean would be a girl. (I could just feel it. Mother’s intuition, etcetera.) Men were such a mystery. Not one I particularly cared to figure out at this point in time. Life had become busy enough. At least there’d been no further mention of lawyers. Baby steps—all puns intended.
“I’ll sort things out for myself. I’ll go to Mal and Anne’s,” I said. “It’s not long before the tour starts. He shouldn’t be able to drive me crazy that fast.”
His brow furrowed. “You sure?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“’kay. But you’ll let me support you financially, right?”
“Look, I ran some figures through my head today. Given that the rent on this place is paid up, and with my work at the—”
“Wherever you’re going with this, the answer is no.” The man leveled me with a look. Or tried to.
“Excuse me?”
“No, you can’t go it on your own. More important, you don’t have to. You’ve got me.”
“But I haven’t got you, Ben. That’s the whole point.” I sat forward in the seat, willing him to understand. He opened his mouth, but mine was faster. “Please, just listen. I’m going to have a baby, and that is huge. It’s so big, when I try to think about it I feel like my head is going to explode. But I’ll deal with it all because I have to, because this baby is relying on me to. What I can’t think about or deal with is you—you and your life and how this all affects it. Because I know, no matter what you say, that having this baby is never going to be your first choice. So then I feel guilty, and then I feel angry because I feel guilty, and then it’s just a big ugly mess that I don’t know how to deal with.”
“Liz.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Shit. It doesn’t have to be my first choice. Having a baby now wasn’t your first choice either—”
“But—”
“No,” he said, hands gripping his thighs tight. “My go to talk. Your turn to listen. Please.”
I stopped, then nodded because fair enough.
“Okay.” His thick shoulders rose and fell on a deep breath. “This is our baby. You and me, we made it together, whether we meant to or not. Those are the facts. No matter how I might have liked my life to play out, this is what’s happening. No fucking way am I going to be some douchebag absentee dad missing from my kid’s life or letting another man raise him.”
“Or her.”
“Or her.” He gave me a meaningful look. “Yes.”
I pretended to zip my lips closed.
“Thank you.” Yeah, his tone wasn’t sarcastic at all. “And I’m not letting you do this alone, either. No matter what Anne and Mal think of me right now, I am sticking by you however I can. We’re not together, but we’ll figure it out. The best way I can help you right now is to make sure you don’t have to worry about money.”
I took a deep breath, turning it all over inside my head. The man had a point. It would be nice to cross monetary concerns off the list. How many strings and complications the funds came with, however, concerned me. But he was Bean’s father. If he did mean to be present, as stated, then I had to accept that, embrace it even.
Give him the requested chance.
“Worrying about you today, not knowing where you were or what was going on with you … it got me thinking. This’ll fuck with your life every bit, if not more, than it will with mine. We don’t need to add lawyers to the mix, what with your connection to Mal and everything. We can keep this simple.”
“Hmm.”
“Stop frowning.” He frowned.
“I’m thinking.”
“There’s nothing to think about. It’s already done.”
“What?”
He scratched at his beard. “Transferred money into your account today. It’s all done.”
“How did you get my account number?”
“Anne gave it to me. I think she meant it as a dare.”
My eyes felt wide as wide could be. “How much money?”
“Enough that you don’t have to worry for a while.”
“How long a while?”
He just stared at me.
Oh, whoa. Something told me a millionaire rock star’s version of a while was a whole lot longer than mine. The thought made me panicky, my fingers twisting together in my lap. Legal documents were scary, but the thought of him giving me masses of his money seemed even worse. “But lawyers and contracts and stuff. What you talked about this morning.”
“We’ll sort it out between us, like you wanted.” He seemed so calm, while I was anything but. “It’ll be okay, Liz.”
“That’s a lot of trust you’re putting in me.”
“We’re having a kid. We gotta start somewhere, right?”
There were scuff marks on my favorite boots. Quite a few of them. At least I wouldn’t be growing out of my shoes. My clothes, on the other hand, would probably need replacing before long. Most of my things were a little worn or were bought secondhand. Not as if I’d have been willing to ask Mal or Anne for a handout to fund a flashy new maternity wardrobe. They did so much for me already. It would be bizarre to not have to worry about money. We hadn’t grown up with much. I couldn’t really remember a time when money hadn’t been an issue.
“Right,” I mused.
“No big deal.”
I wasn’t so sure about that.
“I appreciate you being willing to monetarily support us. That’s going to make a huge difference.” I told the floor, because looking at him seemed too hard just then. “It’s a real weight off my shoulders.”
“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry about last night. And this morning. I’m just … I’m doing the best I can here.”
“Of course.” I smiled as bright as bright could be. “We’ll be friends for Bean’s sake.”
“Bean?”
My smile grew more genuine. “In the early stages they’re kind of bean shaped and sized.”
“Oh. Right.” His fingers lay laced in front of him, jiggling yet again. For a second, his gaze landed in the region of my belly before darting away again. “Give me a chance to catch up, get used to the idea. Then we’ll talk some more.”
“Okay.”
“And of course we’ll be friends,” he said. “We are friends.”
“Of course.”
He smiled back at me. But I don’t think either of us was feeling anything but fear just yet.