Ethan stared at him for a long time. “Is there anything you could have done to change things?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could have shown him the way out of the peloton.”
“You really believe that?”
Josh didn’t have an answer and that was the hell of it. “Charity’s pregnant,” he said instead.
Ethan looked at him and grinned. “Seriously? She slept with you? Why?”
Despite everything, Josh chuckled. “I’m the best.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” The smile faded a little. “You happy about this?”
“Still stunned. We’ve been seeing each other for a while, but we hadn’t talked about the future or getting serious.”
“A baby has a way of changing that.”
“Tell me about it. She said she wasn’t expecting anything from me. That she was telling me as a courtesy, nothing more.”
“That’s cold.”
“Maybe, but given my reputation, do you blame her?”
“No.” Ethan leaned toward him. “What do you want? To marry her? Settle down?”
Marriage? Again? There would be no halfway with Charity. If he let himself love her, he would be all in. Angelique had bruised him when she’d left. Charity would have the ability to rip out his heart and leave him for dead. Why would anyone give away that kind of power on purpose?
But they were having a baby together. A child. A piece of each of them. It was pretty damned spectacular.
“I always wanted kids,” he said slowly. “In the future. More abstract than real. This is different. What if I can’t do it?” He studied his friend. “I never knew my dad. What if I’m like him? What if I screw up everything? I don’t know if I’m in the right place.”
“Every new dad is scared,” Ethan told him. “My dad had six kids and he was terrified every time. But you do it anyway. You live with the fear and vow to do your best. That’s what I did.”
Four words. Simple, easy words. Josh wanted to bang his head against the desk.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I shouldn’t have brought this up.”
Ethan shook his head. “You think you’re the first person to talk about someone being pregnant in front of me? It was a long time ago.” He stared at Josh. “What I remember most was wanting that baby more than anything. We’d just found out Rayanne was having a boy. My son. God, that felt good.” He cleared his throat. “Trust me. You want that.”
Josh nodded because he didn’t know what to say. He tried to remember how long it had been since Rayanne had died, taking their unborn child with her. Leaving Ethan alone.
What if something happened to Charity? It was one thing for her to decide he wasn’t good enough. He would eventually figure out how to recover from that. But to know she was gone seemed unimaginable.
“Have you talked to her since she told you she was pregnant?” Ethan asked.
“No.”
“That would be the first step. She’s had what, two or three days to imagine the worst? And believe me, women are good at imagining the worst. Go see her. Find out what she wants. Tell her what you want. Work it out. You always did have a way with the ladies, although I could never understand what they saw in you.”
Josh grinned. “They’re blinded by my perfection.”
“I’m impressed by your ability to delude yourself.”
Both men stood.
“You okay?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah.” Or he would be, once he figured out how to be whole again. Because being who he’d been before meant being worthy. Not just of the baby, but also of Charity.
“HI.”
Charity looked up and saw Josh standing in the entrance to her office.
She hadn’t seen him in three days. Not a word or a glimpse. Just incredibly painful silence after she’d told him she was having his baby.
Every hour that passed made her more and more sad as she realized he wasn’t the least bit interested in even pretending to want the baby. He was going to walk away. He would probably pay child support, maybe offer to take the kid for a day here or there, but that would be it.
The death of her dreams, dreams she hadn’t been willing to admit, was painful. Even worse was looking up at him, and knowing that she could never be in the same room as him and not want him, not love him. It made the concept of getting over him and moving on impossible to imagine.
“Charity?”
“Come in,” she said.
He stepped inside and closed her door, then moved to her desk. He took a seat and gave her a crooked smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“No morning sickness or anything?”
“Not yet.”
He gazed into her eyes. “Tell me what you want.”
“Excuse me?”