She smelled so good, felt so good.
“Don’t go,” she was saying. “Stay. Listen. Don’t go. I’ll explain everything.”
Pulling her to me tighter, it was impossible to not feel the baby between us. The smallest biggest barrier in the world.
“Shhh,” I finally said, stroking her hair and her arm, willing her trembling to subside.
“Please take me home,” she said after another few minutes had passed. “We need to talk.”
Talk?
That didn’t sound good. But one of the things we’d talked about in therapy was not pushing the tough shit away, to not hide from it. To face everything head on instead of turning to the bottle, or pills, or coke, or sex, or whatever.
“You have multiple addictions, Ace,” Dr. Miller had told me. “Drugs, but also alcohol and sex.”
He had looked at me as if he expected me to react to those simple truths. But hell, really? Anybody who knew me for more than five minutes could have known all of that.
The doctor had kept talking, and he kept making more sense. About how I’d used drugs to avoid real commitment and as a security blanket against failure. After all, nothing feels bad when you’re floating. Or fucking. Or asleep.
My need to be the best had been instilled in me at a young age, but as I’d gotten older, I’d used it as a wall, a barrier of sorts to keep people at a distance. “From a distance,” the doc had explained, “people can admire you without seeing the real Ace Newman. They can’t see your perceived flaws. They can’t be disappointed.”
“Perceived?” I’d snorted. “My flaws are real.”
At the clinic, we had solo therapy and group therapy. Time to read and think. I’d worked out like a monster, pushing weights I hadn’t pushed since I was twenty. Running faster. Doing more pushups and sit-ups than I’d thought my old body could do.
“Don’t replace one addiction with another one,” Dr. Miller had advised me. “Find balance. Find a variety of coping mechanisms.”
When the detox tried to bring me to my knees, I meditated. I couldn’t do it for shit in the beginning. At first, every time I closed my eyes, I’d see different faces, hear different voices. The disappointments. Expectations. But after a while, I learned to close all that off and let my mind grow still. I learned to breathe.
I was working hard to breathe right now.
This was Holly, and she was looking up at me with black lines streaking down her face and a pink nose. She’d never looked so beautiful.
“Thought you were gonna buy waterproof,” I said, wiping at a tear and making a bigger mess.
She laughed, but it was also a sob, and tears began flowing again.
“Come on, let’s get you home.”
We were twisted together in the small space of my front seat, so we unwound, and I helped her get out. Damn. How pregnant was she? I couldn’t keep my eyes from her stomach. I couldn’t keep the questions from my head.
Later.
I’d get her home, and I’d hear her out.
I didn’t know what I’d do after that.
After getting her settled in the passenger seat, I walked around the car and spotted a group of people standing down on the sidewalk. Looking closer, it was Whitney, whose hands were cupping her cheeks, clearly crying. Beside her was a woman who looked like Holly. Beside her was fucking Jack.
I gritted my teeth and got into the car.
With a roar, I drove out of the parking lot, heading back to Holly’s place. We didn’t talk. I’m not sure she even moved as my Porsche ate up the distance. I practiced my breathing while wishing with everything inside me that I had a drink. Just one drink.
Holly’s cottage was cute, but as I walked behind her across Calvin’s back yard, it might as well have been a prison. It was there that Holly was going to tell me the truth. Tell me it was over. She was going to, as gently as she could, break my heart.
She would thank me for the bakery. Promise to pay me back.
Yadda fucking yadda.
I stepped inside her little house, just wanting it over with. I wanted her safe, and I wanted to leave so I could…
Do what?
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked formally, wiping her hands down the sides of her shirt, bringing attention back to her belly. She blushed. “I mean, I have tea, soda, water…” she trailed off. Life would be like that from now on. People tiptoeing around my addiction. Not sure what to offer me or what to say.
Why did I ever think this would work?
“No, nothing. I’m fine,” I finally said to her, my tone carefully neutral.
I wanted to yell and scream and hit something. Break something.
Fuck something.
Drink something.
“I love you, Ace.”
I stared at her, waiting for the “but.” It didn’t come.
“I love you, and I’m having your baby. I’m due December third. I don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy. And yes I’m scared. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.” The words were spilling from her in a rush.
My baby? It was my baby in there, due to arrive in this world in only a few months.
“I’ll take a paternity test if you don’t believe me,” she was saying, “I can understand if you don’t. I never slept with Jack or anyone else, so I know you’re the father, but if you…”
Father.
I was going to be a father.
She was pacing now, her hands in her hair, still speaking quickly. “I won’t tell the press or ask for child support. Very few people even know I’m expecting. I’ll sign whatever you need me to sign…”
In three long strides, I was in front of her, then on my knees, my arms around her hips, my face in her stomach. My child. The woman I loved was carrying my child. And she loved me. And nothing else mattered.
All my past fuck ups melted away. All my cravings stopped.
Except one.
I pushed her shirt up and felt the warmth of her skin. I saw something move inside her, like an alien wanting to come out. I touched it, and it moved. I followed the movement with my finger. A baby. My baby. Playing chase already.
Holly was crying again. I could tell by the tears falling on her belly.
“Hey, little one,” I said to my child. “I’m your daddy.”
I was still having trouble wrapping my head around it.
I’d come back to New York, roses in hand, to ask Holly to be my girlfriend, for us to be in a relationship. Forge something solid and real between us.
Now this.
“Marry me, Holly.”
The words were out of my mouth like a speeding bullet, but I didn’t regret them for an instant.
“What?”
I stood up and planted my hands on her shoulders, holding her an arm’s length, looking into her gorgeous eyes.
“Marry me. Let’s be a family. Let’s…”
I stopped talking because she was shaking her head.
She was rejecting me. She was crying even harder than before.
Didn’t she trust me? Trust me to stay clean and take care of her and the baby? I couldn’t blame her if she didn’t. Not really.