“I think you might be too tired.” I drop a kiss on the tip of her nose.
“It’s normal. I went to the doctor Friday, remember? She said it’s expected. My body’s adjusting.”
Unable to help myself, I reach down and settle my hand over her very flat belly. “When are you going to start showing?”
“I bet you’d like that, huh? Your poor fat wife.” She laughs somewhat self-consciously. “I still have a few months before that happens.”
“Oh.” I’m sort of disappointed. I want proof that baby is growing inside of her. But I’m patient. It’ll happen. “Are you still tired?”
“Sort of.” She yawns, doesn’t even bother covering it up. “I tossed and turned a lot last night.”
“Why?”
“Too anxious for you to come home.” She offers me a shy smile, so unlike Fable I’m a little surprised. My girl rarely acts shy. She’s bold and determined and sometimes downright ferocious. No one crosses Fable. She’s f**king tough.
Right now, though? She looks ready to slip behind a giant wall so she can hide.
“Are you okay?” I ask because I’m concerned. She’s not acting like normal and yeah, maybe I can blame the hormones and the baby, but maybe not. I need to make sure she’s really okay.
“I’m good. I just …” Her voice drifts off and she leans into me, her face pressed against my neck. I can feel her breathe against my skin, her lips on me, damp and plush, and she kisses me there, soft and sweet. “I feel weird after everything that’s happened.”
“What do you mean?” I tug on the ends of her hair to force her to look at me.
She tilts her head back, her gaze meeting mine. “I feel like I deceived you somehow, and that was never my intention. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to tell you that I was pregnant. I needed advice, so I went to Jen. And then it all backfired. The last thing I wanted was for you to find out you’re going to be a father from some dumb gossip site or TV show.”
“You were only trying to do what you thought was right by going to Jen,” I say softly, but she shakes her head.
“Yeah, and what I thought was doing the right thing turned out to be totally wrong. What if I do that more often than not? What if I do that sort of thing with our baby? Sometimes my judgment isn’t the best and I do dumb stuff. Maybe I can’t be trusted to be a parent. I might end up a shitty one, you know. My mom was awful. She’s still awful. And I have no idea who my dad is, so he doesn’t count. The example I had growing up was not so great,” Fable admits.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” When she looks up at me questioningly, I continue. “I had terrible examples, too, you know. My dad wasn’t around much and we won’t even mention A—”
Fable presses her fingers against my lips. “Don’t say her name,” she murmurs, her voice edged with steel.
I chuckle, and she drops her fingers from my mouth. “You know what I mean. Anyway, my parenting situation as a kid was pretty f**ked up, too, Fable.”
“So what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? I don’t know how to be a mother and you don’t know how to be a father.” She pauses as if she just realized something. “We’re going to be a total wreck as parents, aren’t we?”
“Hey.” I cup her cheeks with my hands, forcing her to stare into my eyes. She blinks up at me, looking lost and worried and in desperate need of reassurance. “Remember when we first got together? Remember how f**ked up that all was? We knew we didn’t make any sense but it happened anyway. We realized the only way we made sense was together.”
“Okay,” she whispers with a little nod. “But what does that have to do with our being parents?”
“We work as a couple. We’ll work as parents, Fable. I have faith in that and you should, too,” I say vehemently, sweeping my thumbs slowly over her cheeks, marveling at how soft her skin is. “We’re going to make great f**king parents, don’t you think?”
“Not if you use language like that around our child,” she sniffs, making me laugh. “I’m serious, Drew. Look at Owen. He never stops with the language. Ever. It’s awful.”
“Neither do you, baby,” I say just before I lean in to kiss her.
“Hey, I’ve really cleaned up my act,” she protests once I break the kiss. “I’ve been especially good these past few weeks. Do you know the baby can hear pretty much everything I say right now?”
“The baby doesn’t even have ears yet,” I remind her.
“Not true. She’s hearing everything. Trust me. So keep it clean.”
“Now the baby’s a she?” I like the idea of a blond little girl with flashing green eyes and a sassy attitude running around. I like that a lot.
“I go back and forth. One day it’s a boy, the next it’s a girl. We do want to find out what the baby’s sex is, right? I don’t think I can stand waiting until I deliver,” she admits.
“I definitely want to find out what we’re having. The idea of it being a surprise … I don’t like that.” I’ve never been a fan of surprises. They make me uneasy.
“That’s how they did it in the olden days,” she points out, oh so helpfully.
“This isn’t the olden days anymore, Fable. Let’s take advantage of modern technology.” I kiss her again because she’s so hard to resist. Just like that I’m swept up in the taste of her lips, the feel of her, the little sounds she makes.
Then I remember what I left on the dresser and I pull away from her with a quick “hold on.” I dash over to the dresser and grab the flowers, thrusting them toward her. She takes them from me, her expression one of shock.
“What are these for?”
“Um, a congratulations that you’re having my baby?” I snag up the gift bag and hand that over to her as well. “And a gift.”
“Drew, you didn’t have to do all this.” She says this but I can tell she likes it. Her cheeks are flushed and her mouth is curved in a pleased smile.
“Yeah, I did. The mother of my baby deserves all the gifts in the world,” I say.
Her cheeks redden even further and she reaches into the bag, pulling out the infant-sized gold-and-red 49er onesie that I picked up at one of the gift shops in the stadium. “Oh my God,” she breathes, her gaze fixed on the piece of baby’s clothing. “It’s so small. And so cute.”