“I don’t need you to help.” She reaches for my hand to cup it against her cheek. “I hope that you’ll want to but if you don’t I’m okay on my own. I have a good job and my apartment isn’t big but it’s nice enough.”
I try to tangle all those pieces of information together into something that makes sense. “I’m not following you. Can you slow down and start from the beginning?”
“I can.” She nods her head. “I can start from the beginning.”
That’s something. I take both of her hands in mine and kiss them. “I’m here for as long as you need me. Start at the beginning and take all the time you need.”
She hiccups through a soft sob as her eyes lock with mine. “I went to the doctor a few days ago.”
I try to keep my hands steady. “Are you still feeling faint?”
“It was only that one time at your place.” She bites her bottom lip. “My friend, Gabi, insisted I go because of my medical history.”
“Your medical history?” I ask with a cocked brow.
“I was very sick when I was a teenager.” She sighs heavily.
“Cancer?” I question as my stomach knots.
“Leukemia. Chronic myeloid leukemia. I don’t know if you know what that is.”
I swallow hard. “I know.”
“I’m in remission but the chemo it did things to my body.”
It ate it from the inside out. I know. I don’t need her to tell me what it can do to a person. I’ve seen it firsthand.
“Evan.” She turns to face me. “I need you to know something.”
I kiss her softly as I rest my forehead against hers. “Tell me.”
“If I thought there was any chance, I would have told you.” Her eyes close. “I would have taken precautions, but I thought it was impossible.”
“You thought what was impossible?”
Her eyes open and it hits me. It fucking hits me before she says another word. “I’m pregnant. I don’t know how it happened but you and I are having a baby.”
***
I want to bolt. There’s a part of me that is tempted to head straight for the door and leave this in my past. I can’t go through this again if it’s going to end the way it did last time.
My work is my family now. I love caring for people and every form of comfort I need I c
an get in the corridors of the hospital when I’m doing my job.
“I’m terrified,” Chloe says softly. “I never thought this would happen to me.”
If I were a dick and she were any other woman, I’d push her to clarify what exactly her fertility specialist told her. I don’t do that because I know she’s as genuinely shocked by this news as I am.
“I always wanted to have a baby,” she goes on as she picks at a corner of the table with her fingernail. “I gave up on that dream when my husband left me.”
Asshole.
The man has to be insane to leave a woman like this behind.
“Life is funny,” I offer in a hushed tone. “You never know when it’s about to throw you a curve ball.”
A smile blooms on her lips. “This feels like more than a curve ball.”