Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

JESSE

Four weeks later.

“ W hat’s wrong?” her dad asked as he watched Jesse hold Brandt. Her little brother was less than two weeks old and absolutely healthy.

“Nothing,” she said, sniffling back tears.

She hadn’t revealed what happened between her the men. Partly because she didn’t want to advertise her weakness, her indiscretion.

Partly because she didn’t want her dad ruining the men’s lives by flipping into helicopter Godzilla dad mode.

And she also wanted to keep it a secret because maybe, if she didn’t tell anyone, she could pretend it never happened and somehow— somehow —force herself to get over them.

Telling someone else would make it feel… real .

That would multiply her pain.

Best she relegated it to a fever dream born in a cold Yellowstone tent.

Besides, other than the one text from Christopher, the men hadn’t bothered to call or text her. Their silence spoke volumes. She’d never responded to Christopher’s text.

Just shows I was right.

And since her father and Josie insisted on Jesse staying with them ever since their return, and going through the data she was receiving while curled up on her dad’s sofa, and then with Brandt being born, Jesse really hadn’t taken the time to process everything.

Brandt is beautiful and perfect and a very lucky baby. Dad can be there for him—hopefully—and so will Josie.

Josie currently napped in their bedroom and Jesse was torn between wanting to move in with them—because both of them begged her to—and wanting to go home and be alone and privately lick her emotional wounds.

Which as of late drilled through her brain with increasing frequency, sometimes catching her off-guard and making her weepy.

And she was so. Damned. Tired .

All the fricking time.

Her dad walked over and touched her shoulder, gently forcing her to turn to look at him. “Do you need to talk to someone about what happened? You’ve never…discussed it.”

She choked back a laugh because it was freaky how he could unintentionally tune into her thoughts without even realizing it.

But she didn’t want to talk about it. “No, Daddy. I’m okay. Really.”

He scowled, the familiar furrowed brow warming her, knowing he was worried about her.

“I’m serious,” she said. “I’m okay. Just… Emotional about this little guy.” She gently rocked the baby in her arms. “Plus I have a lot of work to do. I know you’ve insisted on me working from here, but I need to get back into my normal routine.” Ah, humor for the win. “How soon before I can start taking Brandt to the lab? Teach him the family business? I’ll need help, you know.”

Her dad finally smiled. “Give him a few months at least, kiddo. He’s not quite ready for advanced calculus.”

She managed a melodramatic sigh. “This means I need to learn about sports and cartoons and stuff, doesn’t it? Gawd, now that’s torture.”

“I could waterboard you. Would that make you happy?”

She softly laughed, not wanting to wake the baby. “I’ll settle for having my fingernails pulled out. Deal?”

Now it was her dad’s turn to snort. “Thank you, honey.”

“For what?”

“Firstly, for humoring us and staying here. And for being you. For being every bit of who you are. I see your mother in you and it breaks my heart in good ways. And I see you, and how much you’ve accomplished, and I worry about you not being happy. About getting so wrapped up in work you forget to have a personal life.”

She shoved away overpowering thoughts about Mark and Christopher. “I am happy, Dad.”

Okay, so that was a little fib.

“I guess I’ll never get you to take time off again, will I?”

She shrugged. “We start production on the next-gen models in four days. It’s supposed to take nine weeks but that timeline is out of my hands. I have managers overseeing the QC through each stage. I’ll be crunching data and tweaking the algo for the final setup, but I promise I’ll take weekends off until we’re ready to deploy the upscaled mesh network. Plus, I’ll babysit this tater tot for free when you two need time alone. Deal?”

“I guess that’s the best I can hope for right now, huh?”

“Please take the W, Daddy.”

Jesse ended up spending two more days with them, finally, gently prying herself out of their loving arms to return to her condo. She’d been by a few time to get things, but hadn’t spent a night here since returning. She’d let her father bring her back to their home and spoil her rotten and be her daddy.

She didn’t forget that grief she’d experienced when she thought she might never see him again. And she couldn’t imagine the grief he must have endured until he knew she was safe.

Except…yeah.

While she’d always preferred being alone before, now being alone made her aloneness feel far sharper. Yet she recognized her energy well allowing her to “people,” even with people she loved and wanted to spend time with and who were very good about making space for her neurospiciness, was nearly dry.

It was time to recharge before she had a serious meltdown.

And she desperately needed time alone to…process.

How could I have misjudged them so badly?

Oh, wait.

They were cute, smart, and we trauma bonded because we seriously worried we might actually, you know, die.

She didn’t regret the sex with them—that was haawwt.

It checked off a box on her bucket list she hadn’t realized was there.

She would miss that.

The sex, not the ordeal.

If someone had told her she’d not only enjoy outdoor sex with two guys she barely knew in the middle of nowhere while thinking she might die soon, she would have laughed in their faces.

Maybe I’m a more flexible than I thought.

Personal growth, right?

By the middle of the week her exhaustion worsened and she even threw up her dinner the night before. Worried she might have picked up a bug and passed it to her dad or Josie or, worse, Brandt, she shot her dad a text, but he reported all was well.

Then he immediately insisted on coming over to take care of her.

The tenderness made her simultaneously laugh and cry, and that was something else that worried her—the way her emotions wildly swung from one extreme to the other like it never had before.

Maybe she had PTSD, or a delayed reaction, or… something.

Although the simplest answer was likely the truth—she had a broken heart.

Note to self, talk to my therapist about it.

But she convinced her dad she was fine, could order food and meds for delivery, and the last thing she wanted was him getting sick and taking it back to Josie or the baby.

By the end of the next week, during a telehealth visit with her therapist, during one of Jesse’s pauses the woman asked, “Are you feeling okay, Jesse? You look like you don’t feel well.”

“I’m sure it’s just a delayed reaction from what happened. I’m fine.”

“What are your symptoms?”

Jesse listed them and tried once more to brush it off. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?”

Jesse hadn’t mentioned anything sexy happening with her and the men. “What?”

“That sounds exactly like early pregnancy signs.”

She was already shaking her head even as her stomach gurgled and lurched. “What? No. I can’t be pregnant. It must be something else.”

Two hours later, stunned, Jesse stared at the pregnancy test sitting on her bathroom counter.

No. Nonononononono.

This had to be a mistake.

She looked at the second one.

And the third.

All three testers—different brands—were in agreement that she had a baby on board.

Oh, fuck.

There was no question who the father was—well, okay, there was a 50/50 question about who the father was, but she knew the identities of both 50-percenters, and it had to be one or the other. As she stood there, stunned, she realized her brain refused to process…this.

But yeah, it explained everything she’d felt over the past few of weeks.

What do I do? Would it be weird for Brandt to be its uncle and not even a year older than it?

Him?

Her?

She forced her feet to move and headed to the bedroom, where she heavily dropped onto the bed and tried to…think.

But nothing happened.

Her brain had blue-screened and all she could think about was remembering how badly she’d misjudged the two men.

The heated shame that filled her face when she overheard them talking, well beyond any RSD reaction she’d ever experienced.

She wasn’t the one who needed therapy—Mark damned sure was. Whatever chip he had on his shoulder, the last thing she needed in her life was the complication of being romantically involved with two men who had the capacity to lead someone on they way they had.

Didn’t need it in her baby’s life, either.

And it wasn’t like she needed their support. She probably made more in a year than both men combined in five years. That was her actual salary, not simply a rich-daddy trust fund handed to her.

And what the fuck was actually wrong with Mark that he was upset over her being wealthy?

It hadn’t bothered Christopher.

Staring at the ceiling, she rested her hands on her tummy.

A tummy now occupied by a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.

Temporary on the men’s part, anyway.

She might have easily talked herself into thinking it was miscommunication, but they still hadn’t called her, hadn’t tried to contact her in any way except for Christopher’s single text.

That was proof, right? That she’d only been a job at first, then a diversion, then a liability. She damned sure wasn’t going to call them. Not yet. Eventually she’d call or send them a letter or something, but she would handle this on her own.

Damned sure didn’t want to pollute her peace with that kind of bullshit.