Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

HIM — BEFORE

We’ve been dating for just a few months when the pregnancy test comes back positive. Everything’s in working order for her, further proving the holes in the condoms would’ve worked under normal circumstances with a healthy woman.

But it’s not Janelle’s fault, I know that. Her parents’ maybe. Or bad eating habits. All the makeup she wears, and the alcohol and birth control she used to put into her body. Something to upset her natural chemistry and make her physically unfit to carry children.

Sadie’s morning sickness has been around for a few days, but I waited until today to finally suggest a pregnancy test. She told me it’s impossible, that we’ve always used protection, and she isn’t sleeping with anyone else, but there it is. A single word staring back at me on the tiny, gray screen—that’s what we’ve resorted to, words rather than symbols, because the human population’s cognitive ability is in steady decline— pregnant.

I did it. I made a child. I’m going to be a father to the most perfect child that ever lived. As if I’m a pool ball that has been bouncing around the felt table, finally slotted in a basket, everything seems to fall into place. The feeling of elation that swells in me is nothing short of the sort of white light I imagine you sink into as you die. Pure peace.

“What are we going to do?” she asks, staring up at me over the test. “We can’t have a baby.” She scoffs, pacing, clearly distraught.

“It’s okay,” I tell her, trying to maintain my shocked expression while my face fights against a smile. “It’s going to be okay.” I catch her by the shoulders, stilling her. “What do you want to do? Talk to me. I’m here for you.”

I wait for her to tell me she can’t keep the baby, then for me to swoop in like the hero I am, but instead, she simply stares into space, thinking. “I…I don’t know. I never thought… How did this happen?”

I shake my head. “It was never supposed to.”

“If anyone finds out, you could lose your job.”

I tap my lip. “Unless no one knows it’s mine.”

Her panicked eyes dart to meet mine.

“Look, I know it’s not ideal, but I would take the baby if you don’t want it. I’ve always wanted kids. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to be involved. I know you don’t want kids. We can keep this quiet until you have it, and then I’ll take it.”

Her chin quivers. “You—you mean you actually want the baby?”

I nod. “I think I do, yeah. I mean, this isn’t how I pictured it happening, but I think it could be pretty amazing.”

“I graduate in just a few weeks,” she says softly, back to thinking.

“Yeah, that’s true. It makes it easier to hide. If you don’t overindulge, by the time you start showing, you would be out of school.”

Her eyes bounce back up to mine with a bit of hope. I’m helping her out. Saving the day. “We’re really going to do this?”

“Yeah—I—er—we— what? ” The world stops spinning. The bright light is gone. I’m sinking.

“You want to raise the baby with me? You want to be with me?”

My stomach plummets. “Is…that what you want?”

Her hands go to the flat tummy now carrying my child. “Yeah,” she says softly. “I think I do. If you’re in, I’m…I’m in. I really think we could do this, Cal. Together.”

With the walls closing in around me, the oxygen being forced from the room, I do the only thing I can think of. I drop to one knee. “Let’s do this, then. Let’s go all in. Marry me, Sadie.”