“I don’t have to be involved if I don’t want to be?” There seemed to be some steam coming out of his ears, which made no sense, given that she was letting him off the hook as far as any responsibilities and he’d had the entire car drive to process the news.
This is where he should say,Thank you for being so awesome.
“I talked to the label and Hans. If you’d prefer, I can switch my assignment away from Dimefront. That way you don’t have to… see me.” She probably should stop speaking because Bax looked like he might short-circuit at any second.
Maybe this would be a really good time for her to pretend to lose consciousness? She didn’t particularly want to be conscious through this anyway.
“I want to make this easy for you,” she said, because she did. Also, she wanted to make it easy for her too. She wasn’t totally selfless.
He turned away from her. Dropped to the other end of the sofa, his head going to his knees this time, and started breathing heavy through his nose and out his mouth, sort of like he’d done right before he came in the shower—
“Nothing about this is easy,” he said to the wall.
“Except me.” Levity seemed like a good idea. A little joke at her expense.
It had the opposite effect, and Bax turned toward her. “Don’t say shit like that about the woman who is having my baby.”
Oh.
Huh. So he accepted it just like that.
“I thought you’d want to do the paternity test thing. They can test as soon as we’re ready, but I was going to wait until after the first trimester, just to be sure nothing goes wrong with the pregnancy.”
Bax wasn’t moving. Breathing, sure. But his breaths were shallow.
“Something’s wrong with the baby?” He stared at her abdomen like it was something super special.
That one gaze made her warm and squishy inside.
“No. Of course not. It’s just…” Courtney bit her lip. “This is my first time being pregnant. There’s no reason to think things won’t go well. But there’s no way to know. You have to admit I’m me, which makes me kind of a disaster, so…”
“You’re kind of a disaster?” he asked, monotone and like he was trying to process what she’d said. “You’re not a disaster. I’m a—”
“Do you want a minute?” Courtney didn’t touch him, because if she touched him, she’d probably want to take him up to the shower. But she also didn’t want him to fall off the couch either. Then she’d have to be the conscious one, and that wasn’t something that sounded nice. She’d end up at the hospital with him, and then she wouldn’t get her ice cream sundae and the day really would be shit. “I can give you a minute.”
On that note, Bax shook his head and dropped it back against the sofa. He repeated the word “fuck” repeatedly.
Here’s the thing. She didn’t really expect him to jump up and down at the knowledge that she was going to be a mother, though she’d allowed a few daydreams like that. Then she squashed them because they weren’t reasonable. What was happening now was more likely and totally in line with Brennan Baxter and the way he avoided things that were hard.
Perhaps he needed a pillow? The banging of his head thing really didn’t look like it felt super great.
She should get him a pillow.
Look at her, being motherly.
She totally had this thing.
She snagged one of the throw pillows off the sofa and scooted toward Bax. When he lifted his head, she slipped the pillow there.
He stilled. Head against the pillow, he stopped, stared into her eyes straight through to her soul. He lifted his hand to her jaw and touched her there, the pad of his fingertips against her skin.
“Brennan,” she whispered into the side of his palm. “I wanted to tell you myself.”
Though she hadn’t quite made her plan to tell him yet, this method would not have even remotely made the short list of options.
He continued stroking the column of her jaw.
She let him, because it felt really nice, and at this point, not a lot of things felt nice.
