“We’re not.” I blinked wet eyelashes against my cheeks and tried to rein in my dramatic pout. “Just me.”
“You don’t have to be alone in your feelings.” Barry wiped my wet cheeks with both of his thumbs. “Not when I’m here to bother you.”
I hiccupped a wet sort of laugh.
“You don’t bother me.”
My life would be much, much easier if he was bothersome.
“What were you thinking about that made you so sad?”
I didn’t know how to tell him the truth, it felt too big to say, to admit that I was falling in love with him—had already fallen—while feeling so certain it was fruitless. I was pretty sure I was broken, missing the essential thing that would make me a good partner, and in playing house with him, I’d almost forgotten.
I settled on something close enough to the truth.
“Are you scared? What if we don’t know what we’re doing?”
“Sweetheart,” Barry started, in that way he always did. So caring, so sympathetic. A few more tears spilled onto my cheeks. “Of course we don’t know what we’re doing.”
He smiled in a way that looked like a frown when I scoffed a surprised sound.
“What do either of us know about raising a baby other than the things we’ve been trying to learn? Of course I’m scared, Hannah. I’m scared all the time.”
“You don’t seem scared.”
Barry laughed, shook his head, kissed the side of my temple in the way I knew he shouldn’t, then met my eyes again.
“I’m scared that something will happen to you, that you’ll get hurt, that I’ll be a bad dad, or you’ll feel unsupported when I’m on the road half the time during the season, that you’ll resent me. That you’ll find someone else—someone you actually want.”
My forehead creased, shocked by these confessions, and utterly confused by the last one. “You think I don’t want you?”
Barry looked a bit rueful and shrugged.
“Sorta, yeah. But would it really be so bad to be with me?” he asked, throwing my world sideways. Would it be hard formeto be withhim? Was he kidding?
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve never wanted this with me, Hannah. Not when you left New York, not when you found out about the baby, not even when I forced myself into your life and wouldn’t leave you alone.”
I stared slack-jawed at him, one belief after the next so wildly false.
“I wanted you in New York,” I said, something I swore we’d already covered. Hadn’t I been telling him how much I wanted him? How hard it was to stay away from him? How being with him without beingwithhim felt like a pressure cooker? “I thought about it, wanted to text you and see if one night could turn into something, but I—” Sealing my lips together in a tight line, I lifted and dropped my shoulders. “I’m not your forever; I don’t know if I’m anyone’s.”
“Hannah—”
“It’s true. I had this whole fantasy about us dating long distance before I remembered I can’t even make a relationship work in the same city. And then I saw you on TV and realized I could never tell you I was pregnant without looking like I was trying to baby trap you. See? Because I’m a mess, and you’re—well,you.”
“What about you is a mess?”
I floundered, aghast at the question when he’d seen how I lived for the last weeks. The messes I left around the house, the active projects, the general way of me. “You are a professional hockey player making millions of dollars a year. You are the most dedicated, persistent man I think I’ve ever met. I am a pregnant janitor without a car.”
“A job you like, right?” he asked, instead of saying I had good points.
I thought about it before answering. I did like my job, didn’t I? I hated my brief stint working a corporate job, and it was a relief to be laid off. I liked school just fine, but I only did it because I thought I should. Thought I should work a big-girl job, too, but I never loved it. I missed the meditative nature of cleaning, the flexibility of working odd hours and having most of my days and evenings to work on whatever I wanted. As much as I felt like I should maybe be embarrassed about being a janitor, of course I liked it. I was proud of my dad for starting this business, proud of Kate for taking so much of it on, loved all the excuses I had to hang out with them by working together.
“I do,” I agreed.
“And you sold your car to save for a safer one, which doesn’t make you a mess, Hannah, it means you’re thoughtfully planning for your future and for the future of your baby.”
