“So? Not impossible.”
Atlas gave a little coo, as if he agreed. As if he wanted…a sibling. Jonah buried the thought.
“Do you have any idea how much that costs?” she asked.
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, I do, because Owen—that’s my ex—and I looked into it. In this country, surrogacy runs between a hundred and two hundred thousand dollars by the time you are done, and that’s if nothing goes wrong. That’s way more money than I have or had or may ever get my hands on.”
“Pepper. Look at me.” When she turned, he leaned closer and made a mental note to spoil Atlas rotten for being quiet when he needed him to the most. “I don’tcare. I have a son. He is in my arms right now. I am already a father. I am telling you,I do not need another child. But I do need?—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Jonah. Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell you the truth? I am not sitting here counting babies. You are the thing I want. I know it’s too soon and you work for me and your dad’s my professor and I live in my dad’s house and I know all the things. But I want to be with you.”
She looked at him, and even in the dim light he could see the abject fear in her dark eyes. “Jonah?—”
“I do! I have from the moment I met you and I don’t care if that’s corny, but I walked into your dad’s office and you were sitting there with all that…charm and vibes and heart and eyelashes and, oh. Man. I wasgone.”
She gave a soft laugh, which encouraged him.
“I mean it,” he said, happy to have the confession out. “I don’t care about the cost of some procedure or the fact that you’re missing an organ. Plenty of people don’t have much in the brains or heart department and they get happiness. Why not you? Why not us?”
He thought he had done it. He could feel his own chest unclench. He looked at her with proud relief, and for one second she let him have it, and then she gave him look that he didn’t recognize.
“Oh, Jonah.”
“What?”
“Owen said that. Word for word, almost.”
“Okay, I hate this guy. But he’s not here saying it now and I am.”
“Don’t hate him,” she said. “I loved him. I really did. Can I tell you about him?”
Nowthishe didn’t want to hear. The missing uterus? Okay, he wanted to support and encourage her. But Owen?
“Of course.” Because apparently this was part of her secret and he needed to hear her out.
“I met him when I was twenty. I had an opportunity to dance with the New Orleans Ballet Theater at the Orpheum in the corps forSwan Lake. A dream, obviously.”
“He was a ballet dancer?” Jonah asked.
“Oh, no.” She gave a quick laugh, as if dating Baryshnikov was out of the question. “He played in the Louisiana Symphony. He’d been in it for years, since he was older, almost thirty then. He played cello like…” She shook her head. “Like absolute perfection. He’s the principal cellist now, a really impressive feat at thirty-four, but back then he was just a section cellist, but still…”
But still “absolute perfection,” Jonah thought, hating himself for being jealous of her cello-playing ex.
“Anyway, we were together a while, almost two years, and I got the opportunity to try out for a New York company. We decided to give long-distance a go, which we did, pretty successfully, considering I struck out professionally in New York and was so sad.”
“Then you came back to New Orleans.” Atlas was getting fussy, and Jonah needed to hear whatever she wanted to say about Owen so he could get back to pleading his case.
“Yes, and we lived together and…well, wedidn’tget engaged.” Her voice dropped with what he knew was a deep hurt. “But he kept saying he was just so busy with work and moving up to the next chair and practicing and traveling, but all the while, Jonah, he said what you said…it doesn’t matter. Until…it did.”
“What happened?”
She just lifted a shoulder as if she had no idea. “He was staring down the barrel of thirty-five and I guess a biological clock started ticking for him. He wanted kids. He started going full speed into the possibility of surrogacy. Even though he’d said he was okay with no kids or adoption, he just…changed. Like overnight. And then…” She closed her eyes and took a minute, the only sound Atlas chewing on the collar of Jonah’s T-shirt. “He met someone and dumped me.”
Jonah grunted. “Oof. That had to hurt.”
