“Yeah, yeah,okay.” He crossed one long leg over the other. “Iwon’t move in.” His eyes drifted back to me. “But you should.” He cocked his head to the side, and then he was smiling. Fully, completely smiling. “You definitely should.”
I grinned back at him, feeling lighter than I had in so many weeks.
“I think I will.”
I was home.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
sully
WALKING AWAY FROM ELLIE that morning in the hotel room had taken monumental effort, but it was nothing compared to what I was experiencing now as I forced myself to leave Maple Street. As I forced myself to leave Ellie for the night.
Ellie, who I’d loved for so many years.Missedfor so many years.
Ellie, who was pregnant.
Withmy child.
Images filled my brain, still shots of Ellie in a future that was suddenly available to me again. Ellie’s swollen belly with my hands splayed out, keeping them safe. Ellie with a baby on her hip. Ellie sitting on the front porch at Maple Street, only this time, she was watching a child play with sidewalk chalk, coloring the places we walked as kids.
All these scenes I’d forced myself to let go of a long time ago, and suddenly, she was saying they were going to bereal.
If she had let me stay with her all night, I would have. All I wanted was to sit there and stare at her, take her in, make sure she was okay, put my head to her belly and pretend I could already feel life inside it, even though I knew it was too soon. Iwanted to beg her to say the words, speak the truth, over and over again.
I’m pregnant with your baby, Sawyer.
God, I was such an ass for thinking the baby might not have been mine. But I’d spent the last five years trying to convince myself that Ellie and I were over, that she’d moved on, that she was probably spending her nights with other people. I’d spent the last five years in a concentrated effort to replace the reality I’d always known and imagined with a new one—one where Ellie and I didn’t have children together, didn’t grow old together, didn’t spend every year falling deeper into each other.
I’d removed that vision, and then there she was, standing in the kitchen of my childhood home and telling me that she was pregnant. I hadn’t evendaredto think that maybe my dream reality was possible for us again. Because shit, I’d tried so goddamn hard to exterminate the part of me that yearned to remain hopeful—it was simply too fucking painful to carry hope day in and day out. I’d never known the weight possibilities could have, and it hadn’t taken long before it all started to crush me.
A roller coaster—this was going to be a goddamn roller coaster, but truth was, someone would have to fucking drag me off at this point. Because like hell would Ellie be taking this ride alone. Even if the baby hadn’t been mine, I couldn’t imagine a scenario where Ellie had no one. I’d meant what I said the other day in the car. She knew me. She’d always know me. She could always call me, and I’d be there. I suspected I was just wired that way, like an automated Eleanor system. The way I felt for her, the way I really felt—not the masks I put in place or the bullshit lies I told myself to try to move on—was branded into me, forever unchanging.
Fuck, I couldn’t believe I was going to be a dad. That she was going to be a mom. I couldn’t believe that she wanted us to beco-parents.
As though she wasn’t the only woman I’d ever loved.
As though I didn’t want to watch her sleep every night to make sure nothing, not a single goddamn thing, went wrong.
More than anything else, the wordshigh-riskbounced around my head, making my insides twist. By the time I made it back to my apartment, the urge to pull out my phone and start googling things that would undoubtedly send me into a panic wassostrong. I found myself glaring at my screen, my reflection staring back at me—a reflection that might be mirrored onto a smaller version of me one day.
With that thought circulating the inside of my skull, I opened my phone with a flick of my thumb, heart in my throat. I went to my contacts, fighting the urge to call my siblings. My smart, doctor siblings who might talk some fucking sense into me. Who might help me sort this out, tell me how worried I needed to be. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d called Blake in a panic.
But Ellie said she hadn’t told anyone else yet, and we hadn’t discussed if and when we would tell people. The only person who knew was?—
My thumb frantically moved through my contacts, and within seconds, the phone was ringing.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Delaney, hi. It’s Sully. London. Your brother-in-law. The best one.”
Her light laugh trickled through the phone, and I heard rustling on the other end, like maybe she was moving to a different room.
“I only know one Sully London, believe it or not.”
“Ah, imagine that.”
I paced the length of my kitchen, wiping my free palm on my pants because I suddenly felt so sweaty, and I knew it had nothing to do with the August humidity.
