Page 73 of Blueline Baby

“Whatever you want,” he says. “Anything. It’s yours. You say the word and it’s done. I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

But there’s a look on him now that I rarely see, and when he talks again, his voice almost cracks. “Chlo. What have we done.”

And there it is. The real thing the video shook loose underneath all the gray-faced comedy.

I could tell him it’s going to be okay but even I’m a little scared. Instead, I turn my hand over in his and thread our fingers together.

“Well,” I say. “We can’t go back now, Anderson.”

He huffs out a small laugh in the dark, and he finally starts the truck.

33

JACK

ARE YOU HAVING THE BABY?

Two days before the Stanley Cup playoffs start, Chloe wakes up at seven in the morning and makes a demand.

I should have recognized the dangerous gleam in her eye. But she just looked at me and said, “Jack. The baby needs a Humphrey.”

I’m still mostly asleep. She’s lying on her side facing me, propped up on the wall of pregnancy pillows that somehow takes up more of the king-sized bed than I do. I crack one eye open in the dark and try to work out what a Humphrey is, and how much trouble I’m in.

“Yep,” I say, because it is, she can have it. “Tell me where to get one and I’ll go grab it. We don’t skate today.”

“It’s a frozen yogurt place in Shreveport.”

“That’s three hours away. In Louisiana.”

“It’s exactly two hours and fifty-four minutes away.” She says it instantly, which means she planned all this before I was awake enough to know what time it is.

I push up onto my elbow. “Chloe. I will go to the grocery store down the street right now and buy you all the ice cream. Every flavor they’ve got. I will clear out the freezer section.” And I would. I’d buy the store. “But the baby is due in thirteen days. There’s no version of this where we drive three hours across state lines for yogurt.”

“It’s frozen yogurt.” She says it like that reframes the whole negotiation. “With honey, granola, and fruit.”

“You know where else they’ve got honey and granola and fruit? The grocery store. The one four minutes from our front door.”

She sighs. Then she pushes her bottom lip out into the smallest possible pout. She knows what that look does to me. She does it anyway, weaponizing her bottom lip at seven in the morning. I have to look up at the ceiling so I don’t fold on the spot.

“Chloe. Please. Be reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable.” She lays her hand over mine on her bump. “Your son isn’t.”

“Oh. So now we’re having a boy.”

“Yes.” She says without hesitation. “When he’s being a stubborn, demanding little jerk about something unnecessary, he’s yours, and he’s a boy.”

I have no play left here, and I know it. She’s lying in my bed less than two weeks from the finish line, glowing and smug and certain she’s about to get her way. And she’s right, because I’ve never once managed to tell this woman no about anything that mattered to her, and a frozen yogurt in another state apparently matters to her.

So an hour later, we’re driving to Shreveport.

I’ll admit the yogurt is pretty damn good. But watching Chloe eat it is almost sinful.

She moans around the plastic spoon. She licks it clean and closes her eyes like I’m not sitting across from her losing my mind. When a bead of honey catches at the corner of her mouth, she chases it with her tongue, and I have to grip the edge of the little plastic table with both hands to keep myself in the chair.

“Is it good?” I manage.