Page 18 of Call Me Yours (Lodestar Ranch #4)

STEVEN

What the hell was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking. That was the problem.

But Chloe texted me her address, so clearly I wasn’t alone in the One Braincell Club.

We weren’t friends. She was never going to forgive me for what I did to James.

No, she was going to hate me until her dying breath, and even then, I’d hazard a guess that she’d carry that grudge to heaven with her and give the angels an earful. I knew that.

But I also knew this: Chloe Adams wouldn’t leave her worst enemy wounded and stranded by the side of the road, so I wouldn’t either.

Not that she was my enemy, even though I was hers. And she wasn’t wounded. Or stranded, for that matter.

Whatever. It was a fucking metaphor.

My headlights illuminated her yard as I turned into her driveway. I cut the engine. I had half expected her to change her mind during my twenty-minute drive here, but there was a faint light coming from one of the windows. Still, I texted her, just in case.

Steven

I’m here.

Chloe

Door is unlocked.

I exited my truck, shutting the door as quietly as I could. Unlike me, Chloe lived in town, and she had neighbors. I didn’t want to give them something to talk about.

“Chloe?” I called softly as I stepped into her dark living room.

“In here,” she called back.

I fumbled around her furniture toward the sound of her voice, bumped my knee against a table and swore quietly, until I found the hallway. Light spilled out from an open door. I headed toward it.

I paused in the doorway to her bedroom, feeling like I needed an invitation to cross the threshold, and folded my arms across my chest and leaned one shoulder into the frame. “Hey.”

She didn’t so much as lift her head from the pillow, just looked down her nose at me before returning her gaze to the ceiling. “Hey.”

I had never seen her look like this. So still and quiet. Like all the life had been sucked out of her. I didn’t like it. “Did you take the test?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I can’t pee,” she said. “I’m not hydrated enough.”

There wasn’t a glass or water bottle on the nightstand, and from the way she lay completely still on her queen-sized bed, her hands clasped over her abdomen, I figured she didn’t intend to rectify that herself.

“I’ll get you a glass of water,” I said, pushing away from the door frame.

“You don’t have to,” she said, not moving a muscle.

I paused. “Are you going to do it yourself?”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to.

We both knew she wouldn’t. It was funny.

At dinner, I had watched her take care of her mom, her dad, her brothers.

Six months ago, she’d rescued me and Stevie in the middle of a thunderstorm.

But when it came to helping herself, it was like she couldn’t be bothered.

And then I thought of all the Monday afternoons she spent doing chores and paperwork for her parents after a six-hour shift pouring coffee at Jo’s. I thought of the way she had heaped the last of the potatoes on her brother’s plate, taking none for herself even though it was her favorite.

So maybe it wasn’t that she couldn’t be bothered. Maybe she gave so much to everyone she loved that when it came to herself, she had nothing left to give.

I located the kitchen off the hallway. It was small—everything about the bungalow was small—and it took only a moment to find the cabinet with the glasses.

I grabbed one and filled it to an inch from the brim with tap water.

There were dirty dishes in the sink. A blue porcelain bowl with a shallow moat of milk rimming the bottom, a spoon, and a coffee mug that looked like it had been there since at least this morning.

I shook my head, annoyed that she had either eaten cereal for dinner even though she had just gone grocery shopping, or she hadn’t eaten anything at all. I took a minute to wash them by hand since she didn’t have a dishwasher before heading back to her room.

Chloe was right where I left her. She probably had every centimeter of the ceiling memorized by now. “Sit up,” I ordered.

Her eyes narrowed to annoyed green slits, but she huffed an aggrieved sigh, pushed up on her elbows, and wiggled backward until her back was pressed to the tufted headboard. I handed her the glass, and she took five long swallows before setting it down on the nightstand.

“I can’t drink it all at once. I’ll puke,” she said.

I felt a tiny twinge of guilt. Maybe I should be gentler with her, but I hated seeing her like this. “Do you want something to eat? Would that help?” I asked, trying to be nice, but the words still came out gruff.

She was already shaking her head before I finished speaking, in an automatic kind of way, like saying no was a reflex, but then she suddenly stopped. Her eyes lit up. “A cheese sandwich. That’s what I want.”

She bounced off the bed, brushing past me so close that I caught the strawberry scent of her shampoo.

I snagged the glass of water and followed her into the kitchen.

She didn’t bother with a plate, just slapped two slices of generic white bread—the squishy, underbaked kind that you could squeeze into a quarter-sized ball—on the hopefully sanitized countertop before spinning to the refrigerator.

I winced when she pulled out the package of individually wrapped slices of American cheese.

Two floppy slices went between the pasty bread.

No condiments. No tomatoes or lettuce. Just… cheese, if it could be called that.

She held it up triumphantly with a huge smile on her face, like she had just caught a fish. “Want a sandwich? It’s delicious.”

“That’s not a sandwich, princess. I’m not sure it even qualifies as food. It’s just a pile of preservatives.”

Undeterred by the truth, she took a big bite and chewed. Silently, I handed her the water glass. She took a few sips and handed it back.

“I didn’t have you pegged as a food snob. Although now that I think about it, I don’t think you put a single pre-packaged food in the cart.” Her head tilted. “I take it you don’t have a favorite struggle meal?”

“What’s a struggle meal?” I asked.

“You know, the thing you make when you’re struggling financially or just struggling in general to hold things together. Something cheap and simple.”

I shook my head slowly. Money had never been an issue for us. My dad’s job overseeing a factory made us solidly middle class in a low cost of living area, and if Mom had ever had a problem holding her household together, she never showed it. We didn’t struggle—not the way Chloe meant, anyway.

Chloe shrugged. “I used to make cheese sandwiches for my brothers all the time. Served it up with a heap of eggs—scrambled to make them go farther—and hotdogs if they were particularly hungry, which they always were because they were growing boys. It was back when we were still trying to save the farm, so money was short. And on Mom’s bad days, it felt like everything was short.

I hated to cook, and my brothers learned quickly that you get what you get and you don’t get upset.

And if you did get upset, you were the new cook.

” She grinned, like she thought maybe struggling was fun.

Maybe it was fun, in a weird way. Maybe struggling wasn’t really so bad when you loved the people struggling with you. My chest pinched.

I handed her the water again, because I hadn’t forgotten what we were doing here, even if I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the fact of it all.

That Chloe might be pregnant, and the man responsible for that wasn’t here.

That I was here instead, and somehow that felt both wrong and right at the same time.

“Are you struggling now?” I asked, because why else would she be eating that god awful “sandwich.”

Her warm laugh curled around me like heat from a fire on a cold night.

“I’m okay. I’ll never be rich as a social worker, but my rent is ridiculously cheap and I can cover it with two jobs.

Anyway, I actually enjoy struggle meals.

That helps.” I made a face that told her exactly what I thought about that and she laughed again. “No, really. It’s good.”

She took another sip of water, and her gaze fell on the sink. Her brows pushed together. “Did you do my dishes?”

“It only took a minute.”

“You didn’t have to.”

For some reason, that annoyed me. Was that what she expected of me? I only helped someone if I had to? “You’re welcome.” There was a bite to my words.

Her lips pursed, but then she nodded. “Thank you.” After another sip of water, she said, “This might be the first time all week I haven’t felt nauseous. It’s nice.”

There was no delicate way to phrase it, so I didn’t try. “You about ready to pee on a stick?” I asked.

She snorted. “Yeah, I think I’m hydrated enough now.” She popped the last bite into her mouth. “I’m not pregnant, you know.”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “And unless something has changed in the last hour, neither do you. So how about you take the test and find out?”

“If I take the test, it will be like I’m admitting that it’s possible. Which it’s not.” Her gaze narrowed on the glass in her hand, and she chewed her lip. “It’s not .”

“Hey,” I said. I took the glass from her and set it on the counter. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Even if you are pregnant, you don’t have to stay that way if you don’t want to. There’s a clinic a couple hours from here. I’ll drive you.”

Chloe blinked up with me with startled green eyes.

“You would do that for me?” She shook her head as though to clear it.

“No, I mean, that’s not what I’m worried about.

I haven’t even gotten that far in my thought process.

It’s just that…I’ve never been in this situation.

I’ve never had to take a pregnancy test. It’s never been a concern at all for me.

It just wasn’t possible. And I was fine with that!

But I don’t know how I’ll feel if I take that test and it’s negative.

Because it will be negative. I know that. But maybe I won’t feel fine anymore.”

I studied her. She was babbling in circles, and none of it made any sense to me. “Do you want to be pregnant?”

She huffed. “Well, that would be ridiculous. It’s the worst possible timing.

I’ll be done with my supervised clinical hours in May, and then I’ll be launching my career.

I’m not in a committed relationship, and I don’t want to be.

Of course I wouldn’t choose now, with this guy, to be pregnant.

” And then, so softly that I almost missed it, she said, “I never thought I’d get to choose at all. ”

Shit. I didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know what to do with my hands, either. Should I hug her? Christ, no. She’d probably bite me if I tried that. I patted her shoulder, testing.

She reeled back, eying me suspiciously. “What are you doing?”

I barked a laugh. “I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing here. I’ve never had a pregnancy scare, either. What am I supposed to say? What would you say to a friend who was stalling on taking a pregnancy test?”

She cocked her head, thinking. “I’d gently but firmly insist she take it.”

“Take the fucking test, Chloe,” I said.

She gave me an unimpressed eyeroll. “Your delivery needs work.”

“Where’s the test?” I asked.

“In the bathroom. I really was going to take it, but I couldn’t squeeze out more than a drop.”

“For fuck’s sake, princess,” I grunted. I took her by the elbow and escorted her down the hallway to the bathroom and practically tossed her inside.

I took note of the disposable plastic cup sitting on the sink counter.

The test was next to it. “You want me to hold the cup for you while you pee? I’ll do it,” I threatened.

She glared and gave my shoulder a not-too-gentle shove. “Get the hell out of here, Steven.”

I smirked. “There she is,” I murmured, stepping into the hallway and closing the bathroom door behind me.

And then I paused, listening for the sound of her going like a damn pervert. When I heard pee hit plastic, I headed back to the kitchen. Might as well clean something while I waited.

A minute later she found me wiping down the inside of her butter-splattered microwave. I had the feeling she made a lot of popcorn. “Well?” I asked tersely.

“Thirty more seconds,” she replied.

We stared at each other for every single one of those seconds.

Longest thirty seconds of my fucking life .

Why the hell was I so invested? It wasn’t my baby.

She wasn’t mine. And yet I couldn’t imagine how changing either of those facts would make a damn bit of difference.

I couldn’t imagine caring more than I did right now. It was already too fucking much.

The alarm went off on her phone. She silenced it, then looked at the test. Surprise, then joy, a quick lightning strike of emotion before her features went blank again. She held up the test so I could see the single word on the digital screen.

Pregnant.