Page 99 of Denim & Diamonds

“I’m trying to be serious here.”

“You’ll have a better chance at seducing some woman to help me,” I taunted.

“Hey, whatever works.” He laughed.

“Anyway, I appreciate you wanting to help. But this is my mess to handle.”

“Will you promise to let me know as soon as you find out the results?”

“Yeah, of course.” I sighed. “I’ll let you go. Oak’s probably freaked out by my weird behavior. I need to get home to make sure he’s okay.”

When I got back, I stopped short at the sight of February still sitting on my couch. She’d had her head in her hands and jumped when the door opened.

My eyes widened. “I thought you were leaving…”

She stood and came over to me. “I was wrong. I realized the reason I wanted to leave was because I was scared. But once I thought it through, I figured out that leaving you wasn’t what I wanted at all.”

Hope filled me. “Are you sure? Because I don’t need your sympathy, Red.”

“This isn’t about sympathy.” She wrapped her hands around my cheeks. “Myheartwants to stay. I couldn’t leave you to wait for these results all alone.”

There was that damn hope trying to seep through again, a glimmer of faith that maybe she wouldn’t bail if the worst-case scenario came true.

“I paid for the expedited test. So we should know by tomorrow.”

“I’ll stay whether it’s twenty-four hours or a week. I don’t want you to go through this alone.”

Pulling her into a hug, I breathed her in and reveled in her warm presence. “Thank you, baby.”

The next twenty-four hours would be excruciating. But having her here would help me get through the wait. That said, what would happenafterthe twenty-four hours concerned me most. Suddenly, my guard went up.

“The thing is, Red, while I appreciate your support right now, any additional time I spend with you is only going to make it harder to let you go if you decide not to stick around when we get confirmation that this baby is mine.”

“Neither of us can possibly know how we’re gonna handle something that hasn’t happened yet, Brock. Ifeel like we both need to take this situation moment by moment.” She began to pace. “Am I freaked out a little? Okay…a lot? Yeah. But right now? We don’t have the answer. What wedohave is each other and the entire day ahead of us.”

I placed my hand on her shoulder to stop her pacing and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for staying,” I said.

“Of course.”

Oak seemed to be patiently listening to us from across the room.Jesus. Had I even taken him out this morning? I couldn’t remember. That’s how I knew my head wasn’t screwed on straight.

“I’d better take Oak out,” I said.

“I just did. Before you got here.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “He really needed to go.”

“He didn’t get spooked by his shadow and try to run?”

February shook her head. “Nope. We had a nice walk, actually.”

“I don’t know what you’ve done to my dog, but please keep doing it.”

Another wave of sadness came over me as I realized Oak would miss February, too. My pessimism couldn’t be stopped.

After a bit, she and I decided to get out of the house for a while. We went to the center of town, walked around, and got lunch, though I didn’t have much of an appetite. It seemed everywhere we went today, we were surrounded by babies. And each time we passed one, February looked over at me for a reaction. My cheeks would burn, and I had no idea what to do with myself. Was she trying to gauge my decision?