Page 45 of Inked Devotion

“Oh, good for you. You can have a beer. I can’t do anything to calm my nerves because apparently, I’m pregnant. With child. With a Montgomery kid. With your kid. Oh my God, Benjamin. I haven’t been able to tell anyone, and it’s been twenty-four hours. I’ve just sat in my house just thinking and looking at my phone and saying I should call you and I should talk to you and then I could do nothing. I ignored all of the girls’ calls, and all I did was say I wasn’t feeling well. I’ve been lying to them this whole time.”

I sucked in a breath and then took her shoulders again. “Breathe. You’re rambling.”

“Ramble with me, will you? Panic with me. Oh my God, Benjamin. This wasn’t in the cards. This is not what I planned.”

“I know. I know. Fuck.”

“Exactly. I haven’t even told the rest of them that I wanted a baby. That I was on fertility meds, that I was going to get inseminated. By a stranger’s sperm. Not my friend’s.”

My last brain cell seemed to be on life support as I tried to keep up with what was happening.

“We slept together, and now we’re having a baby.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks again, even as my heart did that little somersault. Warmth filled me, and I let out a breath.

“A baby,” I whispered.

Her lower lip wobbled, and she nodded. “I didn’t plan on this, Benjamin. I was going to do this on my own. It wasn’t going to know the father, and I wasn’t going to deal with the complications. And now, what the hell are we going to do?”

I swallowed hard, wiping away her tears again. Brenna was one of my friends. She and Beckett had been closer for many years, but Brenna had been a vital part of my life over time. And we had slept together. We had made that conscious choice, even after a couple of drinks, we had still gone all in, and known we would have to face the consequences of our emotions, just not the consequences of everything else that came with it.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, and her face fell. “I’ve always wanted kids, Brenna.”

She cringed, nodded. “Me too. That’s why I was doing this. It seems you beat those other sperm to the punch.”

That brought me up short, and my eyes widened. “Oh God, Laura.”

“Is she pregnant too?” she blurted, and she put her hand on her mouth, her eyes comically wide.

“I don’t know. They’re going to tell me as soon as they find out. Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right. Benjamin. We’re not dating. We were never dating. We slept together once, and we were going to never talk about it again and pretend it didn’t happen, and now look at us.”

“I know. But Brenna? Whatever happens, whatever the two of us figure out with this child, because you’re going to have a child,wewill have a child, we are friends. Friends can be parents, right?”

I literally had no idea what I was saying. It felt as if one side of my face had gone numb, and there was that ringing sound in my ears, and I was just trying to keep up. Brenna was freaking the fuck out, and one of us had to be calm. And apparently, I was the calm Montgomery. I could not panic, I could not forget, so I had to be solid and logical.

My friend was having my baby.

We had slept together, just once, and now she was pregnant. With my kid.

And I had to be calm.

Somehow I had to be fucking calm.

“Friends can be parents,” she repeated. “What are we going to tell your family?” she asked, her eyes widening again.

I swallowed hard. “The truth. Because I have a feeling that no matter what happens, we’re going to need them, and I don’t think we can lie. I don’t think I’m going to ever be a good enough liar to keep this quiet.”

She nodded before she took a step back and rested her hands at her side. “I wanted to do this on my own.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but she shook her head. “But that isn’t what’s happening. So now we need to make a plan. Somehow. I’m not just going to hide this baby from you. I’m not a horrible, evil person, and you would always have been in my child’s life as one of the uncles or the friends, and now you’re going to be the father, and I need to figure out what that means. I’m never going to hide this baby from you. I’m never going to ask you for anything. I just want you to know that we exist.”

I cursed under my breath, moved forward, cupping her face with my hands. She stilled and looked up at me. “I was always going to be in your baby’s life. Right now? I’m not walking away. We’ll figure this out. Friends first always. Friends, as we said, can be parents. I’m not walking away, Brenna. We’ll tell the family. We’ll tell the others. No matter what happens, it’s you and me. We’ll figure this out. We have to.”

I looked at her, not knowing what else to say, and when she blinked up at me, I wanted to lower my head, wanted to kiss her and promise her and lie to her and say that we would figure everything out, and there’d be no bumps in the road. Instead, she looked at me, bent over, and threw up on my bare feet.

I sighed, pulled her hair back, and she kept throwing up, and I knew that if there was ever a symbol for what my relationship was with Brenna, I was standing in it. Fuck, I was going to be a father.

---