Page 19 of Finding Forever

“And you’redefinitelyhaving it?”

Her hands went to her stomach protectively, as if to shield her baby from even the suggestion of any possibility other than absolutely wanting him.

“Yes,” she asserted. “The only reason I’ve done any of this was so that I could keep this baby.”

His jaw tightened and he pushed to his feet, stepping into the aisle of the plane.

“Where are you going?”

“I need a minute,” he snapped.

“Cade, we should?—”

“Just a moment, alright?”

“Look, it’s fine if?—”

“Fern, I said I need a fucking goddamn moment to process, okay? Just give me a second to fuckingdothat.”

It was the first time she’d seen him lose his cool and it waspretty spectacular. He was bristling with fury and impatience but at the same time she could see the fear and uncertainty lurking just beneath that incandescent rage and she clamped her mouth shut. She nodded and sat back.

He stalked off toward the sleeping quarters in the back and she strained her neck as she tracked his movements until he disappeared into the separate room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Rolling her lips into her mouth, Fern settled uneasily into her seat, not sure what—if anything—to do.

Cade satdown on the edge of the bed and looked at the muted beige wall of the plane for a long, fraught moment.

He shouldn’t have lost his temper like that. He wasn’t usually sotransparentaround others. Especially not around people he wasn’t sure he could trust yet. He always kept a cool head, regardless of the situation. But this was?—

He bowed his head, unable to even complete the thought.

Fuck.

The word had been circling around his brain on repeat for the last five minutes. He couldn’t break free of the downward spiral of echoingfuckscascading all around him.

The crumpled edges of the paper in his tightly closed fist, jabbing uncomfortably into his palm jerked him back to reality when he recalled exactly what it was he held clutched in his hand.

His gaze slowly shifted downwards and he uncurled his fist to stare at the balled-up wad of glossy paper in his hand.

“Shit.” The word was soft, vehement, and at least different from the litany of fucks that were slowly fading into the background. He pressed the paper flat on his thigh and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of it. Some of the creases had left whitelines in the black ink, but he could still see the tiny blob in the center of the image. He stared at it, transfixed, unable to reconcile the image on this piece of hopelessly crumpled paper, with the less than spectacular act that had apparently led to its conception.

Weren’t babies meant to be conceived in memorable, glorious acts of love and affection?

Okay, that was an embarrassingly naive thought. Of course, he knew better than that. He’d never really considered having kids but if the thought had fleetingly passed his mind at some point, it would have been within the context of something similar to what Gideon and Beth had. Love, marriage, the whole shebang. Not anarrangementwith a stranger. A stranger whom he felt indifferent toward at least and slightly contemptuous toward at most.

He stared at the blob for a long time, not sure what to do for it. Not sure if it even was his place to do anything. She’d made it more than clear that she didn’t want or need his involvement. But the reality was… he was going to have a front row seat to this pregnancy. She would be living in his home, growing bigger and bigger with a baby that she calledhersbut that was actuallytheirs.

How was he supposed to remain unemotional and detached from that? Was it even possible?

He didn’t want to get attached, he didn’t want to love it… then again, that eventuality was probably highly unlikely. He felt a distant, vague sort of recognition currently. This wasn’t something he’d gone looking for. It wasn’t anything he’d ever wanted. And maybe that was how it would remain. Maybe he would watch her grow bigger and bigger with her baby, in distant and uninvested interest.

If nothing else the pregnancy added viability to their fabricated love story. The ultimate happy ending. The whole world would know him as the father of this child and eventually thatchildwould know Cade as his father. A child that would have expectations of its father. And Cade—in his effort to remain distant and uninvolved—would disappoint the kid and hurt it.

The pounding echoing invocation offucksstarted up again… soaring and swooping all around him. And this time, there was no goddamn way to silence them.

Cade—afterremaining cooped up in the bedroom for nearly two hours—joined Fern for dinner but remained mute throughout the meal. She was beginning to recognize that he was an innately quiet man who spoke only when absolutely necessary, but this silence brimmed with everything that he deliberately left unspoken. Possibly because he thought the words were unnecessary, but more likely because he wasn’t quite sure how to say them.

Fern didn’t want to push him. There really wasn’t anything thatneededto be said. She’d conveyed a crucial piece of information that did not at all change their current situation or their immediate futures. The baby was here. It existed. Everything else remained the same.

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