Page 75 of Fight for Me
When I look back at her, a tear falls down her cheek. Worry fills me. Fuck. I hurt her … or maybe she already regrets this. “Syd?”
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly.
“Why are you crying? Did I do something? Did I hurt you?”
She sits up, pulling my dress shirt on. “No, no, it’s just that ... I’m sorry I didn’t say this before.”
“Say what?”
Another tear falls, and she wraps the shirt tighter. “I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sydney
Iwait, and he stares at me. “Already? We just ... and how ...”
I wipe away the tear that rests on my cheek. “Not from just now … from the last time. When we were at the pond.”
“You’re ...monthspregnant?”
Guilt hits me, and I nod. “Four months. Well, closer to five now.”
“But you’re not even—”
“Showing?” I finish for him. “I know, but I am starting to show, I have a small bump here.” I move my hand to where it looks like I’m bloated.
Declan stares and his mouth opens and closes a few times. “That’s … the baby?”
“Yes.”
When I asked the doctor a few weeks ago, she said it was very normal not to show until the middle of the second trimester if you’re skinny and have never had a baby before.
Declan rubs his hand down his face and then blinks a few times. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Of course I was.”
“When?”
The anger is clear in his voice. “Today. Tomorrow. I don’t know. I wanted things to be settled for me.”
“Settled?”
My lip trembles, and I fight back the fear that builds with each second. I didn’t think things would go this way. I thought, we’d have sex and then he’d push me away. After I was broken and alone, I would tell him and we could part ways.
But then he held me.
He loved me.
He gave me more than I could’ve ever wanted, and I couldn’t hold it in.
He kissed my stomach, and I thought, right then, I would sob.
When we were both done and he pulled me close, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
We’re going to have a baby, and if we could share what we just had, then maybe we can have more.
Now, he looks as though I’ve just betrayed him. “Yes, I wanted to have the house sold so that when you rejected us, I had a plan.”
