Page 78 of Wild For You
Turning to the side, I inspected the teeniest of bumps below my navel. I couldn’t imagine what I was going to look like with a full-blown watermelon-sized stomach.
“Everything okay?” Andrew asked, concerned as I stared back at my image in the mirror.
Quickly, I yanked down the hem of my shirt and turned to face him. “Yep,” I said, grabbing the paper the doctor left and my purse. “Ready?”
Andrew walked me to my car. His truck was parked across the way. I was headed back to Nashville for the weekend and planned on leaving after the appointment, but now that the time had come, I was having second thoughts.
“Sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Andrew questioned as he leaned down into the open window of my car.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll only be gone a day or two, and then I’ll be back. I need to check in on my apartment and spill the beans to Caleb,” I tried joking, but it fell flat, and Andrew’s lips never budged.
“I don’t like it.”
“I know, but it’s something I have to do.”
He bent through the window and kissed me one last time. He promised to complete his exercises while I was gone. We both hoped that at his appointment next week, the doctor would clear him for regular work.
The drive to Nashville was uneventful, and when I parked my car in my designated spot, I almost expected my mother to be hovering close by.
As I walked through the lobby, I waved at the security guard, grabbed the mounds of mail from my box, and headed up to my apartment. I’d paid the rent up for several months, but unless I found a new job soon, I’d need to find a cheaper apartment. Luckily, my savings had been padded again, not just from my severance from the Bears, but from Andrew sneaking money into the account. No amount of arguing would get him to take it back out. He called it payment for dealing with him, but now that we’d hooked up, I felt dirty keeping it.
The only thing that made me feel better was when he pointed out he sent it to me not long after I arrived there, way before we slept together.
The inside of my apartment smelled stale and musty. I walked over to the Juliet-style balcony and opened the window to let in some fresh air. I glanced below and waited for the longing to sink in, that unquenchable desire to be in the bustling city, but it never came. Instead, I yearned for the peace and quiet of Ashfield over the people and traffic.
Stepping back, I looked around the apartment. I wasn’t gifted with a green thumb, so the fake plants I displayed inside the living room still looked as vibrant as they had the day I left. Nothing inside the room felt like mine.
Sorting through the mail, I found mostly junk and a few items addressed to my mother. A couple of my magazine subscriptions were at the bottom, and I planned on taking those back to Ashfield with me. A letter addressed to my mother caught my eye, and I prayed she hadn’t opened some sort of account with me as a cosigner. It was something that worried me daily when I first got in contact with her.
I was considering using the steam trick to read the inside, but was interrupted by a ping on my phone. Andrew’s nickname flashed on the screen.
Grump: Are you there?
Me: Yes, Dad. Just walked in.
Grump: Would love to hear you call me daddy. Glad you got there safe.
Me: Don’t tease me when you’re this far away! Call you later?
Grump: Sure.
My fingers floated above the keyboard on the screen as I contemplated telling him how I felt. Sending him an I-love-you over a text message was a lot easier than telling him in person.
But I didn’t want to be the first to say it. I knew it was childish to want him to say it first, but I couldn’t help how I felt. Sure, I had mumbled the words when I was mostly unconscious that time in bed while we were falling asleep, but in my mind, that didn’t count as the real thing.
Now that I’d settled in for the weekend, I tried to figure out my next course of action. I was here to tell Caleb about the baby.
I didn’t want to do it here in my apartment, and a public place was out of the question, because the tabloid photographers would be swarming.
His building was a few blocks away, and though I’d only been there a time or two, I recalled the location.
The day was warm for November, and I opted to walk. Donning a light jacket and my boots, I regretted my decision by the time I made it to his building. My feet ached, and I was sweating out of every pore of my skin.
As I slipped through the glass doors, I expected the security guard to give me trouble, but he simply waved me through as I walked toward the elevators. I rode the car up to the twelfth floor and headed toward his apartment. Empty moving boxes were stacked outside his door, and I assumed his new fiancée had moved in.
Taking a deep breath, I gave myself a mental pep talk before knocking.
Loud music was playing on the other side of the door, and when no one answered, I knocked more aggressively.
