Page 54 of The Devil Gets His Due

We’re having a girl. I stare at it, blinking back tears as he stares at it too.

He swallows. “Well, then,” he says, his voice a little rough.

I could make a joke right now, throw out yet another dumb name I don’t actually like, but I just can’t. We’re having a girl, and I already love her.

And God, I don’t want to mess this up.

That night,I fall into an exhausted, troubled sleep and wake gasping. I stumble out to the living room, and turn on a lamp, needing to escape my thoughts.

I’m curled up on the couch with my phone when he opens his door, blinking at me in the dim light. He’s wearing shorts but no shirt, and his absrippleas he walks. My gaze falls to that happy trail of his, just below his belly button.

Fucking Anna Tattelbaum.

“Why are you up?” he asks.

I set the phone down. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I had a bad dream and was too upset to go back to sleep.”

He hesitates. I’m certain he’s going to shrug and go back to his room, but instead he comes and sits at the end of the couch, arranging the blanket so that it’s covering my toes. I’d be better off if he’d cover his bare chest because, Jesus, he looks so good right now.

“What happened in your dream?”

I frown. It’s going to sound ridiculous to him. “I dreamed I put the baby in the oven.”

He makes a startled sound—some combination of a cough and a laugh. “What?”

“I put her in the oven. It’s not like I was sitting there thinking,oh, putting the baby in the oven sounds like a good idea, I think I’ll go for it. I just arrived at work and remembered I’d done it. And then I was terrified and couldn’t get home fast enough, and I was running and I—”

I can’t even continue to describe it. The whole thing was so terrifying.

“And you felt absolutely powerless,” he says quietly, wrapping a hand around my foot.

“Yes,” I whisper, “exactly.”

“It’s a lot…to go from being only responsible for yourself to being entrusted with a human life.”

“I can barely take care of myself. Who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to entrust me with a baby?”

He laughs. “Well…no one.”

I kick him. “And here you were doing so well for a minute. I almost didn’t hate you.”

He laughs again. “Almost?”

“I don’t want to do this alone,” I whisper.

He squeezes my foot. “You’re not.”

“But you won’t always be here. You’ll go back to New York, and then what?”

He frowns, biting his lip as he hesitates. “I’ve still got plenty of time,” he says after a moment, which is when I realize I was hoping for something else, hoping he’d say,‘I’ll stay as long as you need me.’Or better yet,‘I’m not sure I plan to go back.’

But he hasn’t said that. Hedoesplan to go back. And when did it become the case that I didn’t want him to?

“Look…I get it,” he says. “This is terrifying. And there are so many things that can go wrong, and you have no control over what happens. It’s why I was so determined not to have kids—because I didn’t want to go through my whole life feeling—” He stops, his tongue darting out to tap his lip before he looks away. “I just never wanted to bring things into my life I couldn’t afford to lose. But Keeley…you’ll get the hang of it, I swear. We both will.”

“You’ll stay until you’re positive I’m not going to put her in the oven?” I ask.

He laughs. “Yes. Although, by the second or third incident, I think you’ll be able to remember on your own.”

---