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  “How about you?” I asked. “How’s the school year treating you?”

  Jane flipped her fiery red hair out of her face and sighed. “We’ve got a rough group this year. Six going on sixteen. I’m already counting down the days until winter break.”

  I feigned interest in Jane’s stories as I stared at the double doors that stood between me and my best friend, the same double doors that I’d be facing in five months. The minutes turned to hours as I listened to Jane babble on about how Katie got gum stuck in her hair and how Tanner made the entire class terrified of rabbits.

  Finally, around nine, Greg emerged from behind the doors. I had never been so happy to see him. “Well?” I asked while Jane was still midway through one of her sagas.

  “Babies should be here soon,” Greg said. Beads of sweat dripped down his face, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Liana was just as nervous. “Liana wanted me to fill you guys in and thank you for coming.”

  “We wouldn’t miss it,” Jane said for both of us.

  Greg cleared his throat. “Especially since Liana’s parents aren’t getting back from their trip to Costa Rica for a few more hours.” My heart broke as Greg said the words. I’d known since I was ten years old that I’d be giving birth without my parents there, but Liana was extremely close with her family. I knew she must be devastated over the prospect of her parents not being there. Greg disappeared behind the double doors before I had the chance to ask any questions.

  Jane and I sat in silence as she shuffled through a magazine and I pretended to be checking my email on my phone. In reality, I was trying to take my mind off of this pregnancy, which turned out to be an impossible task in a hospital full of babies. I was so excited to meet my little nugget, to have a family of my own and to give him or her the life I never had. It was something I’d always dreamed of. On the other hand, was I ready for that? I worked an average-paying job and lived in a crappy apartment. It was hard to be excited about the pregnancy when so much was up in the air.

  Then there was Alexander. I had to admit that I’d been having dreams about our future ever since our camping trip. I dreamt that we were living in his giant house, raising our baby together. Our days were filled with walks around the neighborhood, and lunch dates, and the best lovemaking I’d ever experienced. But that was just a dream. In reality, we’d only grazed the subject of the baby, and I could tell it made Alexander uncomfortable. Surely I’d thrown him for a loop these past few months. Here he was, this smart, sexy CEO living the single life. I was sure the last thing he wanted was to be tied down with me and our baby.

  I didn’t know if I should be thinking of this child as our baby. I couldn’t help it. Now I understood why the men who donated sperm at the clinic did so anonymously. Our trip camping was the best date I’d ever been on in my life, but that only made things more complicated. I was starting to regret having gotten involved with Alexander at all. What was I thinking? Even though I was scared of failing as a parent, I didn’t regret this baby, not even for a second. I simply regretted the situation it had put me in.

  Sometime during my overanalyzing, I must have dozed off, because I woke up to Jane’s scratchy voice in my ear. “I bet it’ll be good practice,” Jane said, startling me.

  “Wh-what?” I said, sitting up in my chair.

  Jane gestured toward the doors. “Helping out with the twins. You’ll be a diaper-changing ninja by the time your little one makes an appearance.”

  I sighed. “I hope so.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jane said. She rested her hand on my shoulder like I was one of her students. Jane could be over-the-top with the advice sometimes, like a Dr. Phil wannabe, but I knew that she meant well. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re scared. There’s nothing like a maternity ward to make an expectant mom freak out. But you’ll be fine! I promise!”

  “Thanks, Jane,” I replied lamely. We made polite chit-chat for another few minutes before a nurse came to bring us to Liana’s room.

  As if in slow-motion, I walked on my tiptoes behind Jane into Liana’s room. Liana, her hair still annoyingly in place, was in the hospital bed holding a baby in a blue knit cap, while Greg was sitting next to her with the other baby, this one in a pink cap.

  “One of each?” Jane screeched.

  “One of each,” Liana said with a smile.

  Jane moved closer to Liana and doted over the babies, giving them each an insurmountable number of air kisses. I stood back and let her have her time, as I knew I wanted my own time with Liana and the babies without Jane getting in the way. When she was all out of energy, Jane said her goodbyes with a promise to send over dinner for Liana and Greg later in the week.

  When Jane stepped out of the room, I took a few steps forward. “What are their names?” I whispered. There was something about babies that made me lower my voice a few notches.

  “This sweet girl is Hayley Reese,” Greg said, laying a soft kiss on her forehead.

  I looked over at Liana to learn about the other half of this perfect pair. “Casey, this is your godchild, Aiden William Holdstead,” she said. Tears welled in my eyes. “That is, of course, if you’ll have him.”

  “Of course,” I said, catching the stream running down my cheeks before it hit the babies. Liana held Aiden up to me, and I took him in my arms as slowly as possible. It had been a long time since I’d held a baby. He was gorgeous. I tried to keep my hands from shaking as I blew little kisses at him. Time stood still for a while. I switched with Greg so I could have a chance to hold Hayley, who had huge eyes just like her mom.

  “Liana, sweetheart!” I looked up to see Liana’s parents, luggage in tow, in the doorway. I’d met them probably half a dozen times at birthdays and holidays, but I was still caught a bit off-guard when Liana’s mother came over and pulled me in for a hug. “Is that a little bun in the oven of your own, Casey?”

  I nodded as I handed Hayley over to her grandmother. This was the first time I’d experienced people noticing my pregnancy just by looking at me. I’d been living in tunic tops and flowy dresses to cover my bump, but, in all the chaos, I’d thrown on the first thing I could find this morning.

  “Well, you’ll be great,” Liana’s mom said.

  “What?” I asked before taking the chance to consider what she meant.

  “As a mother,” she said. “You look like a natural already.” I hoped she was right.

  Chapter 16

  Alexander

  The last time I was this nervous was over a decade earlier, at my interview for Emory. The feeling I had when the admissions officer shook my hand was still fresh in my mind, as if it were yesterday. I had all the same symptoms, if that’s what you could call it. My hands were shaking, I could feel drops of sweat making their way from the back of my neck downward, and I could barely form words into proper sentences. Walking up to Casey’s doorway, I told myself that the worst thing that could happen was that she could turn me down, once and for all.

  But that worst thing was pretty damn terrible. I was falling in love with Casey, and I didn’t know if she wanted me in her life at all.

  Knock, knock, knock. I stood with my legs slightly apart, wondering how my knock had sounded. Was it too aggressive? Too weak? Too many knocks? Too few? Get it together, Alexander, I told myself.

  The chain clanked against the lock as the doorknob slowly turned. “What do you want, Alexander?” Casey asked. She seemed less than thrilled to see me, but that wasn’t what caught me off guard. In an athletic tank top and yoga pants, Casey’s baby bump was visible to me for the first time. She wasn’t much more than four months along so the bump wasn’t enormous, but it was enough to make me take the smallest step backward.

  “I... uh…” Just as it happened in my Emory interview, I froze. I didn’t know what to say next.

  “That’s what I thought,” Casey said. She began to close the door, but I reached my arm out to stop her.

  “Can we please talk?” I said. I reached forward and handed Casey the bou
quet of roses I’d been clutching for dear life.

  She sighed. As peculiar as it was, her voice didn’t sound angry. It had notes that more closely resembled curiosity. “Fine.” She stepped aside and made room for me to squeeze inside her apartment, taking the flowers from my hand.

  Though the sight of the baby bump caught me by surprise, I had to admit that it wasn’t a disappointment. That was our child, whatever that meant right now. I hoped Casey understood that this was all as new for me as it was for her. I just hoped that Brett’s advice would serve me well.

  Casey looked absolutely stunning. Even with a quarter of the makeup she had worn on most of our dates and wrinkled clothing she had obviously slept in, she was beautiful. Her delicate skin crinkled around her eyes in a way that said she hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep, but her eyes were still as brown and bold as ever. “You look gorgeous, as usual,” I said, hoping to break the ice.

  “Thanks,” Casey whispered. A faint blush appeared on her face. She walked across the apartment and sat on the couch, motioning for me to follow.

  “Casey, there’s something I want you to know,” I said.

  Her eyes met mine. “What’s that?”

  “I want to raise this child together.” I had never heard my voice sound more confident, but I knew in my heart this was the move I was meant to make.

  “You…what?”

  “I know that our relationship started off a bit, well, unconventional,” I said. “But I really care about you, and I’ve started to care about this baby. I thought things were going really well, but you haven’t returned my calls in weeks. I guess I’d just like to know why.”

  Casey opened her mouth to speak, but tears came falling down instead. What had I said to upset her? I thought I had been as polite as I could while still being matter-of-fact. Seeing Casey cry broke my heart into a thousand tiny pieces. I pulled her in and laid her head on my shoulder. She let out slow, desperate sobs, and all I could think was that, if I was the source of this hurt, it would be best for me to leave Casey and her baby alone.

  “Maybe this was a mistake,” I said, trying to hold back my own tears. “I should go. I’m sorry that I’ve upset you.” I slowly stood up from the couch and turned my head to face Casey, trying to memorize every detail of her. God, I hoped this wasn’t the last time I’d ever see her.

  “Wait,” Casey said, grabbing my hand. “It’s not you.”

  In the gentlest voice I could muster, I asked, “Then what is it?”.

  I listened in awe as Casey’s walls came down and she went through her childhood in meticulous detail. For the first time since I’d met her, I felt like I was seeing the whole picture. It turned out that Casey’s upbringing was much rougher than I could have imagined. Her father had never been in the picture, and she lived a relatively normal life until her mother died in a car accident when she was ten years old. As if that weren’t enough to turn a young girl’s world upside down, Casey had no other immediate family, so she was sent from foster home to foster home until she turned eighteen.

  Casey walked over to the end table and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. As I traced my fingers over each first and last name, she explained that these were the names of the fourteen families she’d lived with over the course of eight years. Fourteen. That meant she’d spent an average of only seven months with each family. What kind of life was that for a teenager? I was completely shocked, and also heartbroken that Casey had endured such a tough time.

  “Once I was eighteen, I was on my own,” Casey explained. “Some of my friends in foster care got lucky and ended up being adopted by their foster parents. Others at least had consistent foster parents who they lived with for years. I wasn’t so lucky.”

  I didn’t know the proper response, so I simply said what I was thinking. “That’s awful, Case. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Most people don’t,” Casey said. “I don’t really like to talk about it. It brings back a lot of hurt, plus a lot of people see it as an excuse or sob story.”

  “Sob story? For what?”

  Casey nodded as though she’d answered this question a dozen times before. “All different things. Foster kids have a reputation.” She paused, choking on the words that followed. “My childhood was ruined the second I was called to the principal’s office to be told my mother was in the hospital. I don’t think any good foster parent could have changed that.”

  “Were there any?” I asked. “I mean, good foster parents.”

  “Some were better than others,” Casey said. “The Foresters threw me a birthday party when I turned twelve, and the father of the Baez family gave me a few driving lessons. In the long run, though, no one wanted a teenager for the long-term. I was an old mutt in a pet store full of puppies.”

  I wished so badly that I could take Casey’s pain away. So much made sense now—why Casey wanted a family, why she was hesitant to get involved in a relationship, why she hadn’t been able to finish school. For a split second, I was upset that she hadn’t told me sooner, but I realized how much courage it must have taken for her to open up at all.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said. I knew how lame it sounded, but it was the truth. “I wish there were something I could do to make it better.”

  Casey looked down at her stomach and smiled. “You already are. You’re giving me the greatest gift I could ask for… a family.”

  I frowned and looked down at the floor, knowing that the family she meant was likely just her and the baby, not the three of us. “I’m glad.”

  “I’m sorry,” Casey said. “I guess this is why I, uh, haven’t been returning your calls. It’s just hard for me to let people in.”

  “It’s alright,” I said.

  Casey shook her head. “No, it’s not. And I’m sorry. I really had a great time camping with you and I sort of just freaked out.”

  “Case, if this is what you want, you and me, we can work through this together,” I started, not exactly sure where I was going to end up. “I’m not only here for the good times. I’m here for the good and the bad.”

  “Did you… did you mean what you said earlier?” Casey asked.

  “About what?”

  “You know… about us raising the baby together.”

  “Of course,” I said, meeting her gaze. “Look, I know things started off on a weird note for us. Ok, beyond a weird note. But why should that have any bearing on our future?”

  Casey hesitated before responding. “I suppose.” She cracked a smile. “I can’t believe such a hottie wants to raise a kid with me. Damn.”

  The mood had changed, and it was absolutely exhilarating to know Casey felt the same way about me that I felt about her. The dark cloud above our relationship had been lifted, and we shifted gears in the conversation to fill each other in on the past few weeks of our lives. Casey told me stories of the craziest patients that had come into the clinic, while I showed her an ‘80s rock band parody I found online that I’d been dying for her to see.

  Casey’s infectious giggle gave me the courage to push a step further. “I do have one more question.”

  “Don’t press your luck, Mr. Preston,” Casey said with a laugh. “What is it?”

  “With the holidays coming up, I was wondering if you wanted to come to Tampa with me to have Christmas with my family,” I said. Casey was quite the mystery, so I didn’t know what to expect in her response.

  “A real Christmas?” Casey asked, seemingly confused and excited. “I’d love to!”

  I’d come to Casey’s apartment not knowing if this was going to be the end of our relationship or the start of something more serious. It meant everything to know that it was the latter. We didn’t talk too much about the baby—after all, we’d still only been dating for a few months—but it was nice to know that it was no longer a topic to avoid. If someone had told me a few months earlier that this was the situation I’d be in, I would’ve told them to stop joking… or given them a drug test. Now, Casey was
all I could think about. The idea of bringing her to meet my family brought a smile to my face.

  Casey curled up against me on the couch, and, for a moment, the rest of the world didn’t seem to matter. “Casey,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want to donate sperm anymore,” I said with a laugh. “I think I’ve already done pretty well.”

  Chapter 17

  Casey

  The naked trees reflected in the rearview mirror as I peered out the window, laughing at one of Alexander’s ridiculous jokes. How had the first two hours of our journey to Tampa already passed? It felt as though we had just stopped at the gas station to fill the gas tank, and, here we were, with just under four hours to go. Besides Liana, I had never been able to tolerate long car rides with anyone—until Alexander.

  From the moment he’d shown up at my door with breakfast and coffee three hours earlier, I knew this ride was going to be special.

  “Well?” Alexander said, pulling my mind back into our conversation.

  “Sorry… what was that?”

  Instead of getting upset that I hadn’t been paying attention, Alexander laughed it off. Damn was he different from the assholes I’d dated in the past. “I asked if you were nervous about meeting my family.”

  “A little,” I said. I gulped, knowing that I should be honest. “Ok, more than a little. I don’t know what you’ve told them about me—or if you’ve told them about me. What about the baby? What are we? Do we have a label?” I knew I was rambling but I couldn’t help it. These were the thoughts that had been bubbling under in my mind for the month since Alexander had asked me to go.

  “I don’t want you to stress, babe,” Alexander said. He took his right hand off the steering wheel and placed it gently on my knee. “It’s bad for the baby.”

  I turned my face away from him to hide my obvious blushing. I had butterflies in my stomach, both because he was comfortable enough with me to use a pet name, and because he was talking like a true father. “I can’t help it.”