Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
“Melanie?” I say again. It comes out softer than I plan.
Her face cycles through surprise, calculation, and something else I can’t tag fast enough. She smiles. “Want a llama. Maybe for your truck, or…” Her words fall away.
I almost laugh. It catches in my chest on something sharper. Up close, she’s exactly the same and completely different. More light behind the eyes. More tired, too. Beautiful in the way that hurts to look at when you don’t own the right to.
I run the math one more time because denial enjoys busywork. The part of me that prefers clean lines wants this solved before words. It isn’t. So my mouth goes tactical-stupid.
“The baby’s not mine, right?”
Her smile falls like a curtain drop. I hear the thud in my own bones and want the sentence back before it finishes vibrating the air. Wrong entry. Wrong tone. Zero bedside manner.
What the fuck am I doing?
“Mel—” I start, but she straightens, the professional calm sliding on like a coat.
“It’s not,” she says, quick and even. “It’s… my boyfriend’s. Freddy. Good ol’ Freddy.”
Good ol’ Freddy. The way she says it slides sideways in my ear, but the two words that matter are the first two. It’s not. They click into place like a lock engaging. Something in my chest stutters, then goes very still.
“Right,” I say. The word tastes like cardboard. “That makes sense.”
Of course it does. She didn’t answer the calls. Timing’s messy. I said I don’t do complicated. A baby is complicated on hard mode. This is what clean lines look like when you keep them—standing in a fluorescent store pretending your heartbeat isn’t audible to the sales associate stocking teething rings.
A woman who looks like her sister hovers within tackle range by a rack of onesies, eyes narrowed, shoulders ready. The calvary. I give her a nod like I see her and I’m not a threat, because I see her and I’m not.
Melanie gestures vaguely at a wall of pacifiers like it’s a skyline. “What are you doing in Saint Pierce?”
“Working a gig through the holidays,” I say, telling her the truth. “Local client. I’ll be in town until after the New Year.”
Her eyebrows jump. “Here? For Christmas?” She recovers fast. “That’s… nice.”
“Could be.” It could be a lot of things if the variables were different. I force my voice level. “You look good.”
A flush edges her cheeks. “Thanks. You look… sturdy.”
I huff a laugh I don’t feel. “Occupational hazard.”
There’s a beat where we could stand in this aisle and rebuild something out of jokes and product demos, pretend this isn’t a crater site. She shifts her weight, and a hand goes to the small of her back without her noticing. The protective reflex in me roars awake—fix the posture, fetch a chair, carry her to a vehicle, plot a route with the least potholes. None of those are my lanes anymore.
I check the clock without looking at my watch. I don’t belong here longer than it takes to be polite and not make a mess. “I should get out of your way.”
“You don’t have to—” she starts, then closes it with a nod that says maybe I do.
“Congratulations,” I say, and I mean it, even if the word scrapes on the way out. “Really.”
Her mouth tips. It doesn’t quite stick as a smile, but it tries. “Thanks.”
I back out without knocking over a single llama (professional pride), tip two fingers to the sister (who looks like she’d put me in time-out if I breathed wrong near the swaddles), and step into the cold. The door bell chimes behind me as I leave.
Outside, Main Street carries on: delivery truck idling, a kid in a puffer jacket skipping over sidewalk seams, wreaths going up crooked over storefronts. I walk two blocks because standing still makes my head too loud.
The extended-stay hotel off Fifth greets me with lobby citrus and carpet that has seen too many hockey tournaments. My room is a rectangle of neutrality: two-burner stovetop, a couch pretending to be a bed, a bed pretending to be comfortable. I drop my pack, key my weapon into the safe, and stand staring at the window while the heater wheezes itself brave.
Seven months ago I watched her tilt her head at a sky full of stars and tell me she didn’t do complicated. We both lied. Or we both wanted it to be true. Now I’m in a room that smells like other people’s dinners and she’s across town building a registry with a man named Freddy who, for all I know, is exactly what she needs—someone who does do complicated, or who doesn’t call it that when it’s love.
My jaw aches. I didn’t realize I was clenching it.
I sit on the edge of the bed, pull out my phone, and do the thing you do when you’re not the guy but you’re still the guy who needs intel: I search. Freddy Melanie Mason Saint Pierce. Add pregnant. Pull pregnant. Add engaged. Nothing meaningful. No soft-focus announcement posts. No brunch photos with captions about “our little pumpkin.” I get a Freddy Mercury tribute page, a Freddy Fred who makes candles in Oregon, a local story about a lost cat named Fredo.