Page 107 of Nine Month Contract
“Trista.” His voice cracks as he rushes over, grabbing my hands and fighting for breath as he hovers over me. “Are you okay?”
“The baby is fine,” I reply quickly, trying to calm him down with the most important fact. I have two giant mountain men losing their shit in my room, and if I don’t get control of this situation, they’ll need their heart rates checked too.
“Areyouokay?” Wyatt asks, repeating his earlier question but in asoft, strangled whisper. A whisper that cuts me right to the core, like it always does when he murmurs to my soul like that.
When his eyes lock on mine, my vision blurs with tears, and I begin shaking uncontrollably, the past week of emotions all coming to a head.
“Oh, baby,” he croaks and, without hesitating, crawls into the bed beside me, taking me in his arms as I cry into his chest, aching over the fact that I haven’t smelled him in a week. Now that he’s here, I don’t know how I’ll find the strength to let him go again.
Luke’s voice clears from beside us, and I faintly hear him say, “I’ll be in the waiting room.”
I feel Wyatt’s head nodding above me. “Mom’s waiting out there too.”
And that little remark only makes me cry more. Luke didn’t say he was going home. He said he was going to the waiting room, even before knowing his mother was out there. They’ll both wait in the waiting room for who knows how long. This family gives and gives so easily, and I’m just the big, dumb idiot who doesn’t know how to take it.
Wyatt holds me for I don’t know how long. It feels like seconds and hours all at the same time, but I know his shirt is soaked with my tears by the time the phlebotomist comes in to take some blood.
“I’m an asshole,” I say, touching the Band-Aid on the crook of my arm as the tech wheels her cart out of the room.
“You’re not an asshole.” Wyatt dips his head down to kiss my arm where the needle was. He does it so casually, so effortlessly. Like affection is natural for him.
“I didn’t eat, and that’s why I fainted. The doctor pretty much confirmed it.” I sniff and pull back from him, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. He uses his flannel sleeve that smells like sawdust and wipes my nose for me. It’s weird and even more intimate than kissing my arm, which only hurts my heart more. “I’m so sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?”
“For being a bitch about your breakfasts. I’ve been leaving them on the step every day.”
His jaw muscle slides under his beard. “I noticed.”
I shake my head. “I just can’t get too close to you, Wyatt.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t my baby,” I reply honestly, my throat burning with that admission. “Because I need to be more responsible. Because I’m getting paid to take care of myself, and I let the stuff with you and me get in the way of all of that. I have a plan, Wyatt, and none of this is a part of my plan.”
Wyatt’s brows twitch knowingly. “I love plans just as much as the next person, but plans can change, Lucky.”
“Not mine,” I reply firmly, my nose wrinkling as I try to harden my emotions by sheer force of will. “I don’t connect with people the way others do. I’m fundamentally flawed. I always push people away. I’ve done it my whole life because I know it’s for the best. Everyone in the world has another language they use that I’ve never understood. Animals, though…they always hear me. They give me what I need. That’s why my plan is so important.”
“That’s funny because I feel like you hear me better than anyone I’ve ever spoken to,” Wyatt says, his voice soft.
I shake my head adamantly. “But there’s still so much you don’t say to me.”
“Like what?”
“Like why didn’t you tell me Robyn was pregnant?” I glance up and see the confusion in his eyes as his body stills.
“Who told you about the baby?”
“Does it matter?”
His lips thin. “I don’t like to remember that part of my life.”
“But don’t you see? She’s your ‘one who got away,’ even if what she did was messed up. You wanted a family with her. How on earth would I ever feel secure enough to have feelings for you when I know I’m just second choice? Hell, technically, I’m not even the second choice. I’m the thirteenth choice. There is nothing lucky about that.”
“Trista—”
“We have to end this…for both our sakes and, most of all, the baby’s. I am not built to be part of a family. We don’t speak the same language. We need to go back to this just being a business deal. I’ll go tothis baby shower and play the part of the hired surrogate because that’s the job, but after that, we have to create some distance.”
