Page 49 of One Night with the Doctor

He didn’t know what would greet him but he wasn’t prepared for the wan-looking woman before him. Her amber eyes were dull, her hair was lank and her eyes had dark rings beneath them.

She looked wretched.

‘Oh, my God!’ Sebastian stepped closer, a strong urge to hug her riding him but she shrank back into the shadows of the house, which appeared to be in complete darkness, and he stopped.

Pushing his hands into his pockets to prevent a repeat performance, he said, ‘You look… awful. What’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me?’ His heart pounded as he thought of all the terminal and degenerative diseases he’d come across in his career. ‘Are you… are you sick?’

She snorted. ‘Yeah. Not much of a catch now, hey?’

A spike of undiluted rage hit Sebastian’s bloodstream and he was pleased his hands were firmly ensconced in his pockets as the urge to shake her took hold. ‘You think I care about that?’ he snapped. ‘I just want to know what’s wrong, damn it! And if you don’t tell me now so help me I’ll⁠—’

‘I’m pregnant.’

Callie hadn’t meant to blurt it like that – she really hadn’t but he was being pretty damn insistent and, in the absence of a better plan it just fell out of her mouth.

Geraldine’s you’ll have to talk to him some time had been taunting her all day and now he knew. But Callie didn’t think this is what Geri had in mind.

Damn it, she hadn’t been ready to tell him, yet. Although, honestly, she doubted she was ever going to be ready for one of the hardest conversations of her life. It was right up there with begging Andy not to jump and having to break the news to Zack that he was going to go back and live with his mother.

She watched Sebastian’s face grow very still as the news sank in. The light from above shone on the golden highlights in his hair and eyebrows. It danced off his lashes, pooled in the hollows beneath his glorious cheekbones and caressed the twin curves of his lips.

‘That night… after Frank… in the shower.’ He said it slowly like he was trying to piece it all together on the fly. ‘Bloody hell…’ He glanced at her stomach. ‘You’re pregnant.’

Yep. Bloody hell. Callie couldn’t have put it better. He rubbed a weary hand across his eyes and she sighed as she stood aside and indicated for him to enter. Now it was out there they might as well deal with it.

Callie was conscious of the door clicking shut and him following her inside. She crossed to the couch where she’d been lying in a ball of misery all day and sat, tucking her legs up beneath her, pulling the blanket over her lap. The only light was coming from the flickering, silent television but he didn’t seem to mind.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘What to think.’

Callie regarded him steadily. ‘How about that I trapped you into this by insisting that you not wear a condom that night?’

‘No. Jesus… No.’ He sat down beside her. ‘You didn’t put a gun to my head, Callie. I wanted it as much you did. And I know this news must be as much a shock to you as it is to me.’

Oh yeah. That was for damn sure.

They both stared at the television for what seemed like an age until Sebastian finally spoke. ‘Where do we go from here?’

Callie shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Somehow his refusal to blame her, his acceptance of culpability, had taken the wind out of her sails. She’d been preparing for outrage and, in the stark absence of it, she had nothing. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘Do you… do you want the baby?’

Callie recoiled at Sebastian’s tentative question. The one she’d been avoiding all day. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated, ignoring the jab of pain that kicked her in the centre of her chest every time her mind drifted to the issue. She’d thought this question would be so clear cut but it wasn’t.

Which probably made her a terrible person.

‘Do you?’

He shoved a hand through his hair as he leaned forward at the hips. ‘I… don’t know. This is a shock. I’m sorry, I just don’t know what to think or say.’

‘Yeah.’ That pretty much summed it up. She rose to her feet, her legs wobbly and her stomach lurching. ‘That makes two of us.’

He frowned. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To bed,’ she said, not bothering to look at him. ‘I’ve done nothing but think about this all day. I just don’t want to think any more.’

She’d get her shit together tomorrow but right now she was just too damn tired.

Such was her exhaustion, Callie crashed head long into sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. And she slept deeply. So deeply that waking suddenly from the depths of her slumber several hours later was utterly disorientating.