I Saw the Comments and Ran With His Baby

Two pink lines. I held the test so tight the plastic bit into my palm.

My husband knelt at the foot of the bed with my foot resting in his hand, working lotion into my ankle an inch at a time. Then a line of comments slid across my vision.

Nobody else in the room could see them. [The standin girl gets the fivestar treatment again, but hey, I'm not jealous.

Everything the side character teaches him, he practices on her and delivers to the heroine.] [Last time the side character gets to torture our male lead. One day left on the clock.

The one that got away lands tomorrow, and he files for divorce and moves on to the main storyline.] [I love that the side character ends up burned over her whole body.

Scares the heroine and the kid into tears. Doesn't even get to stay on as the housekeeper. Cracks me up every time.] Burned over my whole body. Thrown out.

Not even good enough to scrub his floors. That was my ending. I had been clinging to this man for ten years. The comments said he'd hated me down to the bone the whole time.

I yanked my nightgown back down over my knees. "No. Skip the lotion." Chapter 1 Everett's palm was still full of lotion. He frowned like the sentence hadn't reached him yet.

A strap from my nightgown was tangled around two of his fingers. He didn't look away. He just held his hand open between us. "You sure?" [His disgust is written all over his face.

He wants this over with.] [Remember the night she forgot the lotion? She dragged him around until two in the morning and CEO Halloran skipped work the next day.

Killed a tenmilliondollar contract without blinking.

Spare a thought for the corporate drones whose numbers died that quarter.] The comments always sounded like they had been in the room.

They just never noticed the one thing I could see. He hadn't taken his hand back. More of them slid past. I kept my face flat and pulled my foot out of his palm. "It's too hot.

Feels sticky. Not tonight." His lashes came down. His throat moved once. He wiped the lotion off with a tissue, stood, and went to turn the AC down. Impatience. It had to be.

This marriage was my idea and his obligation. I had talked myself into it. He had been backed into it. No point making a fool of myself over it twice.

The man who used to set my curfew was my husband now.

I twisted the corner of the blanket in my fist. "If we ever split up, would you—" His hand stopped halfway to the heating pad. "We won't.

I promised your parents I'd take care of you." [Thought she was going to be a handful again. Nope, she's just playing hard to get.

Only one night left anyway.] [My heart breaks for him. Holding the line out of duty while the love of his life is an ocean away.] So he remembered my hands and feet ran cold.

So he warmed them. Duty. That was the whole answer.

I kicked the blanket back and took the heating pad out of his hands before he could set it against my feet. "I've got it." He frowned, said nothing, and clicked off the lamp.

The bedroom dropped into dark. He slept in a full matching pajama set, arms at his sides, straight as a man laid out at a funeral.

Any other night I'd have curled into him like a cat and rubbed my face along his shirt. Not tonight. I turned my back to him. Behind me his breathing came fast and uneven.

He had to be sick of it by now. The room was black enough that I couldn't see my own hand. I ran my palm down my arm, over smooth skin, and let all of it settle. Still smooth.

For now. Burned over my whole body. Nothing I did was ever going to move the one that got away out of his head.

Maybe if I stopped bothering him, he'd let this end with a little dignity left. Something under my pillow woke me up. It was the test from yesterday.

Two lines, bright and unarguable. Perfect timing for my parents, who kept nagging for a grandbaby. I had been saving it as a surprise for him.

More comments drifted by. [Is the plot running fast? I thought she only used the baby as leverage after the leads reunite.] [It's fine.

Remember how he got dragged into this marriage. Even if she told him today, he'd make her get rid of it. Same ending either way.] I put a hand flat on my stomach.

Nothing showing yet. My chest felt like someone had set a paving stone on it. A thought came up and would not go back down. Before he could say it. Before tomorrow got here.

What if I left first? Chapter 2 Mrs. Kowalski knocked. I shoved the test under the pillow before I answered. When I came out she read the room and headed for the kitchen.

Everett was already in his suit, sitting square in the middle of the custom twoseater he'd had built for the dining table.

The comments switched into roast mode. [Here comes the koalaclingingtoatree scene. Good thing Mrs. K moves fast for her age.] [Absurd, part two. Highneedsbaby energy.

The man is not obligated to order a custom twoseater, and he is definitely not obligated to handfeed a grown woman.] I stopped walking. Took a breath.

Then I went around him and sat in the chair to his right.

He caught it out of the corner of his eye, lifted his head out of the paper, and paused when he took in what I had on. "It's not as cold this morning.

I already turned the heat on." I made a small sound and kept eating. The dress I had on was the only modest thing I owned. His eyes moved to my mouth.

He looked down and cleared his throat. "Strawberries. Already washed. If you want to play with them, now works." "Behave this time.

Keep your hands to yourself." I picked up a fork and put a whole strawberry in my mouth. "It's fine.

You can eat the green tops too." He frowned like he couldn't place what had changed about me.

He filled a bowl with oatmeal without looking, then held the spoon up to my lips. "Eat more." I took it out of his hand. "I can feed myself." The frown dug in deeper.

Something dark sat at the back of his eyes. Mrs.

Kowalski came in with two mimosas and stopped short. "Ma'am, you can feed yourself!" I laughed it off and pretended not to see the wounded look in those brown eyes.

I reached for the glass, then remembered. I wasn't allowed to drink anymore. My fingers came back. He wasn't reading anymore.

Whatever was going on behind his face, none of it made it to the surface. I said it before I could stop myself. "Everett.

Do you like babies?" His gaze dropped and stayed on my stomach, rounded out a little from breakfast. My hand tightened on the toast. My pulse climbed. Two seconds.

Then he stood and took the glass off the table in front of me. "You're not in a position for that right now." I hadn't caught up yet.

The comments answered for me. [Okay, nobody's going to mention the side character is acting strange today? She used to need him to spoonfeed her breakfast.

Today she has evolved into a woman with two working hands?] [Right? She'd wear a camisole and grind herself against him through the whole meal.

He had to bite the tips off her strawberries and pass them over. Rough life for a traditional man.] [Ha, did nobody catch the good part? He tells her to eat more.

Only a man who doesn't want a woman hopes she gets fat. And she still thinks a baby will keep him. He's already thinking about saving himself for the heroine.] [Agreed.

My suggestion is she gets rid of it. The firstborn heir has to be the heroine's.] I rubbed my stomach. My nose stung. Did he really hate me that much? He handed the glass to Mrs.

Kowalski. "Mrs. Kowalski. She's on her period. No alcohol." A wall of comments scrolled past calling him a gentleman. Not one of them stopped to ask how he knew.

He picked his suit jacket up off the couch and gave me one long look on his way out. "I'm going to work." "Next time your period makes you feel bad, tell me." I let out a breath where he couldn't hear it.

Back in the bedroom, I dropped the test in the trash. The sheets still smelled like him. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around a room full of matching couple's knickknacks.

This marriage was one long piece of nonsense, and every bit of it was mine. I started hating Everett Halloran when I was twelve.

Then I spent ten years turning that hate into a habit I couldn't quit. It started in preschool. That was the year my parents worked out I couldn't be left alone.

Chapter 3 My parents were free spirits. Two weeks home for the holidays, and the rest of the year they were somewhere on a map I couldn't pronounce.

Lucky for me, they'd had my brother first. I couldn't stick to them, so I stuck to him. Every single day.

I pushed his door open one afternoon and a hardcover the size of a brick caught me square in the forehead. My brother said it through his teeth. "Cleo.

Could you give me five feet of privacy. Ever." He put an ocean between us over it. So I moved on to my best friend. Five nights a week at her house got back to my parents.

That Christmas they brought home a boy six years older than me. An orphan my grandparents had put through school.

He'd lived in the Ashgrove house since he was fourteen, and nobody had ever filed adoption paperwork. On paper he was nothing to us at all. Mature. Steady. A stickler.

My parents slept great. Everett watched me like a security camera. "Home by nine." "No skirts above the knee." "Sit up straight when you eat." I pushed back.

I asked him who put him in charge. He took a slow sip of water. "Your parents aren't here.

I'm your legal guardian until you turn eighteen." Living under him didn't cure the clinging. It just took away every place to put it. My best friend called it what it was.

An addiction. I couldn't get rid of Everett, so I decided to use him. I moved in close and slid an arm around his waist. "Warden. Finals are over.

Let me off tonight." He frowned and turned his face away.

His hands hovered with nowhere to land. "Don't." I smiled like I'd gotten away with something, and everything in me settled. So I kept doing it. Payback.

I'd cling to him until he ran the way my brother had. The joke stopped being a joke the day I fell first. Senior year of college, somebody put something in my drink.

I didn't call campus security. I didn't call my parents. I called Everett. He carried me out of that building, and for the rest of the night he couldn't get his hand free of mine.

By morning the photos had reached my parents before we did. My father's voice came down one sentence at a time, hard enough to rattle the glasses on the coffee table.

Everett stood there and took it. He didn't step back. His jaw was locked, his hands were shaking, and every word out of him came out clean. It was a promise to my father.

It landed on me too, crouched in the hallway, listening. "I'll marry Cleo. I'll be responsible for her." I was so busy being happy that I never once looked at his hands.

Clinging to him turned into a habit. A crush wearing a revenge costume, and I was the only one it ever fooled. [The leads finally reunited!

They went straight out for boba!] [They even traded childhood photos off each other's phones. I'm obsessed.] But the comments had told me the truth.

Everett didn't love me, and there was somebody he did. I was the standin. What happens to a standin who gets pregnant? Something pulled at my ring finger hard enough to sting.

By the time I understood, the ring was already off. I'd picked that set myself. Loud, busy, nothing like him.

I remembered how his eyebrows drew together when he slid it on in front of my parents. "Mrs. Kowalski. Make up the guest room.

I'm sleeping there tonight." I dropped the ring in a drawer.

In the wedding photo on the nightstand he was pressed against me, arms locked around my waist, those dark brown eyes giving away nothing. I'd always wanted a baby.

A kid with his nose. His eyes. In the good moments I couldn't keep the want off my face. Everett covered it every time. I'd beg.

He'd give me the same flat sentence. "You're not in a position for that." Not in a position. Sure. He was waiting. I reached over and laid the frame face down.

Better to get away from him. At least I could keep this baby. At least when I finally went up in flames, neither of them would be in the room.

Chapter 4 Maybe once the baby was older, Everett would look at all the years he and I had spent under one roof and let him stay. My phone rang.

Everett. "You home?" He sounded worn through. I said yes. There was a pause on his end before he kept going. "Something came up at the office.

I might be late." I was watching the orange light drop past the floortoceiling windows when the comments cut across it. [These two are perfect together.

Grown man, grown woman, no games. Real love. They'll talk straight through dinner.] [Hold on, isn't today their wedding anniversary?] [Celebrating what?

Does he look like a man planning anything? Being with the heroine matters more.] Everett forgot his own birthday. He was never going to remember ours.

Every year since the wedding I'd been the one running around setting it up. It was one of the few days I got to hang off him in broad daylight and call it a holiday.

Candlelit dinner, and then I'd keep him up until the sun came back. I opened my mouth. Mrs. Kowalski knocked. "Ma'am, the balloons are all inflated.

Same arrangement as planned?" "Take it down." She made a confused little sound. I had the phone gripped tight, and my voice carried straight into his ear. "Let the air out.

Strip all of it." Then I breathed in. "Go work. Remember to eat." My stomach growled. Twice. Loud. He was on speaker.

He didn't answer right away. "Do you want me to bring your favorite—" A comment slid past. [He's picking up the heroine on the way.

He's just being polite.] I cut him off. "Don't bother. You don't have to come home at all." He stopped talking. Bring what, exactly?

By the time you're finished, the flower shops and the bakeries are closed. Everything I like is already gone.

The chattering text went back to reporting on the two of them. [The heroine is so gentle. She spilled his coffee and handed him napkins.] [So polite too.

She knows he's married and keeps exactly the right distance. Not like a certain highmaintenance toddler who only knows how to cling.

And that whole guardianandward forbidden romance thing. Gross.] [He won't even look at her. He's shy, right?

How long does this slow burn last, I've given up my morals, ma'am, please just go for it.] I put in earbuds, pulled up a vertical drama app, and stopped reading.

The male lead was on a fresh round of chasing his wife. He was outside her door. He dropped, hard, onto both knees. "You were never anyone's standin.

You're the only one I've ever loved." "Please. Love me one more time." I was still deep in it when the knocking started.

I scrolled down, hit a screen full of ads, and came back to myself. My eyes went past the phone and landed on a face like a storm front, dark brown eyes locked on me.

I jumped and pulled the earbuds out. The comment feed filled with question marks. [???] [The leads had a whole moment going. Why is he home?] Everett was in a mood