I wasn’t expecting that, and I know my face shows it, as much as I try to hide my reaction. I manage, somehow, not to let any words out of my mouth, like, “Hell no!” Or, “I don’t think that baby’s Aunt Amanda, not to mention Grandma Barb, are going to like that idea.” After all, this is the twenty-first century, I am reasonably enlightened, and that baby is growing inside her body, not mine—not to mention the fact that I know women generally end up doing a lot more of the childcare than men.
I also know a weirdly above-average amount about Oregon parental consent laws, because my brother Brody’s path to fathering Justin was… unusual. So, for example, I know that my consent would be needed in order for her to arrange an adoption.
I don’t say that out loud. There’s too much I need to know before I can start throwing my weight around by citing laws and insisting on rights.
I ask, “Is it already set up? The adoption?”
She shakes her head. “That’s the thing. I guess I wasn’t as sure as I needed to be. I’ve been… procrastinating.”
She’s so sheepish that I have to hold back a smile. OK, so it’s not a done deal.
And suddenly I feel weirdly calm. And certain.
I want this baby.
I even want us to raise it together.
I tell myself that this idea of mine, this together idea, has nothing to do with how the sight of those white teeth worrying the plump flesh of her lip affects me. This is about what’s best for the baby—and maybe also my whole family, because they’re going to go nuts with joy when they hear about another Wilder kid.
I mean, once they get over the whole thing about how I got a woman pregnant in a hotel lobby bathroom in Vegas.
Guess the boy next door has truly left the room.
I’m now a guy who knocked up a woman by way of a one-night stand.
The thought, improbably, makes me smile.
She notices. “You’re smiling.”
“Uh. Long thought-train.”
“No, I mean, smiling’s better than the alternative. I didn’t know if I’d ever track you down, and I didn’t know how you’d react when I did. I mean, some guys—”
“I’m not some guys.”
She raises an eyebrow, and a dimple appears in her cheek. “No,” she says. “You’re definitely not.”
Before I can respond to the tease in her voice—or even fully assimilate it—there’s at least one compliment in there—she says, “I’m glad you’re not being an asshole about it.”
“Well, me too,” I say. “Because I don’t think I could live with myself if I were.”
She cocks her head, eyebrows drawing together. “You’re different than I remembered.”
I shrug. It doesn’t feel like now’s the time to get into it—how I was channeling my brother Easton, how pretty much everything I did that night was out of character for me. “It was a while ago, and things happened quickly.”
She squints at me, and I feel like she’s not totally satisfied with that answer, but she doesn’t call me out.
Quickly, I say, “So tell me where things stand. With the adoption possibility.”
She quickly outlines the situation: a lot of time spent reading adoption profiles and four missed appointments with an adoption counselor. “I need to make a decision soon.”
“You said you weren’t sure that you want to—” I search for the right words. Brody had told me it’s not cool to say ‘give the baby up.’ What about “—do an adoption?” Okay, that’s a little awkward, too, but I’m still figuring this shit out.
A quick movement draws my eyes to where she clutches her wrist with one hand. At first, I think she’s hurt, but then I realize she’s twirling a shiny silver bracelet, round and round; it’s a nervous tick.
“I thought I wanted adoption. I didn’t think… correction, I don’t think I’m mom material. My childhood situation—” She hesitates. “It was just my mom and me growing up. And she left when I was thirteen. For good.”
“I’m sorry.”
She waves it off. “My aunt was good to me. I mean, she was pretty busy with my cousins, but she took good care of me. It’s not like I was in foster care, or abused, or anything.”
I try to imagine being in her shoes, but that lands me about as far as I can imagine from the pile-of-puppies family love I grew up with. Well, at least until my dad died. I want to hug her—and tell her that even if your childhood wasn’t the suckiest thing that could happen to someone, it’s okay to feel sad about it.
Before I can move or speak, she jumps in again. “My mom didn’t have a nurturing bone in her body, and I have no reason to think I’d be any different. I’m just like her in a lot of ways. Neither of us knows how to stay put. I’ve been on the road my whole life, and I can’t imagine wanting it otherwise. And that’s not the right way for a kid to grow up.”
I can’t imagine wanting it otherwise.
Well, shit. That doesn’t sound like someone who’s just been waiting for me to make a marriage offer before changing her mind about an adoption.
And yet…
I would never try to get someone to do something they didn’t want to do. I know when someone tells you who they are, you’re supposed to believe them. And Mari has just told me she doesn’t feel like she can mother a child.
But maybe, if she weren’t in it alone?
“Give this three weeks.” The words are out of my mouth before I can shape them or smooth them.
She stares at me.
“Stay here, design the trailers, help us spec the reno. Let you and me work out what we want to do. Together.”
“Together,” she repeats, sounding pained.
I realize immediately how it sounds, and regroup. “Decide together, I mean. About what makes the most sense for the baby. I could—” I hesitate, not wanting to scare her again, but also wanting to lay out the options. “I could do it. Raise it. And if I did, my family would be behind me a hundred percent.”
She’s thinking about it. Biting her lip. She doesn’t hate the idea, I can tell. My chest fills with something. Excitement. Hope.
I dig in harder. “Give me a chance to make you fall in love with Rush Creek. With my family.”
With me.
No, Kane, I chide myself.
That night in Vegas messed me up. No doubt. I’d never had sex like that, in-your-head, under-your-skin, smacked-in-your-chest sex.
But it was still just sex. I have to put it aside for the bigger good here. My baby’s future. My family’s chance to have a relationship with the kid.
This isn’t about me, or how she feels about me, or how much I want to…
Nope. Just no.
No matter how good it felt to make her beg.
I banish the memories to the brain-porn dungeon and hammer my point home.
“Take some time, figure out what it would mean to let the baby grow up in Rush Creek. Give the idea of staying here a chance.”
Now her mouth is hanging open.
“I—” She closes it. “Kane. That’s—that last part. I don’t want to lie to you. I can’t imagine myself wanting to settle down. I told you how I felt about staying put.”
If I were Gabe, or Clark, or even Brody, I’d push. I’d haul out the big male energy and fight back. I’d tell her why she has to stay, why it’s the only right way.
I might even use sex to do it.
But I’m not Gabe or Clark or Brody.
For better or worse, I’m me.
“I hear you,” I say. “And if you can’t do this, I understand.” I say it with so much conviction, I almost believe it. That it doesn’t matter to me whether she stays or goes. “But if you’re thinking of choosing adoption…”
I reach out to touch her hand where she’s fidgeting with her bracelet.
“Then please give me the chance to convince you to let me and my family raise the baby instead.”