Even at Levi’s prompting, all she felt growing within her was denial.
The certain sense that it simply couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be fair. After all the waiting. After all the work. To finally be so close to reaching her goals— A pang of guilt struck her hard in the chest.
Selfish.
If she was pregnant, there wouldn’t be any room for that kind of thinking. Their baby would deserve better.
Their baby …
Hers and Levi’s. This thing between them wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a single night. It wasn’t supposed to turn into something Elise had begun wondering if she could live without. It wasn’t supposed to be love.
Levi was leaving in three weeks’ time.
But a baby would change everything.
A baby was forever.
More important than the plans she had for her studio. More important than anything. And though the idea of her life changing so radically scared her near senseless, Elise realized one thing … She wouldn’t be alone.
All the ways that Levi had surprised her over the last month came rushing to the fore. His generosity and confidence. The way he forced her to let him be there for her even when she’d tried to push him away. He was more than she’d expected. More than either of them had given him credit for … and if any of these fears were grounded and they were having a baby together … she had faith that together they’d make it work.
The front door opened and closed with a muffled thud, followed by the jangle of keys landing in the clutter catcher.
Elise was off the couch in a blink. It hadn’t bothered her when he’d left the way he had. The threat of everything changing so drastically—all the plans they had would have to be reshuffled. She might have been more concerned if he’d taken the whole thing in stride. But hearing that front door close, she hadn’t quite realized the way she’d been waiting for him to come back. How desperately she’d wanted to be with him. Have his arms around her and his common sense and straight thinking in her ear.
How much she’d needed his reassurance that everything was going to be okay.
She’d nearly closed the distance to him—the need within her pulling faster than her feet could move—when he stopped her by holding out a nondescript brown paper bag between them.
“Pregnancy tests.”
Elise took the bag and tipped the contents into her hand. A two-pack of over-the-counter stick tests.
Of course. It made perfect sense. And Levi was always thinking.
The lines in his face were etched deep, fixed with strain. Reaching out, she smoothed a hand over his arm. “Are you okay?”
Stiffening beneath her touch, Levi took a cool step back. “I guess we’ll find out in the next few minutes or so. Though the pharmacist said a negative result on one of these sticks doesn’t guarantee you aren’t pregnant.”
She’d heard that before from Ally when she’d been trying to get pregnant and had to pee on six different sticks over two weeks before she’d finally gotten the positive result. There wasn’t nearly the wiggle room if the reading was positive.
Stuffing his fists into the front pockets of his jeans, he nodded at the boxes. “Look, why don’t you take the first test?”
“Sure,” she answered, nerves once again turning her stomach against her.
She peered across the canyon opening between them. Levi looked hard and unyielding. Utterly unavailable to her.
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she tried to assure herself she was just being sensitive. Emotions were running high, and she was reading more than she should into what was probably a completely normal reaction.
Levi was as overwhelmed as she was. Once they got the results—once they knew where they stood—he’d be able to respond the way she’d come to expect him to.
Picking at the outer packaging, Elise headed down the hall to the bathroom, only realizing that he’d been following her when she muttered a curse at her inability to get past the cardboard and Levi reached over her shoulder and grabbed the box.
He planned to follow her into the bathroom.
They’d shared a lot of things over the past month, but this wasn’t one of them.
Stopping him with a palm at the center of his chest, she shook her head. “Just give me some privacy and I’ll be right out.”
The lines between his brows dug deeper, the angles of his features going harder as if he were bracing to object. But then his eyes met with hers and he took a step back.
The two minutes Levi had been standing on the far side of that bathroom door felt like the longest of his life. But then the door swung open and Elise stepped tentatively out. Over her shoulder, he spied the slim white stick of plastic resting on the side of the bathtub, looking about as innocuous as a bomb about to detonate.
Elise raised her hand toward him, but then let it drop and stepped past. “It says to wait three minutes. We can set the timer on the microwave.”
Holding up his left arm, he answered, “I set one on my watch.”
“Well, then, I’d like to get a glass of water.”
He didn’t want to leave the doorway. Didn’t want to let that little stick with its tiny window out of his sight. Hell, he hadn’t even wanted to let Elise take the test without him there to ensure she did it correctly. Not because he didn’t trust her to be honest with him, but because it was just too damn important.
Elise was staring at him expectantly. Waiting for him to follow her back to the kitchen, he assumed. Fair enough. Rationally, he knew his presence wouldn’t impact the results or timing of the test. And yet forcing his feet to move proved nearly impossible.
With a nod, he followed her back to the small table and chairs. “Sit down, Elise. I’ll get you some water.”
The legs of her chair scraped over the floor behind him as he ran the tap a second before filling a glass. The kitchen was too small. Cramped. Outdated.
Turning back to Elise, he set the water in front of her. “You’ll have enough money to move. Buy a little house or something. If that’s what you’d like.” Although a part of him thought a building with a doorman might be safer. Maybe something down in Streeter-ville, like in the 680 building on Lake Shore Drive. There was a market, coffee shop, salon, security, parking—
Gray eyes gone wide with confusion blinked back at him. “What?”
“This apartment is fine for you, but if you’re pregnant, you’ll probably want something bigger. Safer.”
A nod.
Good. He didn’t want to have to argue with her about it. Only as the seconds ticked past he almost wondered if arguing wouldn’t have been a step above the silence.
He didn’t like it.
They’d eaten at this table a dozen times. He’d laid Elise back and treated her body like dessert on it at least twice. It was always with the laughing and the talk with them. But not now.
A frown pulled at Elise’s mouth as she traced the beads of condensation on her glass. “What did you mean, I’d ‘have enough money to move’?”
If the woman sitting across from him had been anyone other than Elise, he might have waited to get a lawyer involved before having this conversation. But with her, he just wanted to be straightforward—alleviate whatever concerns he could. She wasn’t mercenary. His finances had never been a topic of discussion. Hell, she probably didn’t