Chapter 5: The Fear and the Forever
The walk home from the clinic was six blocks of pure, unadulterated joy.
Lucy had taken the long way, the way that cut through the park with its half-frozen pond and the path lined with bare-branched trees that would bloom in a few months, just in time for summer. She'd wanted the extra time to sit with the news, to let it settle into her bones before she had to share it. The ultrasound photos were tucked into her coat pocket, still warm from the printer, and every few steps she caught herself touching the edge of them through the fabric, just to make sure they were real.
A boy.
She'd known for approximately two hours and thirty-seven minutes, and she'd already imagined a hundred different versions of him. A boy with Tim's jaw and her stubbornness. A boy who'd inherit his father's calm under pressure and his mother's terrible sense of humor. A boy who'd never know what it felt like to be unwanted, to be an accident, to be a complication.
She stopped at the crosswalk and pressed her hand to her belly, which had finally started to round out beneath her sweater. Nineteen weeks. Nearly halfway. The nausea had faded weeks ago, replaced by an appetite that bordered on feral and a strange, unexpected peace. She wasn't sure when it had happened—the shift from terror to something softer—but somewhere between the supply closet and the night Tim had held her until she fell asleep, she'd stopped running.
The apartment building came into view, and she quickened her pace, already planning how she'd tell him. Maybe she'd make him guess. Maybe she'd hand him the envelope from the clinic and watch his face as he opened it. Maybe she'd just blurt it out the way she did everything else, no preamble, no ceremony.
She was still smiling when she pushed through the front door.
The apartment was quiet, which wasn't unusual. Tim had a key—he'd had one for months, ever since the night she'd locked herself out and had to call him at two in the morning—but he usually texted before he came over. She kicked off her shoes and hung her coat on the hook by the door, the envelope still in her hand, and padded toward the bedroom.
She found him there.
Tim sat on the edge of her bed, elbows on his knees, his head bowed like a man in prayer. He was still in his uniform, the dark blue shirt streaked with something that might have been soot, his hair damp with sweat or rain. His hands hung between his knees, and she noticed they were shaking.
"Tim?"
He looked up.
Something in his face stopped her cold. His eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw tight, and for a moment he just stared at her like he was seeing a ghost.
Then he was moving.
He crossed the room in three strides and kissed her. Not the careful, tender kisses of the past few weeks. This was something else entirely—desperate and raw, like he was trying to crawl inside her, like he'd been holding his breath for hours and she was the first lungful of air.
Lucy dropped the envelope. Her hands came up to his face, his chest, anywhere she could reach, and she kissed him back with equal force. She tasted salt on his lips and wasn't sure whose tears they were.
When he finally pulled back, she was breathless, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"What's gotten into you?" She laughed, but it came out shaky. "Not that I'm complaining, but—"
"I almost died today."
The words landed like a punch to the sternum.
"What?"
Tim's hands were still on her face, his thumbs tracing her cheekbones. Up close, she could see the exhaustion carved into every line of him. The gray beneath his eyes. The way his mouth kept trembling, like he was fighting to keep it together.
"Roof collapse on the west side. Old warehouse, abandoned. We were doing a sweep, looking for squatters. The captain went in first, and the whole thing just—" He closed his eyes. "It came down. Pinned him. I was ten feet away, and I couldn't get to him. For three minutes, I couldn't get to him."
Lucy's hands closed around his wrists. "Is he okay?"
"He's alive. Broken leg, some internal bleeding, but he's alive. They got him out. I rode with him to the hospital. He was conscious the whole time, cracking jokes about how he was too mean to die." Tim's voice cracked. "But those three minutes, Lucy. I thought I was going to die there, and the only thing I could think about was you."
She pulled him toward the bed, and they sat down together, her hands still wrapped around his.
"I kept thinking about all the things I never said," he continued. "All the times I wanted to tell you how I felt and stopped myself because I was scared. Scared you'd run. Scared I'd lose you. Scared of ruining the best thing that's ever happened to me."
"Tim—"
"I'm in love with you." He said it like a confession, like a wound he was finally letting bleed. "Completely. Terrifyingly. I've been in love with you for years, and I've been too much of a coward to admit it because I thought if I said it out loud, you'd disappear."
Lucy felt the tears before she registered them, hot and sudden, sliding down her cheeks. She was laughing and crying at the same time, which was ridiculous, which was exactly what she did when she was overwhelmed.
"You're such an idiot," she said.
"I know."
"I've been in love with you for years too."
He stared at her. "What?"
"You heard me." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I just—I didn't think you wanted this. Any of this. The relationship, the—" She gestured at her belly, at the apartment, at the whole messy situation. "I thought I was just the convenient option. The one who was already there."
"Lucy." His voice was rough. "You've never been convenient. You've been everything."
She kissed him again, softer this time, and he made a sound low in his throat that she felt in her chest.
"I want to spend the rest of my life proving it to you," he said when they broke apart. "I want to be there for every appointment, every midnight feeding, every stupid argument about whose turn it is to change a diaper. I want to wake up next to you every morning and fall asleep next to you every night. I want—"
"Whoa." She held up a hand, laughing despite herself. "Slow down, cowboy. You're going to scare me off."
"I'm not proposing," he said quickly. "I know how you feel about marriage. I'm not asking for that. I'm just asking for—for us. For all of it. Whatever that looks like."
Lucy's heart swelled until it felt too big for her ribs.
"You're really in this?" she asked. "All the way in?"
"All the way."
"Even the gross parts? The diaper blowouts and the sleep deprivation and the way I'm probably going to turn into a nightmare for the next five months?"
"Especially the gross parts."
She kissed him again, then pulled back, suddenly remembering the envelope on the floor. She bent to pick it up, her fingers brushing against the glossy paper.
"I have something for you," she said.
Tim's eyes dropped to the envelope. "What is it?"
"Open it."
He took it from her, his brow furrowing as he tore the edge. The ultrasound photos spilled into his hands—small, grainy images of a being that was half him and half her, curled up like a kidney bean in a sea of black.
He stared at them for a long time.
"We found out the gender today," Lucy said quietly. "I was going to make you guess, but I don't have the patience."
Tim looked up at her, his eyes shining.
"It's a boy," she said.
His face crumpled.
He pulled her into his arms so fast she lost her balance, and they tumbled backward onto the bed, the ultrasound photos scattering around them. Tim buried his face in her hair, and she felt his shoulders shake.
"A boy," he whispered. "We're having a boy."
Lucy wrapped her arms around him and held on. The record player in the living room had long since stopped, the apartment silent except for the sound of their breathing and the distant rumble of traffic outside.
"A boy," she echoed. "You're going to teach him how to be a good man."
"It's a lot of pressure."
"You're up for it."
Tim pulled back to look at her. His face was blotchy and wet, and he was smiling like she'd never seen him smile before—open and unguarded and full of something that looked dangerously like hope.
"I love you," he said.
"I love you too."
He kissed her forehead, then her nose, then her mouth. Slowly, like they had all the time in the world.
"What time is your shift tomorrow?" he asked.
"Seven. Why?"
"I'm going to take you to breakfast first. There's this diner on Fifth that does the best pancakes in the city. I've been wanting to take you there for two years."
"Two years?"
"Two years." He kissed her again. "The day after you told me you hated pancakes, I found out you'd never actually tried them. You just thought they were too mainstream. I decided right then that I was going to convert you."
Lucy laughed. "I'm not going to be converted."
"We'll see."
She laid her head on his chest, listening to the steady thrum of his heart. The sun was setting outside the window, painting the room in shades of amber and rose. Her phone buzzed somewhere in the living room—probably her sister, probably wanting to know what the doctor said—but she didn't move.
"I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner," Tim said into her hair.
"You're saying it now."
"I should have said it years ago."
"Yeah." She smiled against his shirt. "But you're saying it now."
He held her tighter, and somewhere in the distance, the city went on without them—people rushing home, people rushing out, people living and loving and losing in the endless churn of it all. But here, in this room, the world had narrowed to a single point of light.
Nineteen weeks.
A boy.
A future that she was finally, terrifyingly, ready to run toward.