When Constellations Form (Light in the Dark 4)

“Yeah, I’ve already been looking.”

“Really?” I raise a brow as we move up in line.

She nods. “I won’t get anything yet—not until we know if Bean is a boy or a girl, but I wanted to get an idea of what I liked.”

“And?” I prompt.

She shrugs. “It’s all so cute. I want it all.”

I chuckle. “Something tells me this baby is not going to help your shopping addiction.”

“Not at all,” she agrees.

I shake my head, and it’s finally our turn so I drop the books on the counter with a thump.

The clerk rings it up and I hand my card over to pay. Thea eyes the magazine stand behind the checkout and I look at what she’s looking at.

A blond, blue-eyed, baby drools on the cover of some parenting magazine and I see her cringe.

I hate that she’s so worried about this, that she doesn’t trust herself to be a good mom.

It’s breaking my fucking heart.

I have to come up with some way to show her that this is going to be the greatest thing to ever happen to us.

I collapse on the bed, rolling to face Thea’s laptop.

“What are you watching?” I ask her.

“YouTube videos of people revealing they’re pregnant.” She sniffles.

My head whips up to her, shock clouding my eyes. “Are you crying?”

She glares at me. “I’m pregnant, and apparently that makes you real fucking emotional, okay? I can’t help it. I’m not normally so weepy, but this stuff is so sweet.”

I clear my throat. “Quarter.”

“Oh, shut up,” she grumbles.

I grin slowly. It’s hard not to be amused by her.

“So have any of these given you any ideas on how to tell everybody?” I ask, reaching over to tap the keyboard to pause the video so we can talk.

She shakes her head. “No—the crying started pretty much immediately so after that my only thoughts were, ‘aw’ and ‘this is so sweet’. I wasn’t really thinking about how it could apply to us.”

I sigh, running my fingers through my hair. “Maybe we just tell them and don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Her mouth pops open and she looks at me, horrified. “No. No way.” She shakes her head roughly back and forth. “We have to do something. I’m not saying it has to be extravagant, but I’m not just going to be like, ‘Surprise, I’m knocked up!’.”

“I didn’t think we’d say it like that,” I mumble, looking down at the bedspread.

She waves a hand dismissively. “We’ll think of something. We have a week.”

Prue jumps up on the bed and over my legs, so she can lie between us.

“Pretty soon it’s going to be the dog and a baby in bed with us,” I comment, looking at the empty space above Prue.

Thea’s lips part in surprise, her hazel eyes wide. “That’s so weird to think about. There’s going to be another person living here. Everything’s going to change.”