A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

How did a guy feel his baby in a woman’s stomach and want to have sex?

How could he feel his baby in a woman’s stomach and not want to have sex?

As his body reacted to the feel of her beneath his palm in the quiet darkness of his car, he slowed his mind. Closed his eyes.

And knew that he’d never separate Christine from his son. She was helping to create him.

In the darkness behind his lids he couldn’t hide from another truth. He was falling in love with the woman. Had already fallen in love with her.

It wasn’t transference. It wasn’t gratitude.

It was her.

Igniting things in him he’d never felt before. Not ever.

Not even with Emily.

What he did with any of it, other than calculate and catalog, he had no idea.

Moving his hand slightly to the left, he tried to make out a shape and... He jumped, pulling his hand off of Christine and then immediately putting it back down.

“What was that?”

“He just moved...” Her words ended on a lilt—a sound from her that was unfamiliar to him. “How cliché is that?” He heard clearly forced levity in her tone, and then, “It’s like he knows you, Jamie. I’ve felt bubbles over the past week or two, but this is the first time I could really feel him move. And he did it for you...”

Her face was turned to his in the streetlight, her eyes glistening.

“He did it for both of us.” The words slipped out in a reverent moment.

“No.” Her tone had changed. Hardened, but not in a mean way. Just firm. She placed her hand over his, holding his hand in place when he might have lifted it. “He’s doing this for you, Jamie.”

She couldn’t possibly know that. And most likely wasn’t right, considering that the baby had no idea that the woman carrying him, protecting and caring for him, hadn’t contributed an egg. Maybe the warmth of his bigger hand was a contributing factor, but...

He felt the tear drop on the side of his hand, a bare portion not covered by her smaller hand. She didn’t pull away, or push him away, just sat there silently.

“We’re human beings,” he said softly, the words pouring up from a new source within him. “I can’t possibly sit here and experience the first touch of my baby all alone. You’re a part of it. Just as you can’t sit there and endure whatever it is that hurts you and have me unaware.”

Her hand slid off from his.

He continued to cradle her stomach.

“Let me share it with you, Chris.”

“Only my mom and dad and Gram and Gramps call me that.”

The news wasn’t surprising. Only family was allowed to occupy the inner circle of her heart. Using her full name was a shield by which she kept the world from getting too close.

He’d grown to know her over the past months, in all of their innocuous conversation.

Their refusal to allow anything physical between them had left open another avenue of intimacy.

An emotional, mental recognition that he couldn’t prevent.

“Let me share it with you, Chris,” he repeated, not able to allow himself to be deflected from that goal. If she told him to go, he would do so. But if she let him stay, he was doing so as a friend. A man who cared about her.

Not as the father of the child she was carrying.

* * *