A Baby Affair (Parent Portal 2)

Less than five minutes into the ride, Craig slowed so they were side by side, and asked, “Is Isabella a family name?”

He’d been thinking about her, and her daughter, nonstop. Of course.

“No, why? Don’t you like it?”

As in, it must be a family name or why else choose it? He hoped to God that wasn’t what she’d thought he meant. He was just trying to stay on the outside looking in, while telling himself he shouldn’t be looking in at all.

He knew that Isabella was going to be well cared for. Well loved.

His job was done here. Except that she’d asked a question. Where or not he liked the name she’d chosen. And...he was contributing to his daughter’s health by giving her mother this opportunity to exercise. For another three or four weeks. Once she entered her third trimester, or grew enough of a stomach to change her balance abilities, they would stop.

So that’s when he’d be done. Done with the job he’d set himself—to ensure the well-being of his genetic offspring.

Right. Made sense. He couldn’t let go just yet. But in a few weeks, he’d bow out for sure. And learn then how to live with the love growing inside him for both the mother and her child.

“I like the name,” he assured her, feeling a weight lift off him as he reached his decision. He had a few more weeks to go. “I like it a lot, actually.” He really did, when he allowed himself to think about it. “It sounds kind of royal, yet sweet, at the same time.”

When she didn’t say anything right away, he continued, “I just thought, by what you’d said on Sunday, that you weren’t picking names yet.” He hoped to God his asinine response to her news hadn’t offended her. Made her doubt him.

He’d wanted to know. She’d given him a gift by telling him. She’d shared the news with him first.

And he’d reacted like a selfish ass.

“I didn’t think I was. I mean, I think about them, but when I found out she was a girl, the name was just there, in my mind.”

“I guess it’s good that it wasn’t a boy, then, huh? Isabella might not have worked as well.”

“He was going to be Winchester,” she said. “Win for short.” She pedaled in silence for a few feet and then added, “I hadn’t made a choice, really. They were just the names I liked best. When I thought about it.”

And he understood. Giving up trying to control everything that could possibly hurt, letting herself believe that her dream was coming true, didn’t miraculously happen upon realization. Just as he knew that, in spite of his feelings for her, he couldn’t give up on his need to have a family of his own. With a woman who was married to him.

She’d made the call. She’d taken a step. She was trying to let go of her fear. Just as he knew he had to let go of her and their daughter—eventually.

The going wouldn’t be easy.

It was right, though. Just as she knew what she needed to be happy, he did, too.

Neither one of them was wrong. They were just very different.

On opposite ends of a spectrum—joined by the spectrum—each with valid purpose. Destined to always be apart.

* * *

Almost as though Isabella understood that her mother had opened her heart, the baby kicked the very next day. Amelia was leaning over her drawing board, actually making progress, when the tiny disturbance hit her from underneath her skin. Right there at the surface of it, though. Or so it felt. In that first moment she just froze. Sat there suspended over the light board, her hand raised

above the page, pencil dangling.

By late afternoon it had happened three more times. She’d run into Angie after the first time, but Isabella apparently hadn’t want to share her accomplishment with her aunt. All three times Isabella had moved Amelia had been alone with her daughter. She found that telling.

And that was why texting Craig to tell him about the movement was wrong. She thought about it. From the first second of the first movement, she’d thought of him. Was painfully tempted. But she didn’t give in.

She couldn’t need him. Or turn to him for the big moments in her life, no matter how much her heart had begun to yearn for him.

And yet, those glimpses she was giving him of a child whose life he wasn’t ever going to share seemed to mean a great deal to him. And was such a small thing for her to do, given the big picture.

She quarreled with herself about Craig all day Saturday, keeping busy with crib and nursery shopping, deciding on a theme of old-fashioned pink and white with teddy bears, choosing decals and paint colors.

On Sunday she and Craig were back at the parking lot at which they’d met for her very first bike ride. They’d never been back to his neighborhood, but when he’d suggested that they do that ride again, asked if she was opposed to it, she’d had no reason to disagree.