“Yep. And I’ll curse him out to his face, next chance I get. But I also know he cares about you. He told you so himself.”
“The situation has changed. That’s not good enough anymore. This baby needs a father who loves it freely and unconditionally. Not some emotionally resistant man who meets his legal obligations but refuses to get too close.”
“Give him a little bit of time to get his head straight. Your getting pregnant is his worst nightmare come to life. What if something happens? What if history repeats itself? All he’s focused on right now are the risks. He can’t see past them, so he’s trying to close himself off. The thing is, his walls were already starting to crumble. He couldn’t hold out.”
“He’s held out pretty well for the last three years.”
Sinclair folded her hands on the table and tilted her head to the side. “No. He hid out well for the last three years. He blockaded his heart and nobody got past the barriers until this Thanksgiving, when he lowered them enough to trust you with a problem and ask you for help. He let you into his life—not for the right reasons, and certainly not with the intention of falling for you—but he let you in. Now he cares for you, and I hope he loves you. He just needs to grow a pair and figure it out.”
“I can’t wait forever for him to figure his shit out. I have to start making plans now.”
“Wait a little while, Savannah.”
She folded her arms and stared at the floor. “Why should I?”
“First, because you’re in love with the man. Second, he’s the father of your child, so he’s always going to need a way back. Don’t go to Italy without talking to him.”
Savannah ran her hand over her stomach and accepted reality. “I’m not going to Italy.” The words were surprisingly easy to say.
“You’re not? I thought the fellowship represented the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“This baby is my opportunity of a lifetime, and I don’t want to have him or her five thousand miles from home. I’d actually been thinking about declining the fellowship anyway. The Mercer Gallery offered to represent me,
and I trust them. I moved to Atlanta to secure a deal with a reputable gallery that could help establish me in a regional market, and if I accept the offer from Mercer, I’ve fulfilled that goal.”
“And you have your baby at home.”
Savannah nodded. “Provided home isn’t located across the hall from Beau-how-could-you-manipulate-me-this-way-Montgomery. Can I move in with you for a while?”
Sinclair reached around and gave her a hug. “Crazy Aunt Clair always has room for you.”
Chapter Twenty
Beau woke up on his sofa with his cheek sweat-glued to the leather and a yellow Post-it note stuck to his forehead. He peeled it off and flipped it over. The weak gray morning light filtering into the apartment assaulted his eyes, but he forced them to focus on the note. He recognized Hunter’s scrawl.
Call your mother.
P.S. I’m never drinking again.
Yeah, right. He got up, astounded when his head didn’t roll right off his shoulders, and dragged his sorry ass to the medicine cabinet to swallow three painkillers with a handful of tap water. Then he brushed his teeth, splashed his face with a couple more handfuls of water, and took stock.
Red eyes, scruffy jaw, the complexion of a zombie. Not much of a way to show up on his parents’ doorstep on Christmas Day, but they’d seen worse—much worse—and he owed them an in-person explanation and apology. He owed Savannah’s parents the same.
And you need to talk to Savannah…
Had she come home last night? If so, she’d gotten into her apartment more quietly than she’d ever managed in the past six months. He’d been listening for any telltale footfalls on the stairs, or the rattle of a key in a lock—right up until he’d passed out. His eyes dropped to the counter, where the assortment of bottles and jars and…product…had multiplied in some seemingly organic way since the first evening she’d come over with a bag full of stuff to set the scene for his parents.
This was no longer set dressing, though. He tugged off his undershirt and walked to the bedroom to change into clean clothes. His apartment—his life—had morphed into a shared space. He shouldn’t have let it happen, because before she’d come along, he’d been content with his orderly, somewhat stark apartment and his orderly, somewhat isolated life. Now the thought of her things not cluttering the counter, or her discarded robe not tossed across her pillow—the thought of her not being there—left a dangerous void. The kind of void that would drive him to her doorstep to offer things he couldn’t afford to offer.
Even realizing this, he found himself pausing between their apartments on his way out. He ran his hand over her door.
No sound.
It didn’t dawn on him until he’d reached Magnolia Grove that the next sounds he’d likely hear from her apartment would be the groans of movers, because in seven days she’d board a plane to Italy. If she was still going. Would she leave now that they had a baby on the way? If she did, would she stay away the entire nine months? Give birth thousands of miles from her home, her family…him? The prospect sent a burst of useless energy through him. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and he had to talk himself out of the impulse to drive straight to the Smiths’ and tell her not to go. First off, he didn’t know if she was there. Second, he’d come off like a crazy asshole trying to play it both ways. Don’t go, but don’t look to me for reasons to stay.
The grip of last night’s flight instinct had loosened enough for him to recognize they needed to talk, but he honestly didn’t trust himself with the conversation. His head was all over the fucking map, but it really didn’t matter which way his thoughts turned, because he knew the landscape well enough to realize there was no safe ground.
Not even here. He parked in his parents’ drive. His mom opened the door before he cleared the front steps, and the disappointment in her eyes made him feel like a seventeen-year-old caught sneaking in after curfew reeking of weed and beer. Except this was worse.