Midlife Do Over

It was blank.

I just told the man I’d been sleeping with for the past few months that I was pregnant, and his expression was…nothing. Hell, it was less than nothing.

It stung and I felt a fire of humiliation bloom in my chest, but I felt proud because Ryan’s reaction didn’t really surprise me. In fact, it was just what I expected. “That’s what I thought. Now, you can leave.”

Finally, he came back to life. Sort of. His mouth did that guppy thing again, but no words ever came out. Eventually he gave up, nodded distractedly and turned away from me before he made his way across our two yards and into his house. In utter and absolute silence.

I shouldn’t have been mad, and I didn’t even know why I was mad. All I knew was that anger roared through my veins and I stepped back inside my house and slammed the door as hard as I possibly could.

Now that I had Ryan’s reaction to the news of my pregnancy, I could push away all thoughts of him and focus on what I had to do next. First, I needed to finish getting ready for work. Then, I would figure out if this house was right for me and a baby, or if I needed to start looking for something else. I probably needed to start looking, it wouldn’t be fair to my kid to force them to live in a house beside a man who didn’t want them.

There was a lot to do and not enough time in a day to do it all, or even think of it all.

I would make time, I promised myself, as soon as this dang morning sickness went on about its way and left me the hell alone.

Just like the man responsible for the morning sickness had done.

Chapter 23

Ryan

Pregnant.

Pippa was pregnant, and even now, days later, there was no way to stop my mind from spinning like a tornado. I hadn’t been able to write, to think, to record anything since I walked away from Pippa on wooden legs in a fog. Mind full of everything and nothing all at once.

Pregnant. It was unbelievable that she was pregnant. Weren’t we too damn old for things like accidental pregnancies?

Apparently not.

Holy hell, I was going to be a father. I was going to be responsible for someone else’s life, well-being and happiness. Truth be told, I didn’t know how I felt about that. I hadn’t actually thought about having kids because I hadn’t been serious about anyone since Pippa, not even my ex-wife. We hadn’t been together long enough to consider having children, and we hadn’t known each other well enough to even have the kids talk before we got married.

Hell, I still didn’t know how my ex felt about kids. Or Pippa. Or how I felt about having kids. Did I even want to be a father? A man doesn’t get to my age without having kids if he truly wanted them. Right?

But the thought of having kids with Pippa wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill thought of having kids in general. This wasn’t general at all, this was Pippa, the love of my life. The woman I’ve wanted for nearly as long as I’ve drawn breath. Kids with Pippa had always been the dream, even when I walked away from her and she pretended as if I never existed. She was the woman for me and now she was having my baby.

All should be right in my world.

But all wasn’t right, because we hadn’t talked about having a baby together, and as far as I could tell, Pippa had only told me because she wanted to get rid of me. Because she assumed I would hear the news and I would run.

Which I did.

“I need to talk to someone.” I knew that much was true, but I couldn’t go to Lacey because she’d already warned me off of Pippa, and she’d be all kinds of upset before she got around to being happy about it. Roman and Derek couldn’t see clearly because our relationship had produced some of the best songs I had ever written, and because Pippa was like a sister to them. There was no one else I trusted enough to have such an important conversation with, so I grabbed my keys and my guitar, hopped in my truck and drove. I drove for hours and hours, not even seeing the gorgeous Tennessee landscape as it passed me by.

I drove until I could make sense of Pippa’s words, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of anything beyond the fact that she was pregnant. So, I kept driving.

Pippa was pregnant with my baby. “You just had to push, didn’t you?” My reflection had no sympathy for me for pushing when it was clear she wasn’t ready to share the news with me. But the fact that Pippa didn’t want to tell me, made me question if the child was mine at all. Maybe she’d just said it to get me to go away, to stop bothering her.