I wrapped my arms around myself, ducking my head down so he wouldn’t see my eyes tear up. That was around the time I’d tried to call my dad, only Harry, the bastard, had changed his number and I couldn’t reach him. I didn’t have friends in town, and I didn’t have a way to contact my brother. It had been so hard.
“By the fifth month,” I continued, “I couldn’t take on any more people, so I closed the place then. A few still stopped by, and I let them stay as long as they paid for a room and didn’t expect any food, because I needed the money. In the sixth month, no one came at all
, and that was when I decided to sell. I could only sell some of the furniture and art pieces in the rooms, and I did that by going around town and asking for whoever wanted it all. The rooms are pretty much empty now.”
There was another length of silence, and I used it to take deep breaths and hold back the tears that wanted to come.
“What about when the baby came?” Dan asked.
I looked up, my body trembling, glad he was still standing there and talking to me.
“A neighbor of ours. The town is pretty small, and I couldn’t exactly hide my growing stomach. News got around. She knew my mom, back when mom was still with us, and she’d come over because she was worried about me. I couldn’t afford to check myself in at the hospital, so she moved in with me a month before the baby was due and helped me with the delivery.”
His eyebrows jumped up in surprise. “Don’t tell me you gave birth here.”
I laughed, though there was nothing humorous in what we were talking about. “I didn’t really have much of a choice. She was nice enough to stay and look after me and the baby for a couple weeks after he was born. She taught me how to take care of him, bought me some stuff for him. She had her own family to look after, though, so she didn’t stay for long. And, I was left alone. Again. But with a baby I was expected to look after when I didn’t have the means.”
For a while after I stopped talking, Dan didn’t move. I rubbed my eyes, telling myself it was pointless to cry. I didn’t know what Dan would do, but I couldn’t force him to do what I wanted, either. I couldn’t look after the baby, and if he really wanted to put him up for adoption if I wouldn’t take him back…my heart ached, but I didn’t have that many options.
“You have no idea how happy I was when I saw you at that clinic,” I whispered, meeting his eyes with a trembling smile. “I felt like my prayers had been answered. Finally, I would have someone to help me out, even a little bit, and I’d hoped you would. But you didn’t know it was me. I left you with the baby, and a part of me hoped you would remember and come look for me. I didn’t really figure much besides that, though.”
I could feel my face warm as I admitted it. I’d said everything I had to say. Now, Dan had to make a choice.
Chapter Fifteen
Dan
I watched Scarlett as she hugged herself, her shoulders hunched as she watched me with wide eyes. I felt…strange, like I held this woman’s world in my hands. Or, well, the fate of a child that belonged to the both of us.
It really would be better for everyone involved if I gave into the adoption idea. I hadn't actually thought of it, because I hadn't had time. I’d been left with some stranger’s baby, and all I could think of was how to find the mother and return the child. But, it wasn’t that simple anymore.
I didn’t know how I felt about Scarlett, or the baby. I’d had fun with her, but this was all too sudden. My wife had left me because I’d been reluctant to have a child in the first place.
When I thought of it that way, the current situation was pretty ironic, how I’d fallen into the exact kind of situation I’d been running from with Laila.
But…is this really the same?
With Laila, I’d felt panicked every time she mentioned children. I’d done everything to try and get her to forget it. I’d even given up nights of sex, because I knew she was off birth control and she didn’t want to use a condom, because she wanted to try and get pregnant. We’d already been divorced for a year when I met Scarlett, and while I regretted how I’d treated her for her first time, I couldn’t entirely regret having slept with her.
And now, a baby had come out of it. One that neither of us were really in the right place to look after. But, did that mean I had to give the baby away?
No.
The word popped in my mind unbidden, and it caught me by surprise. But, the more I thought about it, the more comfortable I was with the idea. Scarlett and I were more or less in the same boat, both in deep shit and with a responsibility we hadn't planned for. I couldn’t leave her to take care of our baby alone. She’d helped me when I was at my worst, and she was right, I did owe her.
“Do you have some sort of plan?” I asked.
I must have been silent for too long, because she jumped when I spoke, then blinked at me like she hadn't understood me.
“W-well,” she stuttered. “A plan? I…”
My mind was whirling with ideas and plans of my own, and now that I was doing more than feeling sorry for myself, I could feel excitement start to build in my chest. I walked over to Scarlett, and she jumped a little, but didn’t move away.
“Yeah,” I said. “A plan. You were leaving the hotel, right? Where do you plan to go, and do you know what you’re going to do?”
She blinked at me some more. “Um, I don’t really… I was just going to go into town and see what I could do. I’ve talked to some people before and I have a few leads…”
I took both her hands in mine, her eyes widening. I pressed her hands together between mine, closing the space between us.
“Would you move in with me?” I asked.
She gasped. “What?”
“Move in with me,” I repeated. “I just figured something out. You named him Makas because it meant hope, right? I guess you could say I just realized that, in a way, you and Makas are my hope.”
She frowned, her eyes falling to where I held her hands between us, chewing nervously on her lower lip. “What do you need hope for, though? You had a good job before, didn’t you? You could probably get another one easily, right?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, it’s not going to be that easy. If it was, you wouldn’t have found me in a clinic early in the morning, looking like a hobo in a suit after days of not showering. My life´s a mess right now, as is my house. But I want to change all that.”
She looked up at me through her eyelashes, still chewing on her lip, a nervous tick of hers I’d noticed from before.
“Believe me, okay?” I held her hands tighter between mine. “When my wife left me, I…kind of lost it. I thought I was coping, but my friends had to intervene so many times, and I messed up badly enough at work that it got me fired. Meeting you was the happiest I ever was in the past two years. And the responsibility of looking after a kid might just be the kick I need to get my ass in gear.”
I couldn’t say I was in love with Scarlett. Being around her made it easy for me to forget my worries, even though at the moment, a great deal of them involved her. But my heart felt clear for the first time in a while. I rarely went with just my intuition instead of cold, hard, reliable logic.
“But,” she started, hesitant. “What are we going to do? You need to look for a job, and I still need to try and sell the hotel…”
“I have some savings, just enough that I don’t need to look for anything right away. My friends, the guys you saw with me outside, were nice enough to buy a bunch of stuff for the baby, we probably won’t need to get any more for some time. I was thinking…we could just stay at home for a while, and we could try to get used to raising a kid, together. Then, I’ll look into getting a new job.”
I frowned as I thought. I didn’t have any definitive plans, and having the spare time would be useful. Because I would definitely need a plan if I was going to re-enter the corporate world with my current track record.
Then I remembered I was forgetting something, and focused my attention on Scarlett.
“I should have asked this already, but do you know what you want to do with your life, now that you no longer have the hotel?”
She blinked at me, looking surprised that I’d asked. I didn’t know if she even had an answer, but when she did speak, it was my turn to be surprised.
“I just…want to be happy,” she admitted.
I could feel my expression twist, just a little. I’d been ambitious all my life, and while I could understand wanting happiness and contentment, just wanting to be happy wasn’t a goal one should have for life, how I saw it. But if it was what she wanted…
“If that’s what you want, then it’s a start,” I decided. “We can go from there.”
Chapter Sixteen
Scarlett
I woke up in a large bed, alone, and for a moment, I was disoriented. Until I remembered I’d moved in with Dan. It had been a few days already.
Everything had happened so quickly. There wasn’t anything left in the hotel anyway, so after he’d called his friends to pick us up, I’d locked it and we’d left. I still had to do something about it, but I had time and a place to think.
Dan’s house was bigger than I’d expected, big enough for our little family of three. He’d told me he hadn't planned for a family any time soon, but he had a couple guest rooms. He was letting me sleep in his room, while he took one of the guest rooms. His friends had bought a crib for Makas, and when we got back, they’d helped to turn the extra room into a nursery where he slept.
I didn’t like sleeping alone, and I didn’t like the idea of the baby asleep in a room on his own, so he was in a crib just a few feet from the bed. I got up and walked over to him, smiling down at him when I found he was still sleeping. I reached for one of his little fists, the one he didn’t have in his mouth. I felt the same awe and fear I had as when I’d first held him in my arms when he was born. My little unexpected miracle.
“You wake me up in the middle of the night because you’re hungry, and you look this much like an angel in the morning, huh.”
Makas removed the fist from his mouth to smack his lips, stretching his arms a little, before the wet fist was back in his mouth. I laughed quietly to myself.
We had a baby monitor set up, and I made sure it was turned on, before taking the speaker with me as I walked out of the bedroom, leaving the door open. I heard sounds coming from the kitchen, and followed the smell of breakfast.
“Did you learn to cook since the last time I saw you?” I asked, walking into the kitchen.