Desperate Times (Boys of Silver Ridge 2)

The weekend.

It’s all we have, and I’m going to make sure we fucking enjoy it, ignoring the nagging guilt that’s going to weigh me down and distract me the whole time. Sighing, I close the locker, grab my stuff, and head out to the parking garage. Traffic is slow and it takes twice as long as usual to get home. I text Chloe instead of calling her, hardly able to stand talking and acting like everything is okay when it’s far from it. The truth bubbles inside of me, wanting to come out and ease my own guilt, but the repercussions of telling her now, of spoiling our time together, make me pause. I stew over it the whole drive home, and am spacing out, lost in thought as I walk through the lobby of my apartment.

“Sam!” someone calls, and I come to a sudden halt. I know that voice—fuck—and turn to see Stacey.

“What the hell—” Blinking, I cut myself off. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right?” My heart skips a beat and I fight the urge to turn and make sure Chloe isn’t coming off the elevator.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I wanted to talk to you.”

“So you came here?” I don’t mean to be blunt, but the fuck?

“I was in the neighborhood.” She smiles and looks around the upscale lobby. “I missed the way this place smells. Weird, isn’t it? How I crave smells more than I crave food?” She laughs. “I’m gonna have to ask what kind of air freshener they use so I can get it at home.”

I swallow hard, desperate to get away and upstairs, locking the door and warning Chloe about solicitors that somehow got past security, so there’s no need to answer the door or even look through the peephole to see who it is. I let out a slow breath and look at Stacey. I don’t dislike her. We had fun together, and I found comfort in our familiar routine. Yet this…this is wrong. So fucking wrong.

“What did you want to talk about?” I ask, eyes going to Stacey’s midsection. She’s wearing a tight-fitting gray t-shirt, tucked into high-waist jeans. She was always a fashionable and rather flashy dresser, which attracted the shallow part of me when we first started dating.

I know some women start showing very early in pregnancy and others don’t until they’re nearly halfway through. Stacey doesn’t have the slightest bump yet.

“It’s a little awkward,” she starts, wrinkling her nose. “But, um, you said you wanted to be involved.”

“I do.” If the kid is mine, that is. “How can I help?”

“I want to start buying stuff for the baby.”

“Oh, uh, right.” A lot of people wait until after the twelfth week to start shopping, and Stacey is several weeks past that. It is time to start prepping…and the thought makes me want to hyperventilate.

The first family get-together after Rory told us she was pregnant will filled with excitement and with our mother planning a laundry list of things to do. Items to buy. People to invite to the baby shower. Names to use. Names not to use. It was fun, everyone was happy, and the baby was loved by his whole family right away.

I don’t want to take those things away from Stacey. She should be excited. She should decorate a nursery and spend hours looking at lists of baby names. She should have a baby shower and know she doesn’t have to go through it alone.

And this baby should be loved right away as well.

But no matter how hard I try, I can’t get excited. It makes me feel guilty, and I wish so much Chloe was the one having my baby instead of Stacey.

“What do you want to get?”

“Like everything,” she laughs. “Though I want to wait to find out if it’s a boy or girl before I buy some stuff, like the bedding and clothes of course.”

“You should be able to find out soon,” I tell her, trying to get just a spark of excitement to ignite inside of me. “You’re far enough along.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She waves her hand in the air. “You can just give me cash and I’ll go shopping.”

“Oh,” I say, not expecting that. “I, uh, can go with you.”

“I figured you’d be busy. And I need maternity clothes. You always hated when I went clothes shopping.”

“Oh,” I repeat, not knowing what else to say. I want to be involved and I thought Stacey wanted me to be involved too. I pinch the bridge of my nose and then rub my forehead. “I’ll go with you.”

“The cash would be easier,” she laughs and playfully nudges me. Her touch feels wrong.

“Yeah.” I rarely carry cash on me when I’m going to and from work. If I had a bunch of cash in my wallet, I’d just give it to her to make her leave before she and Chloe somehow bump into each other. “But I meant it when I said I wanted to be involved.”