She nodded as if she understood but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Claire was a force of nature in her own right so she had no idea how it felt to constantly doubt and wonder. “Maybe you didn’t mean to walk out into traffic and crack your noggin on the concrete, but your insecurity made sure that was inevitable. “Margot,” she sighed. “Grady is handsome and well-built and successful in his own right, I know that as well as you do. He could have had any woman he wanted and he chose you.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat caused by that particular truth. “So you do get it.”
She nodded. “The same way that you are beautiful and successful and could have gotten knocked up by any man you wanted, but you chose my boy on that particular night. Why?”
My mouth opened and shut like a fish struggling to breathe outside the water.
Claire pointed at me, fire in her eyes. “Because despite the way you both lie to yourselves about the animosity between you, there’s something there. Something more than physical attraction and mutual dislike. There’s something real there but you two dummies are two damned scared to admit it to yourselves or to each other.” Claire shook her head, disgusted. “Do you want to do this on your own Margot? Is that your goal?”
“No,” I admit to her as well as to myself. “I’m not sure that I can even if I wanted to.” Raising twins alone while running a business was not something I could do on my own, I could admit that much, but I didn’t know how to change or how to make it right.
“Are you sure? Because you’re doin’ everything in your power to push Grady away. Men are more fragile than we are Margot, if they feel they aren’t wanted or needed then they will just pick up stakes, move on and never look back. It’s their superpower.”
My heart seized at the idea of Grady picking up stakes—literally or figuratively—and moving away, forgetting all about me and our babies. “I’m not trying to.”
“I know,” she said softly, her tone and demeanor gentle and understanding. She moved to the bed and leaned over to wrap me in her arms before she pressed a kiss to my cheek. “You’re allowed to be emotional because you are hormonal and pregnant and that’s just the way things are, but you are not allowed to try to kill my grandbabies. Not ever. Do that again and I’ll be bunking with you until they finish high school.”
How I managed to laugh in that moment when my head ached and it felt as if everyone close to me hated me or was angry with me—or both—I will never know. But thanks to Claire my shoulders shook with laughter and I nodded my understanding. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Claire pulled back with a satisfied smile and patted my cheek. “That’s what I want to hear, honey. Grady is upset now because he’s scared but he’ll get over it. If you do your part to make this work. Whatever it is.”
I nodded at Claire’s words because I had no idea what Grady and I were besides future co-parents and former sex partners but also kind of current sex partners. There were no defined lines between us and that made everything even more confusing. “I’m working on it.” It wasn’t something I could change with the snap of my fingers but as I watched Claire exit my hospital room, my head throbbing, I really wished that magical switch did exist.
Grady and I were fooling ourselves. There’s no way to turn a one night stand into something more, something substantive. He will make a great father but does that make him the man for me? Unlikely. My head hurt just thinking about it but I knew I had to think about it, had to figure it out before the babies arrived if for no other reason than to make our lives easier.
Fifteen minutes later Grady walked into the room with a stormy expression on his face but he didn’t give me more grief, instead he was eerily silent.
Thankfully the doctor arrived shortly after Grady which gave me something else to focus on instead of the giant blue-eyed, tattooed man who could barely look at me. The doctor’s gaze slid to Grady and then back to me. “Margot, how are we feeling?”
“Besides the giant headache? Not too bad.”
“That’s good to hear, considering everything that’s happened.” He looked down at the chart in his hands and sighed. “But you have a sprained wrist and a concussion which means you need to be watched closely for the next twenty-four hours.” He looked to Grady again. “Do you have someone to do that for you?”
“She does,” Grady answered before I could. “What am I watching for?”