Page 71 of The Moment You Know

“No. We were on life support when she told me she was pregnant.”

“Hell, you’re still on life support,” Evan muttered.

Evelyn’s gaze sharpened. “So, you’ve stayed with her for four years because of Jacob?”

David thought he knew what path she was taking. “You think she wants another baby to lock me down again.”

“I do. I’d bet my right nipple on that.”

David sighed.

“How long has she been pressuring you to have another one?” Evelyn asked.

“Two months.”

“Has anything happened between you two, to trigger this?”

David immediately thought back to that night at Bender’s and Ashley’s response to Paige about not being married. Had Paige triggered it? “Maybe.”

Evelyn was silent for several moments before she said, “David, if you don’t want another baby with her, then don’t have one. And the way to make sure you don’t have one is to become an active participant in not having another one. Now, that being said, what kind of birth control are you two currently using?”

Evan didn’t even bother protesting this time. What was the point?

“Ashley’s on the pill.”

“Don’t trust that she’s taking it,” Evelyn told David seriously. “And I mean that. It’s easy enough to check and see if the correct pills are missing from her prescription, but it’s also easy enough to pretend to take the pills and just be flushing them down the toilet. So, even if it looks like she is, I would still recommend that you wear condoms, just to make sure you’re in control this time around. And if she questions why you’re wrapping it up, tell her you want to make sure she doesn’t ‘accidentally’ get pregnant again while you ‘think’ about having another baby. She can’t really tell you you’re being paranoid, since it supposedly happened once before, so you have a legitimate reason to use condoms. And by the way, if she seems abnormally upset that you want to use condoms, it’s probably a good indication that she’s not taking her pills.”

David nodded, feeling a trickle of unease at the thought that Ash might be doing that. Possibly for the second time. “Thanks, Ev.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Evan parroted, although with a heavy layer of sarcasm. “Now get the hell out of here.”

Evelyn pointed toward the giant glass bowl next to the cash register. “Don’t forget to leave a business card for the drawing,” she told David.

“I won’t,” he promised.

“And don’t forget to write my name on it,” she said to Evan.

“Why should your name go on it?”

“Because I earned it by giving him all that great advice, that’s why.”

He gave her an aggravated look. “Fine.”

An hour later, after demolishing an order of chicken wings, David left, but not before giving a business card to Evan, who immediately wrote his own name on the back before tossing it into the bowl.

Chapter 26

That night, David was actually not annoyed to get home before Ashley for once. He paid Casey and watched her leave, then carried Jacob from the couch to his bed, this time without waking him. After David carefully tucked the blankets around the little boy, he sat there stroking Jacob’s narrow back with gentle fingers for a moment as his mind drifted back to the night Ashley had told him she was pregnant, almost four years ago.

She’d invited him over to dinner and while he was drinking a beer, she’d started crying.

Perplexed, he’d stared at her.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” she’d said, wiping at her eyes. “I was hoping I wouldn’t cry until … after.”

Setting his beer down, he’d asked, “After what?”

“After I told you I was pregnant.”

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