Page 46 of Where You're Planted

“What are you picking up?”

“Can I just swing by in a bit? I’ll only need it for, like, an hour.”

“Hold on. If it won’t fit in your car,” he said, “does that mean it’s heavy? Something you shouldn’t be lifting?”

“Here we go,” she said on a weary sigh. “Never mind. I’ll just ask someone el—”

“Where are you picking it up?”

“Costco.”

He smiled. “You getting a truckload of toilet paper or what?”

“If you must know, it’s a grill for Omar for our anniversary. It’s a surprise.”

Jack turned off the computer monitor. Any excuse to get out of this office. “I’m on my way.”

—

The first thing he noticedwas Amy’s baby bump. She was wearing a stretchy knit dress that hugged her stomach, and as they walked through the store, she kept caressing one palm over the curve of it. She caught him noticing, and he looked away. She didn’t say a word, just led him to a grill in a huge box and let him muscle it awkwardly into their cart.

On the drive here, she’d blasted his AC and angled the vents at herself, telling him if she got remotely overheated she’d puke in his truck. Then she’d popped a couple hard candies that were supposed to settle her stomach and closed her eyes for the whole drive. They hadn’t talked. And Jack had been pretty proud of himself for not voicing his concerns about her health.

Now that they were headed back to her house, she seemed to be feeling better despite them hitting bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway, Jack’s truck stopping and going in annoying spurts. She turned to him, her belly pressing against the middle console, and said, “How are things without Greta?”

He shrugged. “About the same. Although I had no idea how many damn emails these people were sending her. Now, they’re all coming to me.”

Amy laughed softly, palming the top of her belly. He clenched the steering wheel and changed lanes, only to haveto slam on the brakes when someone else cut in right in front of him. He growled in frustration.

“I’m not in a hurry,” Amy told him gently. “We’ll get there when we get there.”

Jack discreetly rubbed at the sharp spot in his chest, the place that had constricted in waves all afternoon and was back at it with even greater force now. He felt caged in this truck and in his own body, his ribs too rigid around his lungs, his skin too tight all over. He hadn’t managed a full breath in hours—not since he’d been shin-deep in the creek with Tansy and Briar—but it was worse now. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Couldn’t burn it off with exercise like he preferred. And he couldn’t breathe through it without alerting Amy.

“Jack,” she said softly, knowingly, and hell, he couldn’t hide this from her even without doing the stupid breathing exercises.

“What?” he asked anyway, playing dumb.

She reached over and squeezed his wrist, making him loosen his grip on the wheel. “It’s not just the traffic. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it’s anxiety?”

He shrugged and then nodded, embarrassed.

“Because of…”

He glanced at her when she trailed off, and she was looking down with a frown at both hands on her belly.

“No,” he said forcefully. Even though he felt like if he looked directly at her, he wastoo awareof her body, and if he didn’t look, then he was being weird, and that mental contortion probably meant he wasn’t managing his worry as well as he wanted to.

“I’ve had a bad day,” he said. But his body rejected thesentiment immediately. “Actually, it was a pretty great day for a while.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “But I’m too fucked up to just have a good day and leave it at that.”

Amy’s mouth pinched to one side.

He didn’t let her push back, adding, “Tansy said something to me today. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“What’d she say?”

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