Page 44 of Henhouse
They both cast quick glances at Schilling, who only slightly bristled at the mention of his baby’s mother. “She’s still going to go tomorrow, isn’t she?”
“I have been given permission to confirm. She will be there at three o’clock.” Effie waited a long moment before asking, “Will you go?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. You have permission to tell her as much.”
Effie nodded, but Theo noted the way she clenched her teeth. She clearly didn’t like being their go-between. Theo wondered how often she did that—stuffed down what she felt or thought to make things easier for other people. He hoped he’d catch it if she ever did it for him because he wouldn’t want it.
No, Theo wanted transparency. To feel emotions as they came up in a healthy way and to fight when it was warranted. He wanted to be in the moment and never overpower her experience. He wanted . . .
. . . A lot of things. Big things. Little things. Pain, pleasure, and everything in between. He wanted passion and friendship. Love and partnership. And he was finding, maybe too quickly, maybe too brazenly, and definitely too dangerously if you asked her, that he wanted all of those things with Effie. He just knew it.
The sky was blue.
24
Hope sat on a picnic blanket spread out by a quiet pond. It was her favorite patch of green space between the Proprietor’s Burying Ground and the larger expanse of gravestones in the South Cemetery. In truth, there was no South Cemetery, it was just the name given to the collection of five public and private graveyards that abutted one another in this part of town. Her fascination with such places led to many assumptions that she dabbled in the occult. She’d been all too eager to prove to Brayden that they weren’t eerie or sad. In fact, she often felt like they were brimming with life. Brayden hadn’t been fond of that opinion when she shared it, but he’d come to see it her way.
The memory warmed Hope almost as much as the sunlight that crested the church steeple in the distance. It seemed like a lifetime ago, even though it was only this time last year that she invited Brayden to her favorite spot in town for a walk amongst the dead.
They first met at an author event at the largest indie bookstore in the area. She’d been asked to do a reading from her first book.Apparently, Brayden had been in the store at the time looking for a new novel to dig into. He bought a copy of her book and made sure to introduce himself after her fans dispersed. She remembered playing a little hard to get but reveling in the notes he tucked into the free library box near her house. They were pen pals that way, swapping notes and books, for a few weeks before she finally agreed to meet him in person for a date.
The rest was an easy breeze into love. For her, it was simple to break the plans for celibacy she and Effie had laid out. It felt too good to be in love with the sweet, sensitive man who took her to minigolf courses, playgrounds, bowling alleys, and graveyards for dates that werefun. The reason it had taken so long, she thought, for her to tell him she loved him was because nothing felt too serious with Brayden. It felt joyful and goofy and right. It’s not that the love wasn’t there, but there was no need to label it or think through all it meant.
That kind of levity felt foreign to Hope. She aimed for seriousness in her work, aimed for deep unrelenting truths. But Brayden warmed her, soothed her, showed her you could have the big, beautiful, serious things in life and not take them so seriously that you forgot to enjoy them.
Or at least, he had.
Hope squirmed in her seat. The grand declaration of her email emptied like an echo behind her. The optimism it had carried deflated when she saw how much she’d hurt Brayden. She worried she could never undo the pain she caused, the feeling she’d left him with—as if he was ever just a sperm donor and not the most important person in her life. Hope wished so many things had gone differently, but now she could only try to move forward, one clunky step at a time. Startingtoday.
Effie told her that Braydenmightshow, but Hope wasn’t expecting anything. She wasn’t surprised he needed space, but she was determined to keep showing up.
Hope leaned back on her hands and stretched out her neck. Tibby warned her that in the next few weeks she wouldreallypop. Hope didn’t believe she could pop any more than she had, her belly already giving the subtle impression that she’d shoved a basketball under her shirt, but apparently, there was more room to grow. Sixteen weeks to be exact. So much time and not enough. Not if she wanted things back to where they’d left off with Brayden before they got messy. She desperately wanted to get there before the baby came.
Hope loosed a sigh that turned into a bit of a growl at herself and Chloe, who had to have known what she did by calling herself Brayden’s wife. Hope grabbed her sweater from the ground beside her, pressed her face into it, and screamed muffled bloody murder.
“You Thatchers have a lot in common.” Hope turned to see Brayden, hands shoved deep in his pockets, standing beside her. “Walked in on Effie screeching Taylor Swift to calm her nerves one time.”
Hope offered him a faint smile. “She must have been mortified.”
“To say the least.” He gestured to the sweater. “You okay?”
“Just hating myself a little today. Chloe too, but mostly me.”
Brayden didn’t respond but instead settled on the blanket, just out of reach. Hope’s breath hitched at the love she could still so clearly see in his eyes.How could she ever have thought he’d betray her?The question plagued her at night when she couldn’t fall asleep.
The sight of him had her feeling twisted up in knots. If she had handled things differently, he wouldn’t be untouchable with morespace than she cared to acknowledge between them.
Hope’s cheeks flushed and she couldn’t stop the tears that escaped. “I’m sorry.” She sucked in a breath. “I don’t know what to say . . . I don’t.” Her sinuses blocked up and her eyes burned as they flooded. “I can’t help it!” she whined, throwing her hands up in the air absolutely exasperated before gesturing to her swollen belly. “Everything is so screwed up, and it’s my fault, and I want to go back in time and confront you about the Chloe thing and stop it all from going to hell.”
Brayden crouched before her. “Unfortunately we don’t have a TimeWeb.”
Hope wept even harder, her words coming out strangled. “Stop quoting my book lore, it’s too—too much.”
Brayden moved behind her, making himself into a backrest for her to lean against, his strong legs on either side of her hips. He pulled her back into his chest. Hope took a few deep, shuddering breaths as he brushed the hair from her dampened cheeks. “You’re not supposed to be making me feel better right now. I’m the one—”A new wave of sobs threatened to break through, and Hope could have cursed out her body for betraying her right now. Pregnancy hormones were not to be trifled with.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, but she heard the lump that had worked its way into his throat. The last time they’d sat like this was the moment she should have told him about the baby. The moment she chose to say I love you instead.
Brayden’s pectorals tightened along with the air in her lungs as he reached a tentative hand over Hope’s side like he was deciding if it was safe to rest his hand on her stomach, to hug her like he always did when they sat this way. She didn’t dare breathe or move his handfor him. She’d already left him out of so many decisions, she wasn’t literally going to force his hand on this too.
