A/N: Sorry about the long stretch between chapters. Busy season for me in my job, so this might be how it is for awhile. But I had some inspiration and decided to finally try to put it all down. Enjoy!

The park date was meant to be an actual date for just the two of them, one that was planned and didn't occur on a whim, in other words, a new milestone for the couple. What actually happened, however, was a super-apologetic looking Matt showed up ten minutes late as Lauren turned on the park bench where she'd been waiting to see him approaching with Mariah in tow.

"Hey!" Lauren made her face bright and cheerful for the little girl, showing no signs that she'd been caught off-guard by the presence of his daughter on their date.

"Hiiii!" Mariah didn't have time to stop and chat. After waved wildly as they approached, she scurried right past Lauren, headed straight for the playground structure, undoubtably ready to let loose in the wide, open space filled with children.

"I'm really sorry." And he did look awfully sorry about it as he took a seat in the space beside her. Lauren was already ready to brush it off, but as she opened her mouth to reassure him, he continued. "No, I know you're about to say 'it's OK,' but it really isn't. I owe you a real date and this was supposed to be it, but well, Mom had her days mixed up and today's a day she's actually working so..."

"Matt, I know you're a dad," Lauren cut him off. As he looked down at his lap in shame, she gave him a wry smile and rested a hand atop that perfectly cut bicep of his. "Well, at least, now I do. Anyway, that isn't my point, the point is... I accept that Mariah is a huge part of your life. So, in getting to know you, I ought to get to know her a little more too." Lauren glanced at the little girl, presently climbing the play structure. "That is, if she's ever coming back down..."

"Not for awhile she isn't." Matt was giving Lauren that gracious smile he'd worn right after she'd forgiven him for keeping the pretty major secret of being a teen dad in the beginning stages of their relationship (or whatever this was). "She loves this park."

"Then, see?" Lauren was smiling and unpacking the food she'd brought along for them in her small cooler. She handed him a chicken salad sandwich while taking out her own small Tupperware container and plastic fork. "We are alone, for the time being."

"What's that you're eating?" He wanted to know, as he accepted his sandwich and removed it from the little plastic baggie.

Lauren glanced down at her lunch as she removed the airtight, plastic lid. "Oh, it's chicken salad," she said. "I just didn't make a sandwich with mine. You know, bread... carbs... I try to limit them whenever I can."

What Matt did next kind of pissed her off, though she tried not to show it. He feigned that wide-eyed expression, like it shocked him to hear her say this, like she should have absolutely no reason to be careful about what she ate. She couldn't help but roll her eyes at that routine. Please don't pretend you haven't noticed I'm not a size two.

"Mariah!" Matt was distracted just then, as his fatherly instincts rightly kicked in when Mariah climbed to the top of a tall tower. It just had ladders to go up and down, no slide, and the little girl was maybe twenty feet off the ground with no way down but to climb. In a flash, Matt was across the playground and waiting for her at the bottom, as she began her descent. When she finally had her feet on the ground again, Lauren could hear him admonishing his little girl for attempting such a climb and telling her not to do it again.

"That's a full time job," Lauren remarked, when he returned to the bench once more. She personally hadn't even been paying that much attention to notice the little girl doing something dangerous, but it seemed like Matt had some sort of talent for multitasking that was only fully realized when one became a parent.

"It really, really is." Matt was shaking his head. "So, I've been working on a few moves to add to the choreography we started the other night. I get off work tomorrow in time to go to glee rehearsal, so I was thinking I'd drop by and show them. You want to learn them and maybe help me with a demonstration?"

At this, Lauren felt her face growing warm. She'd never fancied herself to be a dancer, at least not without a little more alcohol and a little less awareness of everyone staring at her, but Matt acted like she was equally matched as his partner. Which, though she enjoyed dancing with him, she knew, she was not. She didn't know whether to be flattered or confused by his insistence that she was the ideal partner in this situation.

"Yeah, or..." Lauren brainstormed this quickly, trying to see if she could work her way out of glee rehearsal, even though she didn't have conflicting plans either. "We could call my brother and Madison. You remember Madison. Anyway, she's a cheerleader and, like, this awesome dancer. You could just teach her and then the two of you could show everyone tomorrow."

Matt looked disappointed by this idea. "But," he began, wearing a distinct pout. "You're my partner. I really liked dancing with you the other night."

"Well, I didn't." Lauren couldn't be any less blunt. She was really starting to get annoyed by how much he didn't get it. "I didn't really like everyone staring at me, and I'm not doing it again, okay? So it would probably be best if you just do what I'm suggesting. I'm not... not the dancer-cheerleader type, okay? I don't know why I have to spell this out for you. I'm not the type of girl you're used to."

Matt faltered then, as he finally sensed that she was getting angry by now. "And what type of girl is it that I'm used to?"

Lauren replaced the lid on her chicken salad that she didn't even feel like eating now and set it aside. "You know," she said, willing him not to make her say it. Yet he just sat there, without a clue, so she pressed on. "The... the Brittany-Santana-Andrea Cohen types of the world. Not me. Not girls who look... like me."

Matt just stared at her, long enough that he made her uncomfortable enough to want to jump up off that bench, run back to her car, and drive away from there. But she didn't. She just stared at her lap instead, wishing she didn't feel the strange urge to find out what it was he saw in her, a girl with no actual experience beyond making out with stupid Noah Puckerman for no good reason whatsoever, other than the fact that he'd inexplicably noticed her.

"I don't want those types of girls," Matt said, not exactly denying that his past involved the first two that she'd mentioned. "I'm interested in you. Haven't I made that clear?"

Lauren wished she was as confident as Quinn Fabray thought she was, when she made that comment about how Lauren walked around the school like she owned it. She might have been able to present that face to the world, but she couldn't maintain it when she looked in the mirror.

Their conversation was interrupted by two women running across the playground towards them, wearing frantic expressions. "Is she your little girl?" The woman pointed over her shoulder. There, at the bottom of the playscape, was Mariah, lying flat on her back.

Matt ran to his daughter, with Lauren close on his heels. When they got there, a small crowd had formed around her already. "She fell right over the edge!" One of the women was saying. "Is she okay? Did she break anything?"

Matt carefully examined Mariah, as tears streamed down the little girl's face. She'd cut her chin and, upon closer inspection, there was a little blood inside her mouth. Matt checked her teeth but it seemed she'd bitten the inside of her lip somehow. After a moment, she sat up and appeared shaken but otherwise unharmed. Nothing appeared to be broken on her small body.

"Watch her carefully," urged the second woman. "If she starts to vomit or acts disoriented, take her to the hospital to make sure she doesn't have a concussion!"

This was all pretty scary, and Lauren felt immediately intimidated by the women who were seemingly judging Matt right there on the spot for having looked away while his daughter played on the unsafe playscape. But Matt just nodded at their advice, as he carefully scooped up Mariah and carried her to the bench. Lauren got her a drink of water and literally, two minutes later, she was asking to go feed the ducks at the nearby pond.

Matt looked at Lauren, who shrugged. "I guess she's alright?" she muttered, staring at the child in awe. "She really bounced back quickly there. I think we got lucky."

"Very," said Matt, looking almost sick himself. Without another word, they set about the task of taking her to the duck pond, as she wished.

As they stood back, both their sets of eyes glued to the little girl this time as she happily tossed handfuls of bread crumbs out of a baggie that Matt had brought along to the ducks, Lauren once again worked her way out of the previous conversation by changing the subject.

"I think it's really amazing that you're raising your daughter by yourself," she said. "I mean, I know you have support from, like, your mom and stepdad, but I know that, at the end of the day, it's on you." He met her gaze briefly. "And I want you to know you're a good man, Matt Rutherford."

Matt locked eyes on his daughter once more as he spoke. "Well, I know what it felt like to think I'd lost her," he began, slowly. "To think that I wasn't going to be a dad. When I found out I hadn't, well, there was no going back. But, given what nearly was, I was okay with that."

"What nearly was?" Lauren echoed, confused.

"Andrea lied and told me she'd had an abortion," he said, shuddering at the thought as he continued to watch Mariah toss the bread crumbs into the water. "This was after I'd already dropped out to try to work and save money for the baby. Then I didn't hear from her until Christmas Day. She was eight months along by then..."


Matt opened the front door to find the very last person he expected to see again bundled up in a coat on the doorstep. Once he recovered from the shock of seeing her there, he quickly invited her in out of the cold.

She made her way inside and followed him into the living room. He sat and patted the space beside him on the couch. She bit her lip then, unzipping her coat and setting it aside on the back of the couch to reveal what she'd come to show him. His eyes grew wide as he took in the sight of her.

"You didn't go through with it."

"I didn't go through with it," she confirmed, gingerly taking a seat next to him on the couch. She licked her lips nervously, looking down at the prominent bump and back up at him. "I'm sorry for not coming to you any sooner. But... listen, this is way more than I bargained for. I thought I could do it all but I just can't. You have to take her."

"Her?" Matt echoed, still trying to process the revelation that she hadn't ended the pregnancy after he'd begged and pleaded with her not to go though with an abortion. He'd just spend all these months thinking she had, and now here she was, in all her maternal glory, telling him it was a girl.

"I already gave up my senior year with Vocal Adrenaline," she said, as Matt continued to stare down at her swollen stomach in disbelief. "And everyone at school stares at me just like you're doing right now. But next month... next month, this is all going to be over and I can have my body back. If I can get into shape fast enough, maybe I still have time to audition and get into dance school like I've always dreamed of doing."

"And you want me to raise the baby?" Matt echoed. "By... by myself?"

And then she looked angry. "Isn't that what you promised you'd do?" Her voice rose in a panicked sort of way. "When you begged me not to end this pregnancy?"

"Andrea, of course I will!"

He'd practically shouted over her shrill cries. At this, she burst into tears of relief. Matt really had no choice but to hug her and pat her back, telling her it was going to be fine, though he was honestly pretty furious with this girl. He couldn't believe she'd hidden the fact that she was still pregnant from him all this time. After-all, he'd already dropped out of high school and gone to work as soon as he'd found out, only to then be told that it was all for nothing. And now here she was, insisting that he take and raise the baby that he'd thought he'd already lost.

"Oh, Matt..." Lauren watched him continue to stare at his daughter, as he finished telling the rest of his story, the hardest part for her to hear and the hardest, evidently, for him to tell. Tears had filled his eyes as he recounted how he nearly thought he'd lost his child. The child he now loved with all his heart, more than he'd ever loved anything in the world.

He glanced at her, giving a tight smile. "It was one of the scariest days of my life, yet one of the happiest ones too," he said. "Second only to when she was born."