A/N:

Once again, this took way longer than I thought it would. I thought I worked myself into a corner and wasn't sure how to move forward. Hopefully, it came out okay. Happy reading!

"I'm so glad to have you home," Carolyn told her son as she put a plate of homemade breakfast in front of him. "Is Chris still asleep?"

"He is. He had a hard time sleeping on the plane. He was exhausted by the time we got here. I'm sure he will be asleep for most of the morning." Derek answered, then took a long sip of the freshly brewed coffee. There was just something about being in his childhood home that made that first sip of coffee feel infinitely better than any coffee he'd ever made for himself. Is that even possible, he wondered.

"He's grown so much since you left New York. I haven't seen him since before you left."

Derek nodded, but his focus was all on the plate his mother was just about to put down in front of him. He couldn't even remember the last time he had a homemade meal. "Yeah, kids tend to do that," he answered distractedly before taking the first bite of his food.

Carolyn set her own plate down on the table across from him and sat down to eat. "How are things in Seattle? How is work?"

"Things in Seattle are great. I, uh, I actually met someone recently."

"You did…" Carolyn's eyes lit up.

"Yeah, we've been out a few times. I really like her so far, but it's still very early and I don't really know her too much," he admitted. "She's in the finance department at the hospital I work at."

"That's great. I'm happy you're moving on," Carolyn told him. "If things work out, you should visit with her over the holidays."

"I don't know that it will work out, Mom. There is so much we don't know about one another. She doesn't know I have a son, or an ex-wife, or that my ex-wife is pregnant with our second child."

"What?" Carolyn asked.

Derek suddenly realized the words that had come out of his mouth. "What?" he repeated back, hoping to act dumb and let the moment pass.

"Your ex-wife is pregnant with your child?" Carolyn asked in shock.

Not knowing what to do, Derek stuffed a forkful of food in his mouth to buy himself time. Once he had chewed and swallowed, he was about to take another large bite when his mother glared at him.

"Why is Addison pregnant with your child? How is Addison pregnant with your child? What were you thinking?"

"Do you really want to know what I was thinking when it happened?"

"No, Derek, I know exactly what you were thinking when it happened. And here I was, so sure that I had raised my son to be better than this. But you're just like every other man- thinking with your penis instead of your brain."

"My brain was in full agreement with my penis," he assured her mother. "Addison has been my best friend for most of my adult life. I feel at home around her. We just had a little too much to drink and got a little too comfortable given where our relationship was."

"And now she's pregnant."

"Yes."

"And you're sure it's yours?"

Derek looked up from his plate to look at his mother. "Yes, Mom, I'm sure."

Carolyn gave him a doubtful look. Addison had been with someone else during their marriage, how could her son believe she was restrictive with her sexual urges after marriage. Carolyn cleared her throat and took another bite of her food. She was hoping to change the topic but the next question out of her mouth was, "You're not over Addison, are you?"

Derek slowly shook his head. "I'm trying though," he told her. And he was trying. He had met someone new, he had been going out with her and he was actually enjoying her company. But he couldn't help the fact that every time he pictured his future, he pictured Addison, their son, and their baby. A girl- he hoped, because he had always hoped they would have one of each.

"This new girl you're with, what is she like?"

Derek shrugged, "She's different. She's very outdoorsy, she loves fishing. She's spontaneous and free spirited. She's funny, and great with numbers," Derek described.

"Do you love her?"

"I barely know her, Mom. We've only been seeing one another for a couple of months. I like her, I know that."

"Derek, when you came home after you started medical school, you sat in that chair and you told me you met a girl and that you were in love. You'd known her for less than a month."

"You can't be in love, you've been on one date."

"Yeah, but I've been her lab partner for almost a month, I study with her four or five times a week, I see her everyday. It's just that we've only had time for one real date, but we are together all the time, all day long."

"How can you love someone you barely know?"

Derek shrugged, "Some people believe in love at first sight."

"Derek you're 22. You have your whole life ahead of you, you just started medical school. You're going to meet so many people. Don't tie yourself down to one girl from the very beginning."

"She's the girl, Mom. She's the one. I'm going to marry her, I know I am. I love her."

"You're too young to know what love is!"

"I know that every time she walks into a room, I can't help but smile. I get butterflies instantly. When she's with me, I just feel happy. Even if I'm really stressed with school, when she's next to me it just makes me feel better. Every time I feel her hand in mine, my heart races and I can't believe I can feel this way about another human being. I know I love her and I know you will too."

Carolyn sighed deeply. She was so against the things her son was sharing with her but she didn't want to express that and hurt his feelings. He's young, she told herself, it won't last. So instead she forced a smile and said, "Tell me about her."

Derek smiled back, "She's really smart; freakishly smart. She reads through the text once and somehow retains it all. She's really, really pretty. She's got green eyes and light brown hair. Nancy says it's called chestnut or something like that."

"Nancy has met her?"

"Yeah, they're friends. Anyway, she's fun, and she's very kind. She does things for people that no one would think to do. There is this homeless guy near campus and she feeds him every single day, she gets him clean clothes every week. She's been talking about helping him get a job. Who does something like that for a stranger?" Derek continued to ramble.

"Does she have the money to support someone like that?"

Derek shrugged, "I guess she does."

"You sound quite taken by her."

"I am."

"I was like 23," he reminded her.

"You were actually 22. And you said you believed in love at first sight. Are you saying you admit that you were too young to realize it wasn't love at first sight with Addison? Or are you saying you still believe in love at first sight, but you didn't feel it with this girl."

Feeling cornered, Derek cleared his throat and admitted, "I didn't feel it immediately with this girl, but I did with Addison. I still get that feeling around Addison. Doesn't mean I won't get to that point with Dereana."

Carolyn nodded as she took a sip of her coffee. After a few moments passed, she sighed and said, "I hope you do get to that point with her."

Violet stood across the island in the shared faux-kitchen of their practice with a mug of coffee in her hands. "So Derek took your son to visit his mother and you get the whole weekend to yourself," she clarified. "And you're not going to do anything?"

"I'm going to relax at home. That's something."

"No," Violet insisted. "Let's go to a spa. There is this place in West Hollywood that has a seaweed wrap that leaves you feeling 10 years younger. You would love it. We will get Nai in on it too."

"As great as that sounds, I'm exhausted and some alone time sounds better than literally everything right now."

"You're always tired lately...and pale. Maybe you're anemic, have you checked?"

"I'm not anemic. I'm pregnant."

Violet's eyes widened and she froze. "Pregnant?" he eyes shifted to Addison's midsection.

"Yes."

"Like, on purpose?"

"No."

"And you're keeping it?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who the father is?"

"I do."

Violet stared at her blanky expecting an answer. "And?"

"Derek is the baby's father."

Violet smirked. "I should have known!" she exclaimed, mostly to herself. "I just knew you'd end up hooking up or getting back together at some point. I just knew it was a matter of time. I didn't think it would be this fast but I should have seen it coming."

"We're not getting back together," Addison told her. "We're just going to co-parent like we do with Christopher. That's been working for us and I don't want to ruin a good thing."

"But co-parenting an infant can't be the same as co-parenting a school age kid. For one, he can't see the baby once a month. Every time he comes around, it'll be a new baby and it will barely recognize him until it gets older. And I doubt you'd be willing to fly a newborn to Seattle once a month."

Addison sat back on the bar stool and looked down at the salad in front of her. She hadn't thought through those factors and she wasn't ready to.

"And then how do you navigate his mom meeting the kid? Does she come here to visit? Do you take the baby there? Does he take the baby there without you?" Violet rambled questions as they came to her mind, each one making Addison more and more anxious.

Luckily, the reception poke her head into the room and cleared her throat, "Dr. Montgomery, you've got a patient in the waiting room. It's the woman who stormed out a few weeks ago," the woman explained. Noting the surprised look on Addison's face, she added, "She says she is ready to talk now."

She asked the receptionist to direct the woman to her office and set down her fork without even taking the bite of lettuce that was speared on to it. "Can you throw that away for me?" she asked as she dabbed her mouth and left the kitchen to meet the woman waiting in her office.

She stopped right outside the door to draw in a breath before putting a smile on her face and walking in to greet the woman with a handshake. "I'm so glad you decided to come back," she said as she sat behind her desk.

"You said you would be able to help me."

"I said I would do everything I can to help you," Addison corrected. "And I will."

The woman, Allison, Addison recalled from their last meeting, gave a nod. "I was upset last time. I didn't think it was fair that our tests were mixed up but you had the winning results, especially given that you're already a mother," she started saying. "But, then I realized it's not your fault. You didn't choose to give me the disadvantage."

Addison nodded, trying her best to remain professional. "I think it would be best to start with a new round of tests to be analyzed by a different lab. Once we have those results, we can determine which, if any, treatments will be effective. We can try whatever it takes to help you accomplish your goal of motherhood."

"How long will that take?"

Addison shrugged, "I can't say. It depends on your body. And if your body is not responding to treatment, we can consider surrogacy or adoption."

The woman gave her a very skeptical look. "That all sounds very expensive."

"We will do whatever we can to get you to your goal and you won't have to worry about cost any step of the way. We'll work that out."

"Why would you want to do that for me?"

Addison opened her mouth to respond but came to a halt as she considered what she was about to say. She urged herself to stop making the case personal and to remain as professional as possible. Before her brain could restructure her thoughts, the words came out of her mouth. "Because before I learned about the mix up, I was in your shoes and being robbed of that dream was hard. It's hard to think about fertility treatments as a single woman, you shouldn't have the added stress of how to pay for it."

After meeting with the woman, Addison felt at peace for the first time she learned of the whole incident through her own pregnancy. She was sharing the news with her coworkers at the end of the day when Naomi's jaw dropped.

"Are you crazy?" Naomi asked her, genuinely believing that must be the case. "This practice can't afford to write-off a woman's long shot fertility treatments until something works! That's a massive profit margin, Addison!"

Cooper winced at the tone and excused himself to avoid the topic.

"Relax, Nai, I wasn't planning on having the practice write it off. I will personally cover the cost."

"You're going to pay out of pocket with no limit until a stranger gets pregnant?" Pete asked, thinking he would call her bluff.

"She's got a 25 million dollar trust fund," Naomi casually told Pete. "Money has no value to her."

Peter and Violet both grew wide eyed. She felt like in the mere seconds since the information was revealed, they were already treating her differently though no one had said or done anything.

"No, wait, it's 30 now, isn't it? You mentioned once during a drunken breakdown after you got engaged that Bizzy put in a contingency to up your trust fund if you ever left Derek," Naomi recalled.

Addison took a deep breath to try to calm herself. When that didn't work, she decided to count to ten keep her from reacting without thinking through her words and actions. What she didn't plan on was that she'd keep going to fifty before making the decision to calmly walk away from the situation.

"That was a little harsh," Violet told Naomi once Addison had walked away. "She's pregnant, there's no need to create unnecessary conflict."

"She's pregnant?" Pete asked in surprise. "Since when?"

Ignoring him, Naomi turned to Violet, "You've known her for less than a year. I've known her since medical school. Why are you getting involved?"

"Because sometimes you can be harsh, and I'm telling you this was one of those times. It's her money, it doesn't matter how much it is or where it came from and it's none of your business what she does with it. If she wants to pay for a stranger's fertility treatments, that's none of your concern, Naomi. It's not like she's going to turn to you to cover her expenses afterward."

Pete nodded in agreement, "She's got a valid point. I'll go check on her," he said before excusing himself.

Naomi rolled her eyes, "I should have known everyone would pick her side," she mumbled to herself.

"I mean, she's the one that ended up pregnant after you told her it's not physically possible because you didn't notice the test results were wrong. And she's the one helping the poor woman who is on the losing end of this mix up that you were apart. Yet you're not really showing remorse, so yeah, her side does seem more appealing." Violet told her bluntly and shrugged.

"Mommy and I live on the beach now!" Christopher excitedly told one of his cousin's, Kathleen's middle son, who was just under a year older than him, as they played together in their grandmother's living room. "Like that one house we had where everyone would come sleep over during Fourth of July," he continued, thinking back to the few summers he remembered at the house in the Hamptons. "Except this one is smaller. I don't think that many people would fit."

"Do you go to Disneyland all the time?"

Christopher shook his head. "Just once when Daddy was supposed to visit me but couldn't so my mom took me alone."

"Do you get to see movie stars?"

Christopher shrugged, "I saw Mickey at Disneyland. Does that count?" he wondered out loud.

Their conversation was interrupted when their grandmother called them to the kitchen for lunch. The both eagerly ran over to see chicken tenders and broccoli waiting for them on the table. Christopher sighed in disappointment as he sat down. "Can we have french fries?"

"No, you can have broccoli," he grandmother replied as she put a serving on his plate.

"Do you have green juice?" Christopher asked.

"What's that?"

"It's got apples, bananas, wheatgrass, kiwi, and kale in it. And maybe spinach? I'm not sure. It's called Green Machine but I call it green juice." He explained.

"You don't like broccoli but you drink wheatgrass and kale juice?" his grandmother asked him with a questionable look on her face. When did her grandson become a California hipster?

"My mom and I love it," he told her as he took a bite of a chicken tender while ignoring the broccoli on the plate. "Where's my dad?"

"He's patching a hole in my gutters," Carolyn replied.

"Daddy fixes things? Why don't you just call a guy with lots of tools to fix it?" Christopher asked in surprise.

Carolyn made a mental note to talk to Derek about being more present in his son's life before the boy could complete his transition into a mini-Addison. "He's a brain surgeon. I'm sure he can figure out how to fix a small hole in a tube."

"Chris says he's gonna have a baby brother!" her other grandson blurted excitedly. "Did you know that, grandma?"

"Brother?" Carolyn asked, looking at Christopher for confirmation.

Christopher shrugged. "Yeah, it's gotta be a brother. I don't want a sister because it'll will be two girls at our new house and I'll be the only boy since Daddy doesn't live with us anymore. Two girls and one boy isn't fair."

"Yeah, cuz we're three boys and four girls and the girl always get to pick the movie cuz their vote wins," his cousin agreed. After a few moments of silence while he processed all of the updates from his younger cousin, his brows came together. "Your dad doesn't live with you anymore?"

Chris shook his head. "No, he stayed in Seattle. He and my mom don't like each other enough to live together anymore," he told his cousin, trying his best not to sound bothered by that reality. "But they still love me the same, so that's okay," he added, because that's how his parents and teacher always end their spews when their topic came up.

At that point, Carolyn excused herself from the table to go outside and see Derek who was standing around on his phone as opposed to actually doing work. "How is it going out here?"

"I called a handyman," Derek replied. "He'll be here any second. I wasn't sure what to use to patch the hole and I figured I should let a pro handle it."

So Christopher was right about Derek not being handy and just throwing money at problems, that's definitely something that he developed after marriage Carolyn thought to herself. "Has Christopher seems like he's being very mature about your split from Addison."

Derek nodded, choosing not to mention that there have been hard days and lots of tears and separation anxiety from all parties. "Yeah, he is doing very well and he's been very understanding. Addison does a pretty good job of helping him understand and making sure we stay connected so I think that's helped."

"Does he know about your girlfriend?"

"Mom," Derek sighed. "She's not my girlfriend. We are just dating for now, we haven't put a title on it yet. And no, he doesn't know. It's too soon for him to know." Plus, once he knows then Addison will find out and then he'd have to face that reality (which he hoped to avoid as long as possible.)

"Derek, you can't keep your son, your ex-wife and the pregnancy, and your unofficial girlfriend secret for long. It's a dangerous juggling act you're attempting. I don't want you to lose control and hurt anyone."

Little did he know, the hardship of juggling secrets were just beginning.

Fingers crossed the next update doesn't take four months like this one did. Perhaps lots and lots of reviews will be a good motivator to get the next chapter up sooner (insert winking emoji here).