fever dream
10
The drugstore carries four different brands of pregnancy test.
I buy three of each and grunt my thanks at the cashier, tossing the plastic bag onto the passenger seat and peeling away like my ass is on fire.
"This is purely a guess, but since you didn't mention it...do you know that you're pregnant?"
What the actual fuck?
I have a selection of prenatal and pregnancy pamphlets folded and stuffed into my back pocket and half a shelf of pregnancy tests on my seat, but I still can't believe this is my life.
I'm floating outside my body, watching Numb Bella drive toward home on autopilot, but I have no idea what's going on or what I should be doing right now.
Undoing my jeans, clutching the handles of the plastic bag in one hand and the car keys in the other as I stumble up the steps to the house probably isn't it.
Riley is just coming down the stairs with his case when I manage to get the door open after several tries. He's leaving for a work trip in a couple of hours, I'm reminded. Hand luggage at the foot of the stairs, suit bag hanging from the coat stand, folder of necessary documents fanned out on the console. He's meticulous with his planning. Always has been. Riley hates the feeling of not seeing a complication coming in advance, of not being able to prepare for it.
I bet that even he hasn't seen this complication coming.
He smiles, but it slips when he looks at me properly.
I imagine he's seeing my unbuttoned jeans, a full CVS bag with First Response and Clearblue logos visible through the thin plastic, and the no-doubt frantic look on my face, wondering what the hell is going on.
"Bella, are you okay?"
I stare at him, really look at the lines around his mouth, the way his blue eyes see right through me. His hair is slicked back, a few grays at his temples that I didn't notice until recently. He's wearing his favorite suit, tie draped over the bottom of the stair rail ready for him to head out to Kentucky.
As he reaches the bottom step, setting his case on the floor, I choke out two words I'm sure he wasn't expecting to hear today.
"I'm pregnant."
~ fd ~
Sitting on the side of the tub, I stare down at the twelve tests I've just peed on or dipped in pee.
They're all positive.
Every single one.
And I...I'm numb.
I don't feel a thing when Riley breathes a string of curses.
Lined up along the counter, I blink back tears and wonder how the hell this could have happened.
"We'll be okay," Riley eventually whispers, like he's afraid speaking at a normal decibel might make this real. "We'll be okay."
No, no we won't. Because this…I press trembling fingertips against my abdomen. It's still flat—well, as flat as it gets since I birthed two nine-pound babies nine years apart.
This might not be your baby.
How do I tell him? How?
My eyes burn as I play out a hundred different conversations that all start and end the same.
With me admitting that I've been having an affair...
And him finding out that this baby is a Cullen through-and-through, just maybe not his.
Life is a funny old thing, though. I've heard it called a game many a time—only now, when Riley sighs and reaches over to twist our fingers together on my thigh, do I realize why.
I'm five steps behind, always.
"I know it's not mine."
"I—Riley...of course—"
"Hear me out, please?"
I nod, can't do anything else, and he stares at the line of tests as he starts to speak. As he explains that the only time we could've created this baby was the night of Edward's birthday, but he didn't finish.
I frown, staring at his profile like it's the first time I'm seeing it.
After a humourless chuckle, he admits, "I think I've known for a while. That there was someone else. There has been, hasn't there? Another man?"
My whole body trembles as he turns his head to face me, blue eyes piercing right to my soul. He knew?
He knew.
All this time…
Slowly, I nod.
Of course he knew.
Scary calm washes over me like a tsunami as I stare at him, the boy I fell in love with at fifteen and the man I fell out of love with...somewhere along the line since then. If I had to, I couldn't even put a pin in it. The moment it happened. But now...
It's time.
The fact that he suspected does nothing to quell the stab of pain that crosses his face. Despite how far apart we've become, how little I feel like I know him now, it hurts me to see him hurting. Especially because I know I've caused it.
"I saw a charge on the credit card once. You must have used the joint account by accident, I never saw it again. The motel, out by the highway?"
Oh, God.
He really did know.
His sad, almost-smile guts me. "You know...I thought if I let it go, if I didn't say anything, it would get out of your system or something and you'd come back to me. I figured it was just a rough patch. I'm gone a lot, it's hard here with the kids sometimes, you have an intense job…" Riley shakes his head. "But I felt it. You, pulling away. More and more every day. And then…" He breaks off, chin dropping to his chest, a bitter laugh escaping.
My breath catches in my throat when he lifts it again, two fat tears sitting on the apples of his cheeks.
"That fucking bird. Of course he'd get that tattooed right over his damn heart."
His words knock the breath from my body.
Oh, shit.
"Yeah. As if I wouldn't put the pieces together. I didn't realize my little brother thought I was that stupid."
"Riley...I'm sorry, I...we never meant to hurt you. I never meant—it wasn't..."
"You don't have to explain it to me, Bella. Please, don't. I can't...I don't want to think about my brother fucking my wife, let alone hear about it."
Ouch. I flinch, but I deserve every bit of his anger, deserve to feel his hurt. I caused it—I'm still causing it.
Bile burns my throat as I realize it's not going away any time soon either, because if what he said is true and he really didn't finish that night, the likely truth is that I'm carrying his brother's baby.
Edward's baby.
"Can I just ask one thing?"
"Anything."
He hesitates. "Why didn't you just leave me? I've wondered...so many times. If you were unhappy, if you didn't love me...why not go?"
Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I wrap both my hands around his and pray he feels the truth in what I'm saying. Pray he believes this, if nothing else.
"I do love you, Riley. I do. I never stopped, not for a minute, but I...I wasn't happy. Somewhere along the line, somewhere between having a family and trying to build both our careers, I think I just stopped being in love. It felt like we were drifting apart, like...like we were living two different lives from the same house." Saying the words aloud, putting them out there into the universe for the first time, feels strange but also not. "We've had a good life together, I think. We're good together, as parents. But maybe...maybe not as husband and wife, anymore?"
He nods slowly, like that's what he expected to hear, like he agrees. I don't know if that makes it better or worse.
"But the real reasons I never would have walked away are Fi and Jameson. I couldn't do it…"
Tears clog my throat, cutting off my words, because despite everything I've put us through, despite it all, I am going to do it.
There's no going back from this.
We'll be gossip fodder for the likes of Alice and her PTA mom friends, because at some point in the near future, Riley and I will divorce. The kids will have two homes, two Christmases, two birthdays.
And a new sibling.
And somehow, someway, we'll have to make sure they stay happy, and safe, and that they understand we both love them so very much.
Brushing a tear from my cheek with the pad of his thumb, Riley manages a weak smile. "It'll be okay, Bella. It will. I...I need some time, okay? I'm going to go stay in a hotel for a few days, the kids are expecting me to be gone anyway. And when I come back, we'll deal with...everything."
"Ok-kay."
Everything is an awful lot, but for the first time in a long time, with Riley by my side, I feel like we can do this.
~ fd ~
When Riley returns on Friday, I've packed the kids up and dropped them with Em and Rose for the weekend. They have no idea what's going on, I just hinted to Rose that Riley and I needed some alone time and she took the bait.
In the days since he left, we've spoken a couple of times; enough to get the ball rolling with a divorce lawyer and agree that, no matter what, we're splitting custody of the children fifty-fifty.
When he walks in the door Friday evening, looking exhausted and totally unlike himself in sweats and a t-shirt, I fall apart. We spend the evening on the sofa with a bottle of non-alcoholic wine and a pepperoni pizza, working out logistics and timings and how and when we'll tell people. There's no urgency, we agree. We can move at our own pace—within reason, anyway.
There's the small but not unimportant matter of telling Edward that he's going to be a father to take care of.
"I already told Nonna," I admit sheepishly, cheeks flaming before he snorts and tells me he guessed I would have.
"I told Bree," he adds, talking about his PA, looking everywhere but at me. I file that little tidbit away for later, hearing my phone ringing in the kitchen.
Getting to it just in time, I frown when I realize I don't recognize the number. "Hello?"
"Hello, is that Mrs. Cullen?"
"This is she. Who am I speaking to?"
"My name is Carla, I'm a nurse at St Marks Hospital. We've got a Mr. Cullen here asking for you."
My blood runs cold.
"Edward? Edward Cullen?"
"Yes. I'm afraid to say he's been in a bit of an accident. Are you able to come down here?"
~ fd ~
I'm in no state to drive, so Riley bundles me into the car and gets us to the hospital in what's probably no time at all, but feels like forever.
When we get to the ER entrance, he tells me to call when we're ready; he'll wait outside.
Grateful, and well aware I shouldn't be expecting anything of him, I pop a kiss on his cheek before dashing inside.
I hear Edward before I see him.
"Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguing is done
We'll take our leave and go."
"Oh, for the love…"
The nurse grins as she points me toward Edward's voice, admitting, "He's been regaling us all with his, uh, lovely voice ever since the EMTs brought him in."
"I'm so sorry."
She snorts, erupting with laughter at my solemn apology, but my focus switches from her to the mess on a gurney as soon as I step into the curtained-off area in the corner.
"Oh, Edward…"
His handsome face is all bashed up; a split in his lip, a cut across the bottom of his jaw, and a pretty intense black eye already brewing.
"What did you do?"
Squinting, he hisses before breaking out into a beautifully heartbreaking smile. "Bellaaaa! You came!" Leaning so far over he almost tips himself off the gurney, he loudly whispers, "I lied! I told them you're my wife." He tries to wink with his good eye, but both close, then open again. "They believed me 'cause we have the same name. Cullen, right? 'Cause you're married to my fuckwit of a big brother."
"Edward…" I warn gently, goosebumps rising on my arms when I lay a hand on his chest.
Piercing green eyes snap to mine; a little unfocused, but no less intense than usual. "What? S'true, ain't it?"
The admission 'we're getting a divorce' is right there, on the tip of my tongue.
But I can't...not like this. Not when he's slurring his words, hammered beyond reason, and definitely not when he's grunting for me to get out of the way so he can vomit into the trash can behind me.