Chapter 42

It was hard for Clarke to squeeze in check-ups every other week when she already had classes and work to balance. Luckily, Dr. Jackson was more than willing to accommodate her, often skipping his lunch break just to have his appointment with her. He was always smiling and always peppy, and Clarke couldn't help but wonder if he'd been a cheerleader in high school, because he certainly had that type of personality.

The bi-weekly check-ups were wreaking havoc with Bellamy's work schedule, too, but he never missed any of them. Not one single appointment. He always came to campus, picked her up, and drove her to the hospital, and they usually went and got something to eat afterwards. Then he'd drive her back to campus and drop her off right next to her car (if she had to go to work) or right next to whatever building her next class was in.

The check-ups were all pretty standard, and usually they didn't take very long. Dr. Jackson performed a routine physical exam, asked her how she was feeling, and sometimes drew blood for testing. None of the tests ever came back with any alarming results, so that was good.

The week before Valentine's Day marked the last week of Clarke's second trimester, and she was feeling it. Her back hurt so much that she felt like she was breaking in half, and she told her doctor that. He assured her it was normal, and that her leg cramps were normal, too, and that all her little aches and pains were normal. If anything got significantly worse, though, he wanted her to inform him immediately. Or if she started vomiting or feeling faint or bleeding or noticing that the baby was kicking less . . . there was actually a whole long list of things that could have been indicative of some sort of problem, but fortunately, she wasn't experiencing any of them.

One of the things she liked so much about Dr. Jackson was that he didn't just focus on the physical aspects of pregnancy. He talked to her about the mental and emotional stuff, too. Almost like a therapist, but not quite so emotionally invasive. He asked her how she was sleeping, probably as a follow-up to the conversation he'd had with Bellamy last week, and she gave him an honest answer. Sleep was still kind of rough. But at least she wasn't afraid to dream anymore.

"So the nightmares are . . ." Dr. Jackson trailed off.

"Still there, but not as frequent this past week," she said. "I've been sleeping better, and when I do have a bad dream, Bellamy wakes up with me, and I tell him about it." She looked over at him where he sat on the 'dad chair,' as he liked to call it, and smiled at him. "He usually turns it into something funny. And then I feel a whole lot better."

"Good, good." Dr. Jackson quickly typed up some quick notes, then asked, "So you feel like you're getting plenty of rest?"

"Trying to," she said, touching her stomach. "But I've got a little night owl in here."

The doctor chuckled. "Well, I'm glad to hear things are going better for you. Hard to believe you're almost in your third trimester, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I've been pregnant for half a year."

"You've been badass," Bellamy said with a smirk.

Badass may not have been the right word for it. Although . . . maybe it was. Growing and sheltering an entire other person wasn't exactly an easy thing to do.

"You're in the home stretch," Dr. Jackson said. "How are you feeling about giving birth?"

That freaked her out, honestly. What if she wasn't badass enough for that? "A little nervous," she confessed, downplaying her anxiety about the whole thing.

"That's understandable," the doctor said. "Have you signed up for any childbirth classes?"

Oh, crap, she thought. A couple of weeks ago, one of her apps had suggested that she do that, but she hadn't gotten around to it yet. "No," she said. "We were going to, but . . . were we supposed to have done that already?"

"Well, most classes require registration six to eight weeks in advance," Dr. Jackson explained.

"Six to . . . six to eight weeks?" she shrieked. "I didn't know that. I thought you could just show up." She shot Bellamy a panicked look. "We haven't registered! What do we do?"

"It's okay," Dr. Jackson assured her quickly. "You're first-time parents. I'll make sure you get into a class. Are you wanting to do a traditional Lamaze class, or . . ."

"Yes," she said, not even aware of her options. "What other classes are there?"

"I can give you some resources," he said. "But Lamaze is always a recommended one."

"Okay, let's just do that then." Lamaze was practically synonymous with childbirth. There had to be a reason why so many people chose it.

"Okay, I'll get you signed up," Dr. Jackson said. "It's also probably about time for you to come up with a birth plan. If you'd like to."

"A plan?" she echoed. "You can plan giving birth?"

"Well, to be honest, about 54% of first-time mothers say their birth plan goes out the window when they're in labor," Dr. Jackson said. "But 46% do report using them." He opened up a folder, took out a thin packet of paper, and handed it over to her. "Here, take this home," he said. "Fill out what you can, bring it to your next appointment. We can talk through some of your options and discuss what you'd like to be able to expect. Even if you don't end up using it, it might put your mind at ease just to know it's in place."

Clarke skimmed a couple of the questions, relieved that it didn't appear to be too overwhelming. It had the hospital logo on top of it, so it must have been a birth plan worksheet geared specifically for their facilities.

"So there's homework now?" Bellamy said. "I kinda suck at homework. It's okay, though. She's good at it."

She was, always had been, but this wasn't the kind of homework she could do alone. It was something for them to do together, because even though she was the one who was actually going to push a baby out a few short months from now, he was going to be right there with her. His opinion on the big, terrifying day mattered, too.

Clarke couldn't very well focus on anatomy class after that appointment. She tried, but she ended up spacing off, so when it came time to tackle her actual homework that evening, she felt like she was up a creek without a paddle. She sat down at the kitchen table, opened up all her half-assed notes, which were no help whatsoever, and her textbook, which was dry as fuck but contained the information she needed to read in order to teach herself what she'd missed out on today.

All she had to do was answer ten questions at the end of the chapter, but five of them were short-answer essay questions, so getting through them was a painstaking process. She'd been at it for about an hour when her mind started to drift again. Sticking out of the top of her notebook was that birth plan worksheet from the hospital. She'd doodled a little Bellamy & Clarke 4ever! on it, with little hearts and everything, which probably made her seem really immature. But she was an artist. Artists doodled.

She knew she should keep going with the science questions. But they just didn't seem as important as the questions on that worksheet did.

...

Clarke actively tried to slow herself down during her world history test. For some reason, the teacher had set aside an entire class period for it, but it was just so easy, and Clarke knew that if she finished up early, like she always did, she'd have nothing to do but sit there and wait for everyone else to get done. So she wrote her essay answers down in her nicest handwriting, and she double-checked every multiple choice response, even though she knew they were right.

Halfway through the class period—and nearly completely through her test—the classroom phone rang, and the teacher picked it up, speaking quietly. "This is Mrs. Brandt," she said. "Yes. Yes, of course." She hung up the phone and said, "Clarke."

She looked up from her test.

"You're needed in the office," her teacher told her.

She felt like every pair of eyes in that class immediately focused in on her, and she tried to ignore them as she flipped her test upside down, got up from her desk, and headed out of the room. Everyone knew what it was about, though. They'd all seen her empty desk yesterday.

Even though she knew this had to be about missing class, Clarke still tried to convince herself that it could be about something else as she slowly progressed to the office. Maybe she needed lunch money or something. Although that wasn't likely. Her dad had written one huge check at the beginning of the year to cover the cost through May. Maybe she'd left something at cheer practice and they were just going to have her get it from the lost and found. Except . . . they hadn't had cheer practice this morning.

When she walked into the office, the secretary motioned her towards Mrs. Sydney's door. She opened it, none too thrilled to see her mom sitting there in one of the chairs.

Oh, great. It was worse than she'd thought.

"Have a seat, Clarke," the principal instructed, motioning to the empty chair.

"What's going on?" she asked, pretending to be clueless. It was worth a shot.

"Just do what she says and have a seat," her mom said sternly. Her face was red, like she was angry.

Clarke pulled the door shut and sat down in the chair next to her mom, trying to drudge up an excuse not to be in there right now. "I'm in the middle of a test," she said, even though she was technically at the end of it.

Mrs. Sydney ignored that and cut straight to the chase. "It seems we have a problem. Our attendance records indicate you missed your last six class periods yesterday. Is there anything you'd like to tell me about that?"

Anything she'd like to tell her? "No," she answered honestly. Her principal didn't need to know that she and Bellamy had illegally purchased some beers and ended up having sex in the ocean.

"Mrs. Sydney, is there anything you would like to tell me about why on earth it took you a full day to uncover this?" her mom growled. "We should've been dealing with this yesterday, not today."

"I apologize," the principal said calmly. "Yesterday was . . . hectic. It slipped through the cracks."

"Really?" her mom spat. "I ask you to keep an eye on my daughter, and this is the best you and your staff can do?"

"It won't happen again," Mrs. Sydney assured her. "Clarke, you weren't at school yesterday, were you?"

There was no point in lying, not when it was so obvious. "Not for the whole day," she admitted. But hey, she'd still clocked in those first two class periods.

"When did you leave?"

She sighed, with no choice but to own up to it. "After second period."

"And where did you go?"

"Out."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," her mom said. "We both know what happened. Bellamy convinced her to skip school, so they just took off and went somewhere."

"I wasn't with Bellamy," she said, hoping to cover for him, if possible. Maybe, by some freak chance, his teachers had forgotten to mark him absent.

"Clarke, there's no need to lie," Mrs. Sydney said. "We know he wasn't here, either."

So they were both caught. Not surprising, but when no one had alerted her parents to her absence yesterday, she'd kind of let herself get her hopes up and believe they'd gotten away with it. "Well, it wasn't his idea," she said. "It was mine."

Her mom made a face. "Honey, you don't have to fall down on the sword for this boy."

"That's not what I'm doing. I'm telling the truth," she said. "That's what you guys want, isn't it?" She wasn't going to let Bellamy shoulder any more of the blame for it than he had to. "It was my idea to cut class. So we did."

"It really doesn't matter whose idea it was," Mrs. Sydney said. "Ultimately, you both violated school policy by leaving the way you did, and that comes with a consequence. Two days in-school suspension. For both of you."

In school suspension? Clarke had never even gotten detention before, let alone a suspension of any kind.

"I don't want them serving those suspensions on the same days," her mother said.

"They won't," Mrs. Sydney assured her.

Of course not, Clarke thought bitterly. Gotta keep us apart at all times. Didn't they understand that they wouldn't have even felt the need to skip school if they were just allowed to see each other? To sit at the same lunch table together? To walk down the hallway holding hands?

"Can I get back to class now?" she said, eager to get out of there. The irony of a classroom being her escape right now when it'd felt like a prison yesterday was not lost on her.

"That's probably a good idea," her principal said.

Clarke pushed her chair back and sprang to her feet, hustling out the door. Once she was back in the halls, though, she stopped, feeling like she needed to just calm down for a minute. She was pissed and even a little embarrassed to have gotten caught. If she went back to class and tried to finish that test now, she might not do her best work.

She ended up walking outside, even though that technically wasn't allowed. What were they gonna do, suspend her even more?

It wasn't as warm out as it had been yesterday, so she rubbed her arms and shivered. Even though it was chilly and breezy, it still felt better outside than it had in that office with her mom. She felt like she could breathe out here, but in there, it'd been suffocating.

"Why are you out here?"

She winced when she heard her mom's voice, and suddenly, even the outdoors felt a bit stuffy. "Because I need some air," she said.

"And here I thought you were skipping again."

She spun around, huffing, "I cut six classes. It's not the end of the world."

Her mom narrowed her eyes at her and shook her head disappointedly. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing!" she said in exasperation. "I'm just sick of you trying to control my life!"

"I never had to back when you were dating Wells."

Wells again? What did it take to get it through her brain that there was no hope of that happening again? "I'm not getting back together with him, Mom."

"Well, you should," her mom said. "He's smart and driven and . . . everything Bellamy isn't."

Clarke immediately felt the need to jump to her boyfriend's defense. "You don't even know Bellamy!" she yelled.

"Oh, I think I do."

"No, you don't!" To stand there and say that Bellamy wasn't smart and wasn't driven was such an insult, one he didn't deserve. "You've created this vision of him in your mind, because you've always had it out for him. But if you really knew him, you'd know that—that he loves his mom more than anything in the world. That there's a guy here at school who would be bullied mercilessly right now if Bellamy hadn't taken him under his wing. That he's trying to get his grades up just to seem a little bit more redeemable to you." That was only the tip of the iceberg, too. There was so much more about Bellamy that she didn't see and didn't know existed. "He's a good guy, and I . . . I really like him."

"You're better than him!" her mom shouted, louder than Clarke had ever heard her get at school. Or in any public place, really.

Oh my god, Clarke thought, staring at her in utter disbelief. Had she really just said that? Did she even hear herself right now? Better than him? Why? Why on earth would she be better? Because she had straight A's? Because they had money? Because she was going to get scholarships for her grades?

It was more than frustrating at this point, hearing her mom rag on her boyfriend like this. More than aggravating, more than annoying. It was downright cruel.

It was Clarke's turn to be disappointed now, because this woman standing in front of her . . . this was the worst version of her mother. This was not the same person who had raised her to be compassionate and kind. This was someone she felt ashamed to even be seen with, so she stormed past her and headed back inside the school.

...

Despite the fact that her grade point average was still a 4.0, Clarke felt like she'd been such a better student in high school. Getting through this homework right now was painstaking, and the more she let her mind drift to other things, the more impossible and daunting it seemed. She set the birth plan worksheet back down, knowing she still had plenty of time to do that. But knowing that didn't make it feel like any less of a priority.

"Laundry's all in," Bellamy said, emerging from the room next to the coat closet with an empty hamper in hand. "I hope I don't turn everything pink."

"Did you put the reds in with the darks?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Then it should be fine." If something did turn pink, though, she hoped it was one of his sweatshirts. Bellamy in a pink sweatshirt would be adorable.

It didn't appear that he had much to do when he sat down on the couch and turned on the TV, so she picked up the worksheet from the hospital again and asked him, "You wanna work on this birth plan? I need a break from my other homework."

Immediately, he lowered the volume on the TV, to the point where it was nearly muted. "Sure," he said. "Although I'm not sure how much help I'll be. Are we supposed to do it together?"

"I don't know. But I want to." She slid to the edge of her chair and pushed herself up—that was how she had to stand nowadays, because it wasn't so easy to just lean forward anymore—and joined him on the couch with the worksheet and her anatomy textbook. The textbook was only so she'd have something to write on; she didn't intend to open it for the rest of the night. The time for traditional homework had passed.

"Alright, let's do this," Bellamy said, rubbing his hands together excitedly.

At the top of the worksheet was a space for her name, so she put that in. But then she put Avery's name in parenthesis, because it was technically a plan for the baby, too. Then she began reading: "'Attendants. I'd like the following people to be present during labor and/or birth.'" The worksheet listed lines for her to write in the names of various people. The first was Partner, but after that were lines for friends and relatives. "Just you," she decided quickly, filling in his name.

"Just me?" he echoed.

"Yeah."

"Not your mom or anything?"

She snorted at that. "No way. Can you imagine her in the delivery room? She'd try to take over for Dr. Jackson. No thanks." If she hadn't had Bellamy, then maybe she'd have her mom by her side, just so she wouldn't be alone. But even then, Raven would have perhaps been a better option. "'I'd like to . . . bring music?'" she read on questioningly.

"Oh, yeah, let's blast some Tupac," Bellamy joked.

"'Dim the lights, wear my own clothes . . .'" She made a face. "I don't want any of this stuff." She left those boxes unchecked and pointed out the last one on the list to him. "Oh, and look at this one."

Bellamy leaned over and read, "'Take pictures and video during the delivery.'"

"Um, no. Murphy's not getting any footage of this." Pictures afterward were totally fine, even though she'd probably look like crap. Once Avery was born, she wanted loads of pictures and videos. But she never needed to go back and see footage of herself actually pushing the baby out. In her health class freshman year, they'd had to watch a birth video, and it'd been traumatizing.

She checked the box that said she wanted her partner to be allowed to stay with her at all times, which was pretty much a no-brainer, then said, "I feel like some of this is stuff I have to talk to the doctor about." There were terms on there she didn't recognize, despite the medical biology classes she'd taken.

"Yeah, sure," Bellamy said.

"Like all these labor props," she said. "A birthing stool? A squatting bar? A birthing tub? What even is this stuff?"

"I don't know," Bellamy replied with a shrug. "I'd Google it, but who knows what would come up."

She flipped to the next page and laughed nervously. "Oh, look, they have a whole section devoted to pain relief." To this day, she had no idea how the woman in the birth video she'd seen had been so calm.

"Are you gonna take drugs?" Bellamy asked her.

"I'm not sure." She'd done a little reading about the pros and cons, but nothing had completely convinced her yet. "I mean, I'd love to be able to tough it out and just go the natural route, but . . . ow. What do you think?"

"It's completely up to you."

Yeah, that was what everything she read said, that there was no right or wrong method of giving birth, that a woman should always feel supported in whatever decision she made. "Well, with an epidural, they, like, numb you from the waist down," she said. "Which sounds great, in theory, but then supposedly it makes the pushing part of the labor longer." Maybe it was better to just push for a shorter amount of time and get it done?

"What's your mom think?" he asked.

"Well, she had a natural labor, so of course she thinks I should try to have a natural labor, too. But I don't know."

"Just mark this box then," he said, pointing to the one that said she'd request pain relief if needed.

"Okay." She put a checkmark through the box and went on to the next section. "Pushing . . . I have no idea. Positions for pushing . . . I didn't even know you could do anything other than just lay there." Those were definitely things to talk to Dr. Jackson about. She'd just assumed it would play out like in the movies, where she'd be semi-reclining with her legs in the air, screaming her head off while she pushed a whole little human out of her. "Vaginal Birth," she said, progressing to the next page. "Kay, that's what we're going for. 'During delivery, I'd like to . . . view the birth using a mirror?'" She shook her head adamantly. "No. No way. None of these. I just wanna push and get her out."

"What about this one?" Bellamy questioned, pointing to the last one on the list.

"'My partner to help catch our baby,'" she read. Smiling at him, she asked, "Do you wanna do that?"

"I don't know what that is," he admitted.

"Well, it's like, when the baby comes out, you're the first one to hold her." She'd seen a video of that online, a non-graphic, non-terrifying video, and it'd been pretty sweet.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Yeah." Some women caught their own babies, but Clarke didn't think she'd be coherent or coordinated enough for that in the moment.

"Well, I mean, I was a football player," he pointed out, "so I can catch."

"Yeah, you have good hands," she agreed. She loved the thought of it, actually, of his hands being the first thing Avery felt as she came into the world, him being the first person ever to hold her.

"But what if you need me to stay up with you?" he said. "Or what if I pass out or screw something up?"

She doubted he'd pass out, but if he did, he'd hardly be the first father in the world to do so. "Let's just mark this as a maybe then," she said, jotting down a question mark next to the box. "I want you to cut the umbilical cord, though. Is that alright?"

"Yeah, that's good."

So even if he didn't get to catch the baby, he'd at least get to do that. That was a symbolic thing, too. "C-Section . . ." she went on, shuddering. "Don't even wanna think about that." The only way she'd end up having a C-Section was if something went wrong. "Postpartum . . ." She trailed off as she surveyed the various boxes under that section. It was an unpleasant word, mostly associated with postpartum depression, but really, it was all about what happened after the delivery.

"What?" Bellamy said.

"I just started thinking . . ." In the movies, it was always so simple. The baby was born, and the mom got to hold it. And usually it was all cleaned off and happy and healthy, and the mom was happy and healthy, too. "What if something goes wrong," she fretted, "and I'm not . . ." She didn't exactly want to vocalize it, but what if something happened and she wasn't able to make decisions?

"No, nothing's gonna go wrong," Bellamy assured her, putting his arm around her shoulders.

"But what if it does?" It wasn't common, and it wasn't fun to think about, but it was a possibility. "Bellamy, you have to stay with her," she said. "If they take her somewhere, you have to leave me and go. You have to be with her the whole time, even if I can't be there."

"Clarke, nothing's gonna happen to you," he insisted.

"I know. I know, but for some reason, if it does, you have to promise . . ." She swallowed hard, tears welling up in her eyes. "Promise me you won't leave her."

The excited gleam that had been in Bellamy's eyes for every other question on that worksheet had faded, replaced now by something a lot more somber. "I promise," he said.

"She has to stay with you." Her heart pounded heavily in her chest and her mind spun as she thought about how easy it might be for the world to tear them apart if she was . . . well, if she was gone. Right now, she was the link between Bellamy and Avery, despite how much he loved her, despite what a good father he already was. If she didn't make it through the delivery, she had to make sure Bellamy would be the one to take care of her.

...

Clarke knew her mom's window of time for lunch was pretty small, so she left one of her classes early to get to the hospital and catch her during it. The hospital cafeteria was relatively empty, with only her mom and two other people in there eating. The two others sat together, talking quietly, but her mom sat by herself, reading while she ate.

"Hey, Mom," Clarke said as she approached the table.

Her mom glanced up from her book and said, "Hi." She sounded surprised when she asked, "What're you doing here?"

"I'm on my lunch break, too," Clarke fibbed. "Thought I'd swing by." It wasn't like she'd be missing anything in her stats class anyway. It was a stupid general education class she'd neglected to take last year and simply had to get out of the way now. And it was so easy, she had no problem basically just teaching herself the content.

Her mother closed her book—The DaVinci Code, as it turned out—and asked, "Do you want something to eat?" as she motioned towards the food counter. "They can charge me for it here."

"No, thanks." Clarke's stomach churned as she looked at the mystery meat on her mom's plate. "I may be constantly hungry, but even I'm not hungry enough for hospital food."

"Well, here, have my fortune cookie at least," her mom said, handing over the plastic-wrapped treat.

Clarke tore it open, broke the cookie, and took out the small paper inside. "'Your sports team will be very successful this year,'" she read. "Great." Did she even have a sports team? Did she even care?

Her mom moved some food around on her plate and nudged her unused spoon towards Clarke, as if to encourage her to try some. "So how'd your appointment go yesterday?" she asked. "Everything go smoothly?"

"Yeah. Dr. Jackson's gonna try to get us into a Lamaze class," Clarke replied.

"Oh, yeah, we run one through the hospital. The same girl who teaches your prenatal yoga is the head instructor for it."

Clarke pictured Luna with her curly hair and unfair body and mumbled, "She's intimidatingly beautiful."

"She's good at her job, though. You'll like the class," her mom assured her.

Lamaze definitely seemed to have been the best bet. Clarke had looked up a few birthing class alternatives last night, and some of them just sounded . . . kind of out there. Like hypnosis stuff. Maybe it worked for some people, but she doubted it would work for her. Lamaze would be good preparation for what was to come. And then there was . . .

Well, then there was still the after.

"Bellamy and I started filling out a birth plan last night," she blurted, not even bothering to try to find a segue into the topic.

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah." For the most part, it'd been fun. For the most part.

"Can I see it?" her mom asked.

There was no way she was letting her mom see her birth plan. That was for her eyes and Bellamy's eyes and Dr. Jackson's eyes only. "Well, we're not done yet," she said. Which technically wasn't a lie. But when they were done, she still wasn't showing her mother. She just felt like that would lead to her lecturing about all the things that were wrong with it. "Hey, Mom?" she said quietly.

"What?"

As much as she wanted to keep the birth plan stuff quiet, there was one thing they needed to discuss. One very important thing. "I know it's kind of morbid to think about, but . . . what if something happens to me?" she wondered aloud. "Either during the delivery or after? What would happen to Avery if I'm not around?"

Her mom immediately tensed up and took in a deep, shaky breath. "Well, Marcus and I would make sure she's taken care of, of course," she promised. "Always."

Clarke nodded, figuring as much. But that wasn't what she was curious about. "But what about Bellamy?"

For a few seconds, her mom didn't say anything. She was probably having to bite her tongue and contain her immediate reaction. Lately, she'd really been trying to be nicer about him. "What would you want?" she asked.

"Well, I wouldn't want Finn to get custody of her. He hasn't been a father at all," Clarke said, starting with the obvious. "But Bellamy has been and . . ." She trailed off, feeling like she didn't need to say anything more.

Her mother nodded slowly, understanding. "You'd want Avery to stay with him," she said.

She didn't want it to come to that, but if it did . . . "Yes," she said. "It's not . . . it's nothing against you. And I'm sure he'd still want you and Kane and Dad to be involved. But I want her to have a father. And Bellamy loves her so much." She'd do whatever she had to do and fill out whatever forms she had to fill out beforehand to make sure that that was what would happen if something bad happened to her.

"Well, let's not even think about this," her mom said, reaching across the table to put her hand on top of Clarke's. "Because you're gonna be fine."

Well . . . it hadn't turned into an argument. So that was good. Her mother may not have expressed 100% support for her decision, but she hadn't opposed it, either. It was progress, and Clarke would take it.

...

"Sorry dinner was such a bust," Bellamy's mom apologized as she got up from the table. She took his empty plate from in front of him before he could even start to clean up after himself.

"No, it was fine," he said, wiping his hands on his napkin. "Nice of Octavia to show."

"She told me she might be busy."

He grunted, kind of pissed that his sister wasn't there.

"Cut her some slack," his mom said as she started to fill up the sink with water in order to do the dishes. "She's in college and in love. She's got her own thing going on now."

"Well, I got a pregnant girlfriend," he pointed out, "and I'm still here." In fact, his pregnant girlfriend probably would have come with him had it not been for a pre-planned girls night with Raven and Harper.

"You're a good son," his mom said.

"Your favorite child, right?" he joked.

"I don't have a favorite," she claimed.

"But if you did, it'd be me." He smirked.

"I love you both equally," she insisted.

"Sure, sure." He got up from the table, feeling very full and very ready to just hit the hay for the night. But he wanted to help her with the dishes, so he joined her at the sink and picked up a towel for drying. "Hey, Mom, you mind if I ask you about something?" he said. They'd spent the majority of the meal talking about Clarke's doctor visits, and the nursery he was still working on, and even a little about his job. But there had been something else on his mind, too.

"About what?" she asked, sliding the dirty dishes into the sink.

"Well . . ." He wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, so he hesitated, shifting around a bit before finally delving in for some answers. "When I was growing up, did you have a backup plan for what would happen to me if you ever . . . weren't around?"

"Of course," she said as she began scrubbing off one of their dinner plates.

"So would I have gone to Grandma or . . . my dad?"

She froze what she was doing for a moment, then said, "No. Your dad was never an option," and resumed scrubbing the dishes. This time harder.

"So Grandma then," he surmised.

"Yes."

Made sense. Back then, his grandmother had still lived in Arkadia. He'd seen her a lot growing up. "And you don't think my dad would've disputed that at all?" he asked.

"No," she muttered. "Not your dad."

That man was such an eternal mystery to Bellamy, one he didn't care to figure out, to be honest. His mom had dropped enough hints over the years for him to conclude that the guy wasn't a good guy. Not only had he been a deadbeat who'd left her to fend for herself with a kid, but Bellamy got the sense he'd been kind of . . . cruel? Or maybe just self-centered. He hoped to God the guy had never been abusive, either physically or mentally. But his fear of that was one of the things that kept him from ever prying deeper.

"Why the sudden curiosity?" she asked, handing a clean plate over to him.

"No reason," he said, lazily drying it off. Obviously there was a reason, and his mom wasn't stupid. She'd sense that.

"Is Clarke getting her ducks in a row?" she asked, stopping what she was doing.

He looked down, hating to even think about it. Last night, when she'd brought it up, he'd tried to act like it didn't bother him to picture a future without her in it, but of course it did.

"It's smart," his mom said. "It's not pleasant to think about, but it has to be done."

Yeah, he knew that, but still . . . he hadn't really given it much thought until now. "She wants me to have custody if anything happens," he said.

His mom nodded and asked, "And is that what you want?"

"Yeah," he said. He and Clarke were on the same page there, no doubt about that. "But I feel like it'd get messy no matter what, because I'm not the biological father, and . . . I'm no blood relation at all, actually." He'd lain awake for a long time last night wondering what would happen if Finn decided he wanted custody, or if Abby challenged him on it. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that. Hopefully any worrying he was doing was for nothing.

"If that's what Clarke wants, then I think that's what would happen," his mom said. "In a worst case scenario."

He exhaled heavily, nodding, trying not to dwell on it too much. It wasn't a likely case scenario, but he'd still gone ahead and made the mistake of looking up maternal mortality rates last night, and that'd scared the shit out of him. "You know, it'd be a whole lot simpler if she and I just got married," he said, intent on gauging his mom's reaction to that idea.

Her eyebrows rose up a bit, but other than that, she didn't look very surprised to hear him mention that word. "Is that something you've talked about?" she inquired.

"No," he admitted. "But I think about it sometimes. I mean, we're gonna get married someday. That's obvious, right?"

"It's obvious," she agreed.

"Yeah, so why wait? We could just get married before the baby's born, and then my name could be on the birth certificate and . . ." He pictured himself listed as her father, her legally recognized father, and it was a picture he liked. A lot. "She could be Avery Blake," he said. Even the name just sounded good.

"Well, do you have a ring?" his mom asked.

"No."

"Have any idea when you're gonna ask her?"

"Not yet." For all he knew, it'd end up being a spontaneous thing.

"But you're going to?"

He took in a deep breath and let it out with a smile on his face. "Yeah." Sometime in the not too distant future, he was going to ask Clarke Griffin to marry him.

Her mom put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes got all watery. When she removed her hand, she was smiling back at him, looking so happy for him, and she put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. "I'm so proud of you," she said.

It felt good to hear that. His mom had always been proud of him, even back when his only accomplishments had been football-related. But what he was doing nowadays with Clarke was just so much . . . more. So much more important. His mom had a real reason to be proud of him now.