If she knew who he was when he slipped next to her in the hotel bar, she might have told him to call his sister more and walked up to her room alone. If she knew why those green eyes drew her in like they did, she might not have had another shot of something that lowered her walls as quickly as she tugged down her top so he could get a better look at her tits. If she knew what came next she still likely would have gone through with it but only because she really loved her daughter.
As someone sat next to her, about her age with a high and tight haircut and a charming smile, Stacie Conrad already knew she was going to give him her hotel key. No tan line on his left ring finger, he smelled good and he had a pair of green eyes that she felt like she could get lost in.
"I'm Danny." He smiled at her, holding his hand out as they shared the hotel bar without anyone but the bartender to watch them. He had a slow southern drawl at the edges on his words.
"Stacie." She introduced herself.
It took two drinks for him to chance a look at her cleavage. Another drink and she had tugged her shirt down to give him a better look when he did it again.
His head ducked and he blushed with a slow grin on his lips. "You might be the most beautiful woman I've laid eyes on."
"Not a lot of hot women in the military?" She could see the outline of his dog tags under his white shirt.
"There are but the way you look in bad hotel lighting tells me that they couldn't hold an SIG Sauer M17 to you." He downed the rest of his whiskey before sliding his key across the bar after tossing down money for both their drinks.
"Confident, are we?" Stacie tilted her head with a smirk painted on her lips.
"Can't blame a soldier for hoping for one more good night before he ships out to a war zone." Danny bent his head down to kiss her cheek, his hand slipping into hers.
Stacie walked upstairs. She really wished he knew what she was walking towards and who she was walking away from.
The sex was good. Really good.
After the fact, after she knew, Stacie wished it hadn't been.
If he had been too rough or didn't know how to touch her in just the right way, or he had a weird fetish that she wasn't into and that turned her off maybe she would have left before ever knowing.
But he was a good lover. He took care of her as much as he wanted to be taken care of. He didn't leave any marks on her skin but oh how he was about to change everything for her.
"You really ship out tomorrow or is that what you tell all the girls?" Stacie asked from flat on her back next to him as he laid with his arm over his eyes.
"Hand to God." Danny moved his arm so she could look into his eyes. "Somewhere I can't tell you but it will not be a fun tour I don't think." He whispered as his hand cupped her cheek while he rolled to his side to kiss her.
Stacie kissed him back before his head fell to her shoulder. She usually wasn't one for laying in the arms of a one night stand when she had a flight in a few hours to catch. But right now the bed was comfortable and her alarm was set.
If her night ended there she would have never felt what true fear was.
As Danny slept beside her, Stacie reached for his dog tag, never having seen one before. She really should have learned a long time ago that going to bed with people she didn't know the last name of would one day bite her in the ass.
POSEN,
DANIEL R.
5184024325
A POS
PROTESTANT
Fuck.
Stacie didn't know she was pregnant until she was just over ten weeks.
She thought she had the flu which only made her feel stupid after the fact.
A review of her calendar finally led her to see how late she was. She was just trying to figure out when she could meet a friend for lunch when she started counting back to when the last time she had her period was. She noticed it hadn't come that month. Or the one before.
Fuck.
Her doctor did blood work and a week later she knew it wasn't the flu.
She was pregnant.
She thought she knew fear when she read Danny's dog tag. Looking at the results of her pregnant test in the bathroom of her one bedroom apartment made her feel more terrified than she had been in her life up until that moment.
Then she remembered Aubrey would find out one day.
If she had this baby Aubrey would be their aunt.
She threw up for the third time that day with tears streaming down her face.
"What have I done?" She asked herself after standing up and brushing her teeth.
Stacie managed to use some connections she had at MIT - where she was finishing off her PhD in chemistry - to find an email address for Danny.
She emailed him.
She had to admit she was surprised when he emailed her back.
He wanted a relationship with their kid if there was a kid to have a relationship with. He asked about her family and her work and he was funny and charming and Stacie felt like she was going to throw up every time he emailed her.
She didn't lie to him even as she avoided calling the Posen that she had fallen for years before Danny slid her a hotel key. She told him about her work and her family and how their kid was doing as she grew inside her.
For months they exchanged an email every week or two.
She didn't love him, that she knew for sure. But he would be a good dad and that was what mattered.
Seeing Aubrey in Brooklyn almost broke her heart in two.
She thought Aubrey looked good even when her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. Even when they didn't get to all sing together. Even when they were all at a bar in uniforms they out grew when the majority of them were still freshman.
When she finally moved her jacket and told the others she was pregnant she was too focused on faking happiness to notice the look in the green eyes she loved so much.
When she was asked about the father all she could muster was "eh".
Before she left she managed to get Aubrey away from the others.
"When you get back, maybe we can have dinner?" Stacie felt seventeen again. Like she was all awkward limbs and inappropriate touching and heartsick over her captain.
"I'd like that." Aubrey gave her a sad smile. Like she had just given up hope the two of them might ever cash in on the desire neither had ever admitted to but both knew was there.
"I really wish I kissed you in college." Stacie whispered as everyone else cheered as Beca and Chloe finally kissed behind them.
"Me too." Aubrey whispered before walking over to hug her best friend. The tears in her eyes mistaken for tears of joy for Chloe and Beca getting their heads out of their asses because they weren't hats.
Stacie cried in the Uber all the way back to her hotel. She cried on the train that brought her back to Boston. She cried when she was laying in bed with her hand on her baby bump.
Isabella Chase Conrad was born and everything stopped mattering except the six pound, three ounce, twenty-two inch little girl with eyes that weren't the same shade of green as her mother but they were the same shade as her aunt.
Stacie knew using Aubrey's middle name as her daughter's was selfish but she couldn't help it. Ever since she knew Aubrey's full name she had loved the sound of the name.
Chase was Danny's mother's maiden name anyway. A fact he told her one day as they were going over names. He liked it so she used it and pretended it was for him in the email.
It was the only lie she ever told him.
Stacie found out about the Bellas being kidnaped after the fact. After they were all safe and sound on a pier in France.
It wasn't Aubrey that called. Jessica thought to do it, Ashley's arms wrapped around her middle and her head on her wife's shoulder. Aubrey looked at Beca and Chloe like she longed to be sitting with her arms wrapped around someone like they were.
"Is she ok?" Stacie whispered as she hugged her daughter that was less than a week old to her chest. She didn't have to tell Jessica who she meant.
"I don't know." Jessica answered honestly. "Before we were taken she was struggling a lot because her dad kept missing shows. And you weren't here to make her relax."
"Tell everyone I love them, ok? That I'm never letting any of you out of the country again." Stacie's jaw clenched.
"We love you too. And Bella." Jessica said right before the line went dead.
Stacie just managed to settle Bella into her crib before rushing to the bathroom and emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet.
She sat on the floor of her bathroom, milk soaked nursing bra making her nipples feel like they were rubbed raw, an ache she couldn't forget in her middle and a daughter who didn't understand mommy just needed a few minutes crying in her crib.
She never felt more like a failure in her life.
Daniel Robert Posen was killed in action three days after his big sister was rescued from a boat in the south of France.
A bullet hitting him as two sides exchanged fire. Wrong place, wrong time, looking the wrong way.
Stacie opened the door to two soldiers in class A uniforms and asked what they wanted. So unprepared for the news that she nearly dropped Bella when she heard it.
Aubrey opened the door of her parent's home to two soldiers in class A uniforms knowing in a heartbeat Danny was never coming home again. She simply asked them in for a cup of coffee so her parents could be told.
Five weeks later Stacie opened the door to Aubrey standing on her doorstep. She had a larger one of those now after moving into a larger apartment that was close enough to the daycare that Bella would go to in a few months when she would start her job at a medical research company. Aubrey had moved to the city the week before the USO tour for a job that she wanted at a well respected law firm when she got back.
"Danny left everything for his daughter." Aubrey didn't wait to be invited in. She moved past Stacie and into her living room. Her black overcoat tight around her like a security blanket. "Funny thing is no one in the family knew he had a daughter. Especially one with the last name Conrad."
Stacie stayed at the doorway, hand still on the knob and head bowed. "I wanted to tell you so many times since I found out but every time I tried I couldn't."
"She's my niece, Stacie. Your daughter is my niece and I didn't know that. I didn't know the woman that I . . . I didn't know you and he slept together and made me an aunt." Aubrey's jaw tightened.
Stacie hadn't expected anger. Foolish as it was not to. She had expected sadness, maybe some resignation of half thoughts and daydreams of what they might have been if she hadn't taken Danny's hotel card. She hadn't expected the rage that Aubrey was directing toward her.
"I didn't know who he was when I went to his hotel room." Stacie shut the door so the whole complex wouldn't hear them.
The news did not calm the rage Aubrey felt inside of herself. It made her blood boil at the thought her brother managed to do what she couldn't over the last eight years. "You always did move fast when the Hunter did the thinking."
Stacie wished Aubrey had slapped her. It would have hurt less.
"I'm sorry." Stacie whispered and she had never been more honest in her life. "I didn't know, Aubrey. I didn't know who he was other than a cute soldier with eyes that I kept wanting to look at because they reminded me of my favorite pair. I just watched you graduate from law school and I had to get back to Boston and I was feeling a little sad because it felt like another missed chance for us when you kissed my cheek instead of my lips when we hugged goodbye."
"Because you aren't someone I want to kiss for the first time with a dozen of our closest friends around!" Aubrey shot back. "I was going to come surprise you in Boston but I didn't know where you lived and when I texted you to ask about a visit instead you kept making up reasons for me not to come."
"I was pregnant with your brother's child and I didn't know how to tell you." Stacie moved away from her and went and sat down on the couch. "How could I tell the woman I wanted since I was seventeen years old that I accidentally hooked up with her brother because I didn't know he was her brother and now I was pregnant? How could I let you come to my apartment and sleep in my bed since the place was too small for a couch big enough to use as a bed? How could I hold you or let you hold me while I'm carrying his child?" Her voice was dejected.
Aubrey softened a little as she moved to sit on the couch, keeping space between the two of them. She laced her own fingers together to keep from reaching out to hold Stacie's hand. Even this anger she couldn't help but want to comfort her.
"You really wanted to be with me since you were seventeen?" Aubrey asked. "Even when I was the aca-dictator?"
"Yeah Bree." Stacie's voice was barely above a whisper. "I wanted to wrap you up from behind during those early tough practices when I could see how scared you were because you worried we'd never figure our shit out. I wanted to rest my chin on your shoulder and make you watch the sunset or something to relax you. Then give you an orgasm or two and tell you it was my cardio for the day."
Aubrey cracked a bare smile at the last part. "I could have used some of those back then." She admitted before remembering why she was here. "I want to be in her life if you will let me. She's all I have left of Danny." She turned on the couch to look at Stacie.
"Of course." Stacie turned to face her. "I want your parents to be in her life if they want. My parents are here in Boston so they will see her a lot. Yours maybe less but I still want them to know her if they want."
"They do." Aubrey reassured her.
Stacie nodded as she looked down at her own hands. "I think I've been in love with you for a really long time. And I think you've had feelings for me too. But I get it if Danny and me hooking up takes you and me off the table. I get it, Bree."
Aubrey's eyes closed as she tried to stop the rise of bile in her throat. "Give me some time, ok? To process the facts at hand, to know my niece and for us to get to a place where I don't want to hit you really hard on the side of your head."
Stacie put her hand halfway between them but not an inch farther. When Aubrey's hand covered her she felt like it was as big of a win as she had scored in a long time.
It took Aubrey a full year to be in a place where she could accept the feelings she had for Stacie while reconciling them with what Danny and Stacie had done and Bellas existence. A year of Aubrey coming over to see Bella and then having dinner at least once a week. A year of both women holding back until the moment was right.
Their first date they went to the Boston Museum of Science while Stacie's mom watched Bella for the night. Stacie got to be a full on dork about everything from the Hall of Human Life to an exhibit on the Charles River to dinosaurs.
"This was a really good night." Stacie walked with Aubrey to her apartment after they finished dinner at a local Italian place she turned Aubrey onto.
"Best date I've ever had." Aubrey had to admit. She thought she'd feel guilty, even just the faint whisper of guilt in the back of her mind, but she really hadn't. She tried not to feel guilty that she didn't feel guilty.
"This is me." Stacie used her key to unlock her apartment door. "Mom has Bells at her place tonight. Did you want to come in?"
Aubrey did but she knew if she did she wouldn't leave until the next morning. "Next time." She stepped closer into Stacie's personal space. "But I will take a goodnight kiss if that's on the table."
Stacie wrapped her long arms around Aubrey's waist while Aubrey did the same to hers before Stacie bent her head almost all the way down so her lips could meet Aubrey's. As their lips brushed together for the first time, Stacie swore she felt an electric charge run up her spine. The kiss deepened - Aubrey's idea - and then hands moved to cup round flesh - all Stacie's doing - as they pair let out years of want and need and almost first moments in a single kiss.
"I'm never going to want to kiss another person if kissing you feels like that." Stacie kept her head bent to press her forehead to Aubrey's.
"Me either." Aubrey felt a few tears trail their way down her cheek.
"Sleep next to me tonight, Bree? No fooling around, no sex, no more kissing even. Just let me wrap you up in my freakishly long arms and spend the night soaking in that I am finally the one who gets to." Stacie whispered, her hand moving to tangle their fingers together.
"Alright." Was all Aubrey could say.
Stacie will never be sure if seeing Aubrey Posen laying in her bed wearing one of her old Barden shirts is more beautiful than seeing Aubrey in her white dress on their wedding day.
But on the day of their wedding, Stacie eyes were focused only on Aubrey as she walked down the aisle on her father's arm. Looking every bit the southern bell that she was brought up to be.
Bella, all of three years old and looking more like Aubrey everyday but having Stacie's long dark hair, stood between her moms as Chloe Beale - ordained three weeks ago by the power of the internet - pronounced them wife and wife.
Stacie didn't need to be told twice to kiss her bride.