A/N: Sorry, short chapter, but it works better if I break it like this. New chapter up tomorrow!

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Jess woke up curled in House's arms. Much as she didn't want to leave the safe haven of his body, she needed to make sure she was okay. She carefully extracted herself and headed to the bathroom, relieved to find her bleeding had stopped.

She returned to bed, trying to position herself as she had been without waking him, but they'd been so intertwined it was impossible. He grumbled as he woke.

"What're you doing?" he complained sleepily.

"Trying to cuddle you," Jess replied.

"Your feet are cold."

"I went to the bathroom."

"And?"

"No more bleeding."

"Good." He stretched and then rolled on to his side to face her, closing his eyes.

She spent a long time just looking at him. Knowing that he hated talking about feelings, hated emotional conversations. She knew he'd be fine after the few words they'd exchanged during the night, but it wasn't enough for her. She needed to be clear.

"Greg?" she prompted and he opened one eye. "I'm sorry Greg. For everything."

"S'okay. Go back to sleep. I don't have to be in at work til late."

"No, I need to tell you something." Jess took a deep breath and decided to bare her soul. "Greg, one of the reasons I didn't tell you was that I…" she wavered, wondering if she really had the courage to admit this. "I…find it hard to trust people."

"You find it hard to trust people?" He sighed. She could tell he really didn't want to have this conversation.

"I know. It sounds like psycho-babble bullshit and I know you don't want to talk about it. but I need to tell you."

He shrugged and rubbed his eyes with the heel of one hand, shaking his head to wake himself up. "Okay. Shoot."

Having his concentrated attention was scary and Jess half wished he'd stayed sleeping. But she'd gone this far…

"It's just that, in the past, I had someone I loved and they left. I told you that I was pregnant before?" He nodded. "Well, the guy, the father, he left me. He walked out the day before I had the miscarriage and he didn't come back. I lost everything in twenty-four hours. After that, for a long time, nothing meant anything except for my work. I don't mind trusting my work, because it's never let me down. But people have."

It was more about her past than she'd ever shared with him before and she watched as he digested the information. A look of pain crossed his face and she wasn't sure if it was for her or for himself.

"I didn't want to tell you before this, because I didn't want to guilt you in to staying if you didn't want to. I want to have this baby, Greg, but if you don't that's okay. I'm scared about doing it by myself, but I can, if I have to."

He stared at her for a while without saying anything. Then he rose from the bed and went out into the living room, returning a moment later with his leather jacket. He fumbled in the pockets for a while, then dumped the jacket and crawled back into bed.

He held his hand out, and a small, brown-silk covered jewellery box sat on his palm.

"What's this supposed to be?" Jess was genuinely confused. She didn't want to misinterpret what was happening. She knew him well enough to see that he was nervous.

"What does it look like?" he said testily, pushing his hand at her until she took the box from him.

She opened it and gasped. "A ring."

"Exactly. I just can't stand the thought of television viewers watching the news, looking at you and your swollen belly and thinking, 'that poor single mother, what's the world coming to when they'll let any old white trash on TV—'"

"It's…an engagement ring?" Jess interrupted, still confused.

"Maybe. Yes. No, I don't know. It's a ring. So that…" He paused, obviously trying to work out what words to use. "…So that when they look at your left hand they know that there's a daddy."

"Oh." Jess could feel her eyes fill with tears.

"Is it that bad? I know it's not new. It's probably not worth much but it belonged to my grandmother—"

"It's your grandmother's ring?" Jess was suddenly unable to contain the tears and felt two hot, fat drops slide down her cheeks.

"If you really hate it…" He sounded so uncertain and Jess had never been more sure that she loved him totally.

Jess threw herself across the bed, wrapping her arms around him. "It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And it will make me so proud to wear it and let everyone know that I'm not pregnant white trash," she tried to joke through her tears.

He pulled back from her embrace. "So, happy tears?" he asked, looking a little more like his normal, confident self.

"Yes, happy tears. Hormone tears. Sorry, I can't seem to hold myself together these days."