A/N: Thanks so much for the follows and reviews - it means so much to me to be part of such a supportive community of Timeless-loving readers and writers! My sincerest apologies for the delay in posting this chapter - for some reason, the Doc Manager kept converting it to code (NOT helpful), and it took me a couple days to figure out the problem. At any rate, here it is, and hopefully it hits the spot. Much more to come - thanks again for reading! :-)
Pacing back and forth next to the limousine, Wyatt checked his watch again. He'd sent Rufus inside to tell the girls that the limo was leaving – with or without them – in 5 minutes, and that was 13 minutes ago. What was taking them all so long? Lucy and Jiya were masters at getting into and out of complex historical garb at near-record speeds – how difficult could changing into modern-day dresses possibly be by comparison? Of course, since the team wasn't currently 'on the clock', Wyatt recognized that there was no actual need for his teammates to rush. That didn't stop him, however, from hoping that they would.
Given the inherently unpredictable nature of their jobs (Flynn jumped whenever it suited him, and they had no choice but to follow), an entire evening off – one that they could just spend doing something fun – was an exceedingly rare treat. Wyatt figured that it had been at least a couple of months since he and his teammates had enjoyed a night out together – longer still since he and Lucy had had any time alone. Needless to say, he was extremely eager to get going, and to see where the night might lead.
Determined to not let another minute go to waste, Wyatt headed back inside Mason Industries in search of his slow-moving friends. As he strode into the wardrobe bay, he spotted Rufus and Jiya chatting near one of the garment racks. He started towards them, intent on giving them a hard time for holding up the party with their 'gab fest', when Jiya suddenly smacked Rufus on the arm.
Uh-oh. Lover's quarrel? Well that didn't bode well for the evening ahead, did it? Not wanting to make things worse by interrupting, Wyatt quickly turned to leave, only to halt mid-step when Jiya's fervent words – words that included his name – reached his ears.
"Of course Wyatt knows! I mean, she's 18 weeks along, for goodness sake. How could he not know by now?"
Wyatt flinched, barely holding back his gasp of surprise. Rufus and Jiya were arguing about him? About whether he knew something yet or not? 'She' – she who? And '18 weeks along' – what the heck did that mean?
None of what Jiya had said made the slightest sense to Wyatt. Considering that he was eavesdropping on his friends' private conversation, however, he reckoned it would be rude (or rather, even more rude) to ask for clarification. Weighing his options carefully, he ultimately surrendered to his curiosity, and continued to listen in. Surely the fact that Rufus and Jiya were talking about him granted him certain immunity to the rules of polite behavior, didn't it?
"Yeah, well, as unlikely as it seems, the fact is that I spend pretty much 24-7 with those two. So trust me when I tell you that Wyatt definitely does not know that Lucy's pregnant."
Rufus' unwitting revelation stunned Wyatt to his very core, momentarily robbing him of the ability to think or feel anything at all. "Lucy's what?" he bellowed reflexively, without even realizing that he'd said the words aloud, the volume of his own voice breaking through his mental and emotional daze. He swayed a bit unsteadily on his feet as a profusion of questions and conflicting feelings hit him all at once.
Lucy was pregnant? She was going to have a baby – his baby? He was going to be a father? Could he handle being a father? Did he even want to be a father – with Lucy as the mother, as his partner in parenting? How did Lucy feel about all of this? Did the way that either of them felt even matter now that they had a baby on the way? A baby that…Wait – what the hell?
Wyatt's speeding train of thought suddenly screeched to a halt. A baby? How was that even possible? It took months (sometimes even years) of actively 'trying' for a woman to conceive a child, didn't it? And he and Lucy most definitely had not been 'trying'.
They'd only ever spent one night together, for chrissake – one glorious night that had (finally) obliterated the walls behind which they'd both been hiding their feelings for each other, but still – just one night. And that was, what – four months ago now? Admittedly, they hadn't exactly been 'careful' (all rational thought having burned to ash in the searing heat of the moment and all), but Lucy would have told him by now if their risky behavior had resulted in a pregnancy.
Since Lucy hadn't told him any such thing, then it couldn't possibly be true, Wyatt reasoned (even if a small part of him wished that it were). He had to have simply misheard what Rufus and Jiya had said. That was the only logical explanation (and doubtless karmic payback for eavesdropping in the first place).
Feeling the weight of his friends' eyes on him, Wyatt pivoted towards them, fully prepared to apologize for his rude behavior. With one glance at their faces, however – their openly sympathetic and earnestly apologetic faces – the words crumbled into dust on his tongue. Oh god…he had heard them correctly.
"But…that's not…." Wyatt floundered, trying to make sense of it all. Yet there was simply no way that it could make sense, unless... Oh. Recalling all of Lucy's strange behaviors from over the course of the past few weeks, Wyatt suddenly felt like the world's biggest idiot. She was pregnant – she'd simply chosen not to tell him. Worse, she'd lied to him again and again in order to keep him from finding out.
'Angry' couldn't begin to touch how Wyatt felt at that realization.
How many times in the past several weeks had he asked – begged – Lucy to talk to him about what was going on with her? And how many times had she flat-out rejected his offer of a sympathetic ear and a loving shoulder to cry on, claiming that there was absolutely nothing going on with her at all? At the same time, she'd seen fit to level with Jiya and Rufus, hadn't she – to spill every last little detail to them, even though it wasn't their child that she was carrying?
Why? Why in the world would Lucy do that? Why would she purposely go out of her way to keep something so incredibly important from him, Wyatt wondered. Then it hit him – a second epiphany that was far, far worse than the first: Lucy didn't want him to be a part of this. She didn't want him involved in her pregnancy or – apparently – the life of their unborn child. And damn if that didn't tear Wyatt's heart to shreds.
He'd thought that he and Lucy were building something together – something meaningful and lasting – something infinitely more precious than anything either of them had ever experienced before in their lives. Sure they still had a lot to figure out, but he'd felt certain that they would get there eventually, once Flynn stopped being such a thorn in their side and they could actually spend some freaking time together. Apparently, though, he'd thought wrong – very, very wrong. Wyatt supposed that he shouldn't be surprised, though. Hadn't he known all along that Lucy was way too good for the likes of him?
Lucy was brilliant and beautiful – highly educated, cultured, classy, and accomplished – and by far the most caring, compassionate, and wholly good person that Wyatt had ever met.
He, on the other hand, was little more than 'poor white trash' from a hick town – a fully expendable grunt whose only means of earning a living was taking bullets so that other people (other good people like Lucy) didn't have to. He was a worthless douchebag – a reckless hothead who had left his own wife on the side of a road to die simply because he couldn't control his jealousy. He was a loser in every sense of the word, whose only real accomplishment in life was consistently failing everyone he'd ever cared about.
Yet somehow, at some point, Wyatt had begun to believe that Lucy felt differently – that she (by the grace of some wholly undeserved miracle) saw more in him – better in him – than just some broken down worthless excuse for a human being. More, she'd convinced him to want to be – to strive to be – the man that she seemed to see – the man that she liked, that she possibly even loved.
Well at least there was one good thing to come from that, Wyatt mused: he could now add 'monumentally self-delusional' and 'dense as dirt' to his résumé of personal qualities, couldn't he?
"Are you OK, Wyatt?" Jiya asked tentatively. Approaching him as slowly and cautiously as one might approach a feral animal, she laid a conciliatory hand on his arm. "I'm so, so sorry. But I'm sure that Lucy…."
"Don't, Jiya. Just…just don't, OK?" Wyatt croaked, shrugging off her hand. Lucy had made her choice, and he'd just have to live with it, however much that hurt. He didn't need Jiya trying to explain to him what was already crystal clear, and he certainly didn't want or need her pity.
Giving her a wide berth, he moved towards Rufus. "So, uh, the limo's waiting whenever you guys are ready, and I already gave the driver the planned route and my credit card info to cover the cost, so you're all set. Have a fun time tonight, OK?"
"Wait – what?" Rufus frowned at Wyatt, brows furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean 'have a fun time'? You're not coming with?"
"And here I thought I was the biggest idiot in the room," Wyatt chuckled half-heartedly. With a parting pat to his friend's shoulder, and a weak smile that didn't come anywhere close to reaching his eyes, he turned and strode towards the exit.
"Wyatt, wait!" Rufus called after him. "Come on, buddy, you can't just leave. It's Lucy's birthday! Let's talk about this, OK?"
But Wyatt had neither the desire nor the time to talk. He had a hot date with a bottle of the world's cheapest whisky, and – unlike his friends – he very much valued punctuality.
Rufus felt his heart sink into his stomach as he watched an obviously distraught Wyatt retreat from the room. "Is it just me, or did we just, like, totally wreck Lucy's birthday and her and Wyatt's relationship?" he asked dejectedly as Jiya rejoined him.
"Yeah, I kinda think we did." Jiya sighed, mentally kicking herself, both for blabbing Lucy's news to Rufus, and for not paying attention to who else was in the room when she did so. Although, to be fair, Lucy hadn't told her not to tell Rufus. Neither had she mentioned the small-but-amazingly-significant fact that she hadn't told Wyatt yet. Then again, Jiya hadn't exactly given Lucy the chance to tell her much of anything before she'd raced out of the changing room, had she?
"They shoot! They score! Two points for Team Riya, and the crowd goes wild!" Rufus snarked in his best imitation of a sports announcer's voice. "Seriously, though, what do we do now? I mean, we can't just leave it like this, can we? If I know Wyatt, he'll be drunk off his ass for at least the next week, which means he won't be worth squat to us if Flynn decides to jump. And Lucy…well, who the hell knows what Lucy will do when she finds out, but whatever it is, it probably won't be good for her or the baby."
As if summoned by the mention of her name, Lucy promptly leaned out of the dressing room. "Hey, Jiya – did you find a dress yet?" she inquired cheerfully. Spotting Rufus, she immediately ducked back inside the room, tugging the door most of the way closed. "It's just…it's getting kind of late, and I'm sure Wyatt is burning a hole in the parking lot with his pacing by now," she called through the small opening. "If we're not out there soon, he'll probably threaten to make us walk."
Momentarily forgetting the events of the past few minutes, Jiya grinned at the thought of how well Lucy knew Wyatt. Those two were so simpatico sometimes it was almost ridiculous – in a totally adorable way, of course. "Yeah, he kind of already did," she chuckled before suddenly remembering that, as it turned out, Wyatt had been the one to walk.
Dang it, how was she going to explain that to Lucy? How was she supposed to tell her friend that she and Rufus had driven Wyatt off – quite possibly for good – with their shared inability to keep their big mouths shut? Not only would that shatter Lucy's heart, but likely destroy their friendship as well. Jiya simply couldn't bear to consider either possibility. Somehow, she and Rufus had to fix the mess that they'd created. The question was, how?
By the looks of it, Wyatt had been utterly crushed to learn that Jiya and Rufus had known about Lucy's pregnancy before he had. Jiya could hardly blame the man. By all rights (he was that baby's father, for goodness sake) Wyatt should have been the very first person that Lucy shared her news with. Moreover, Lucy should have told him weeks (if not months) ago. Knowing Wyatt, though, he'd automatically leapt to all sorts of irrational conclusions about why Lucy hadn't yet told him.
As much as Jiya knew that Wyatt loved and trusted Lucy, the fact was that the poor guy was still wrestling with some very serious demons from his past, not the least of which was guilt over the part that he firmly believed that he'd played in his deceased wife's murder. Consequently, Wyatt was always quick to believe the worst about himself – to internalize every perceived slight, and count it as a veritable black mark against his character. And Lucy not telling him that she was pregnant? Her telling Jiya (and, by extension, Rufus) before she told him? Well, Jiya could easily imagine the self-destructive scenarios that were spinning inside Wyatt's head right now – scenarios that, given the man's propensity towards drinking in times of trouble, were likely to reach epically catastrophic proportions in the days to come. If they were to have any chance of salvaging Wyatt and Lucy's relationship, Jiya realized, she and Rufus needed to shut that crap down immediately.
"So, about that dress – any luck?" Lucy asked again, breaking into Jiya's thoughts.
Completely uncertain as to how to respond (Lucy hardly needed a party dress now that her birthday party had, essentially, been 'cancelled') Jiya looked to Rufus for answers.
Meeting Jiya's eyes, Rufus immediately recognized his girlfriend's inner turmoil – an emotional state that perfectly reflected his own. Anger, sadness, remorse…. It was more than obvious that Jiya had been observing Wyatt just as closely as he had. Equally evident was that she'd come to a similar conclusion about the whole screwed-up situation in which they'd inadvertently landed themselves: their 'idiots in love' friends needed help, and fast. Damn it, this was so not how he'd envisioned spending his night!
"Divide and conquer?" he proposed a tad resentfully, holding up a solitary fist.
"Divide and conquer," Jiya agreed with a heavy sigh and a quick bump of her own fist to his.
Rufus pressed a swift kiss of encouragement to Jiya's lips. "You take Tweedledum, and I'll take Tweedledumber. Meet you at the limo in, like, 20 minutes?"
Jiya nodded in silent agreement, although 20 minutes hardly seemed long enough to her to both get Lucy dressed and deliver the what-the-heck-were-you-thinking lecture that Jiya felt her friend rightly deserved.
Her doubt must have shown on her face, given Rufus' next words. "Hey, if Lucy and Wyatt aren't on the same page by then, I say we just ditch them both, and have our own little party. I mean, the limo's already paid for, right? No sense in letting it go to waste."
"Well now you've got me thinking that we should just lock them in a room together for the night, and let them fight it out," Jiya teased, wrapping her arms lovingly around Rufus' neck. "How often do we get a night to ourselves? And in a limo, no less?"
"Yeah, but this is kind of our fault, don't you think?" he reasoned. "Well, more yours than mine, really, since you're the one who can't keep a secret to save your life. I didn't even know Lucy was pregnant until you told me."
Oops – open mouth, insert foot, Rufus immediately realized. When was he ever going to learn? Correctly reading the irritation in his girlfriend's eyes, he quickly disentangled himself from her hold, and took a few steps backwards. "But, um, who's keeping track, right?" He grinned sheepishly.
"Right," Jiya drawled, rolling her eyes at him. With one last half-heated glare in his direction and a shooing wave of her hand, she returned to her original undertaking – finding something suitable for Lucy to wear.
"Just give me five minutes, OK, sweetie?" Jiya called to Lucy, who (she suddenly remembered) was still waiting on her response. "I promise, it will absolutely be worth the wait!" Heck yeah it would! Firmly resolved to fix what should never have been broken, Jiya eagerly dove into the task of finding a dress so freaking spectacular that Wyatt Logan wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in Hades of keeping his eyes (let alone his eager hands) off of Lucy Preston.
Recognizing that he'd been summarily dismissed, Rufus started after Wyatt. Slightly panicked given the man's tendency to do insanely stupid things when he was upset ('upset' being a massive understatement of how Wyatt must be feeling right now), Rufus raced from the wardrobe bay in search of his friend. Hopefully he could catch up to him before the idiot went and did something that couldn't be taken back.