Thanks for the reviews. The latest episode has me inspired so I'm going to try to update Destiny as well this week. ;)

Chapter 16.

Kate hadn't seen Jack since he walked out, so she wasn't sure what to do when she turned the corner to find him coming up the path from the opposite direction; his eyes met hers briefly before he glanced away and she was sure that he was going to walk past her without acknowledging that he'd seen her, but to her surprise he stopped, waiting for her to arrive at the place where he was standing.

"Hey," he called when she approached him with a tentative smile.

"Hey," she echoed, trying not to appear stunned by his greeting. On an ordinary day, she would have snuck a quick kiss from him if she'd met him on the path like this, but nothing about this situation was ordinary; she folded her arms over the shelf of her belly to solve the problem of what to do with them. "I was just on my way to meet Juliet. We're having lunch in the cafeteria."

They'd been apart for less than three days and already she missed him so much that it was like a physical ache. She couldn't ask him to pretend that nothing had changed, but maybe they could still at least try to be friends. "You're welcome to join us," she told him, as nervous all of a sudden as if she were asking him out on their first date, despite the fact that that just two days ago they were as intimately involved as two people could be. "I hear Hurley's making baked potato skins."

Her heart sank when he shifted uncomfortably, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jumpsuit. "Thanks, but the sub is coming back in this afternoon and I told Horace I'd help supervise the unloading."

As disappointed as she was, she tried to console herself with the thought that it wasn't a definite rejection of her. He'd just been given a promotion and with that came new responsibilities: maybe he really was just busy. "Looks like you've really made an impression on him. You'll be running this place before long," she teased him, succeeding in eliciting an embarrassed chuckle from him.
"It's not really a big deal, Kate," he insisted. "It's just basic supplies."

"Still, I'm happy for you," she told him seriously. "It's nice to see you being appreciated."

"How's the…?" He nodded at her belly – the proverbial elephant in the room – breaking some of the tension between them as they waited to see which one of them would bring it up first.

She was glad that it was him. It gave her hope that he'd had a change of heart and might still want to be involved in their child's life even if they weren't together. "Good."

"Mind if I…?" He held out his hand but didn't make contact and she forced herself to swallow her hurt at the realisation that he was treating her with the same polite interest that he did his patients.

"Of course not," she assured him. He'd never asked her for permission before. Somehow it felt wrong. "Go ahead."

He tore his eyes away from hers, averting them to her belly as he placed one of his palms on either side of side of it. "She been kicking today?" he asked, probing it gently, glancing back up at her in mild alarm when moments passed without any external sign of movement.

"She was this morning, but she seems to be taking a break now," she agreed, pleased that in spite of everything he'd said, he couldn't help acting like a father. "I think it must be her naptime. She's saving her energy for tonight when she's gonna drive Mommy crazy." She addressed this last part to their daughter, feeling her shift as though in response.

Jack's expression softened into a smile. "In a few more weeks she'll be too big to move around as much as she is now," he told her.

By then it would almost be time for her to give birth, and then what? Would Jack still want to be there? She didn't know if she could do it without him, especially if the baby was as early as Juliet had warned them she might be.

And then when she was finally healthy enough for them to bring home? If she even made it that far? The thought of handing her only child over to Jack for a night, a weekend, a week, of not being with them, was almost unbearable. Getting pregnant was supposed to ease the pain that had engulfed her since she left Aaron at the motel, but instead all it had done was give her another family that she could lose.

Juliet was right when she told her that she needed to keep trying, to see if she could reach him this time. "Jack, I…" she began, struggling to find the right words to describe how remorseful she was: not just for what she'd done, but for the way she'd lashed out at him. "When I said—"

He withdrew his hands and took a step back, shaking his head slowly. "I'm sorry, Kate. I'm glad you and the baby are both doing okay but that doesn't mean that we are. I need time to process this."

"Oh," she whispered, too mortified to come up with a more intelligible response. "I just thought…" She shook her head, struggling to hold herself together despite the tears that threatened to spill over onto her cheeks. "So what happens now? Are we separated? Do you want a divorce?" A hopeless sob bubbled up in her throat and she almost choked on the word. They were supposed to celebrate their three-month anniversary next week: it couldn't be over yet, could it? That would have to make it one of the shortest marriages in history. At least for 1977.

"I don't know," he confessed and she felt her heart sink because it wasn't the denial that she was hoping for. He stared at her for a long moment, seemingly unsure what else there was left to say. "I should go." He jerked his thumb in the direction of the docks. "Horace is waiting for me."

She nodded, swallowing hard until she trusted herself to speak. "Well, let me know if you find any Twinkies," she told him, flashing him a watery smile as he prepared to move off. "I never even liked them that much before but lately they're all I can think about."

Jack was still thinking about his encounter with Kate as he took inventory of the crates he and the other men had pulled from the sub, checking the contents off against the list on his clipboard to make sure that everything had arrived safely. He wasn't lying when he said he didn't have time to eat lunch with her, but he could have offered to catch up with her later. It wasn't that what she'd done to him was unforgivable – until two days ago, his life had been pretty near perfect – it was that he didn't trust himself to be around her and not give in to whatever she wanted regardless of his own feelings. One look, one touch from her and he lost all powers of rational thought, as evidenced by how easily she'd been able to seduce him.

The whole time he was worried that he was taking advantage of her, he was the one being taken advantage of. After spending weeks begging her to return even one of his phone calls, he should have guessed that she had an ulterior motive for letting him bed her; if he hadn't been so desperate to believe that she missed him as much as he missed her then maybe he would have.

As he pried the lid off another crate, his eyes were drawn to a bundle of cellophane wrapped packages near the top. "Would you mind if I took some of these?" he asked Horace, turning one over in his hands.

"Got a bit of a sweet tooth, have you there, Jack?" Horace joked when he glanced over and saw what he was holding.

"Actually, they're for Kate," he explained, not sure why it was so important for him to get them to her except that it made his chest hurt remembering her expression when he told her that he needed space. She looked so sad and beaten down. More than anything he wanted to find a way to trust her – and himself – again. "Apparently the baby wants Twinkies."

"Ah," Horace agreed knowingly. "Help yourself."

"Thanks." Jack gathered a handful of the cakes and slid them into the pockets of his jumpsuit. Maybe he would pay her a visit after work, he decided, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smile as he imagined her face lighting up when he showed them to her. If nothing else, she was still the mother of his child.

"When Amy was pregnant with Ethan she had this thing about fresh strawberries," Horace told him as he watched him pick up the crate and carry it over to the van waiting to take the food up to the cafeteria. "Of course they don't come in season until June. Really kept me on my toes." He grinned at the memory. "Do you know what you're having yet? Amy has her heart set on it being a boy so Ethan'll have another playmate."

As much as he liked Horace and his wife, Jack wasn't sure how he felt about sending his child on playdates with the man who'd abducted his sister and nephew. With any luck, they would both make other friends and he wouldn't have to. "No," he admitted, pushing it into the back with the others. "But I keep telling Kate that it's gonna be a girl."

"What does she think it is?"

Jack wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand as he straightened. "She thinks we should leave it up to the experts," he explained with a grin, taking a sip from the canteen Horace offered him, "which is funny because before I was always the sceptic."

"You know," Horace said, sitting down on one of the unopened crate with the bottle still in his hands and gesturing for Jack to do the same, "when you and Kate first came to me and told me you wanted to get married, I had reservations. You'd been seeing each other for such a short time, and with the added stress of a baby… I didn't think it would last."

As he followed Horace's lead, seating himself in the open doorway of the van, Jack wondered why he was telling him this. Did he know that he'd moved out? Was he about to say 'I told you so'?

"But now, you have me convinced," he continued. "The way you talk about her – it's like the two of you've been together forever. And I see now that that's the way it's meant to be. You were meant to come here, to find her. I only wish I'd been that sure of what I wanted back when I first met Amy. Then maybe she would've chosen me first instead of Paul."

Jack wished he could say that it was that easy, but he hadn't always been sure. He'd almost lost Kate to Sawyer and then again when he began to doubt himself and now that they were here again he was beginning to wonder if it wasn't a sign that some people just weren't meant to be together. "What're you saying?" he asked him. "That you think Kate and I are soul mates?" There was a time that he'd believed that himself, but once again she'd made him question that faith. He wished he could be sure that she loved him the way he loved her, that he wasn't just convenient, like he had been that night.

Horace grinned as he set the canteen down and stood, signalling that it was time get back to work. "Something like that," he agreed.

Night had fallen by the time they got everything off the submarine, but rather than hitch a ride back in one of the vans with Horace, Jack opted to walk, to give himself time to think. His conversation with Horace had left him with the urge to see Kate, so rather than head to Sawyer and Juliet's as he had the last two nights, he decided to go home to his own house instead, hoping that being there with her again would help him figure out what he wanted.

As it finally came into view, he noticed that all of the lights were off inside, so figuring that she must have turned in early, he headed straight for their bedroom, determined to wake her up so that he could talk to her, but the bed was still neatly made and there was no other sign of her there.

She must have gone out, he thought, but as he passed through the kitchen, the sight of food and utensils strewn across the bench, as though she'd rushed off in the middle of cooking dinner, filled him with apprehension.

When he went back outside, he saw Sawyer striding down the path of their front door, walkie in hand. "Sawyer, have you seen Kate?" he asked him.

What he expected him to say was that she was down at the cafeteria or the games room with the rest of their friends and to insist that he stop being a jackass and come join them; he was taken aback by the hostility in his tone as he snapped, "Where the hell've you been? Me and Miles've been lookin' all over for you."

He was only the janitor: why would anyone care if he disappeared for a while? Unless… "Did something happen?" he demanded, cold fingers of dread wrapping around his heart. "Where's Kate? Is she okay?" When he ran into her earlier, she'd told him that the baby wasn't kicking. What if…?

His worst fears were confirmed when Sawyer explained in the same terse voice, "Your wife is in the infirmary. Jules is with her. She says she's havin' contractions and if she can't stop them, she's gonna have to deliver the baby tonight…"

Next chapter: Jack visits Kate in the infirmary... ;)