A/N: I'm going to jump ahead several of months. I am hoping this will help me make my chapters a little longer since the drama is about to start a little. Sorry they have been so short but the story is just really starting out. I'm not moving this story super fast because I feel that many stories go too fast and before it's over it has lost its appeal. I hope it is not moving too slowly for my readers. Please tell me if it is and I'll try to speed it up.

You know you love me,

XOXO,

Alyss

Chapter Six

It was late October and Ruthie still wouldn't take his calls. He called every other day and every time she would just "ignore" his calls. Not that she could really. She listened to each message several dozen times in the two days until his next call. She knew it wasn't healthy but she couldn't go seem to go a day without his voice.

Martin's messages were always similar. He'd tell her he loved her and that he missed her. Then he'd tell her how he was since the last time he had called. He always ended the same though, telling her that he wasn't going to give up; that he wasn't ready to give her up.

Ruthie sighed. She'd just gotten off the phone. She'd only been out here in Chicago for five months and her parents already wanted her to come home. Her mom kept insisting that the weekly phone calls weren't enough. Thankfully she had been to convince her yet again that being thousands of miles away from Martin was the best thing for her.

She sighed again and looked down at her growing belly. She was around twenty-four weeks and she could just barely see her feet. Mary was in Europe for the next two weeks and Ruthie had the apartment to herself for that time.

She'd opted to do most of her classes online so as to avoid most of the rumors. Not that she hadn't heard most of them when she left the apartment, the most accepted one being that her parents had been so ashamed of her when they had found out she was pregnant that they sent her to live with her sister. Another popular one was that she ran away to her sister's apartment and that her parents didn't even know where she was. She always laughed at those fickle rumors and couldn't wait for the attention to turn to another person.

She went to the desk, sat, and opened her laptop. With this week's schoolwork being done already, considering it was only Monday night, she had some time to relax. Mary had left her two hundred dollars to cover food for the next two weeks, even though they had plenty of food there. Ruthie was grateful for that as she wasn't always willing to eat what they had. She ordered an extra large meat lovers pizza from a local restaurant and blasted her music while typing recipes she remembered from when her mom taught her them. Grandma Jenny's recipes are ones that her mom never looked at a recipe card for, she always went from memory. Her mom had only taught her because her brothers and sisters, aside from Sam and David, would have more memories then she would.

Twenty minutes later, and four of the five recipes typed, the door bell rang. Ruthie got up, placed a hand on the small of her back for a little more support, grabbed a twenty from the counter, and waddled over to the door.

"You're early," she said while opening the door expecting to see Tom, their usual pizza delivery guy, not at all expecting who was now standing in front of her, taking in her pregnant belly. "Martin?"