Thanks for the reviews. I had hoped to have the Christmas chapter up before Christmas but now it's looking like it might not be until after. The good news is that I'm working on a Christmas-themed one shot for the Secret Santa Challenge so you can expect that soon... ;)
Chapter 12.
Jack was dreaming about palm trees when one of the coconuts began to sing.
The coconut's voice followed him back to reality; once fully conscious, he realised that the music was coming from his cell. He lay there with his eyes closed for a moment, waiting for whoever it was to give up, but when it became clear that they weren't going to, he groped around on the nightstand until his hand closed over the cool plastic casing. "Hello?" he croaked, wondering if the caller knew how late it was. A cursory glance at the clock told him that it was after three am.
"Quick, you have to come over," an urgent voice said.
Instantly, he was wide awake, adrenaline coursing through him as he asked, "Kate? What's wrong? Is the baby...?" She couldn't be in labour yet. She had only just entered her twentieth week. The baby wouldn't be viable for at least another month.
"He's fine," she agreed, a smile in her voice, and he realised that it wasn't panic that was making her sound breathless: it was excitement. She was excited about something. "In fact…" She drew the next sentence out for impact. "…He just started kicking."
He sat up, leaning back against the headboard. "What? Are you sure?" She'd been feeling indistinct flutters for weeks now, but nothing that she could easily attribute to the baby.
"Yeah." She sucked in a sharp breath, and he could almost see her wince. "That was definitely a heel." Her words grew muffled as she lowered the mouthpiece, addressing their son in a hushed tone that he could only just make out, and he felt a pang at being excluded from whatever was happening on her end.
He wished that he had been there with her the first time she felt it, sharing the moment, instead of asleep on the other side of town. "Well tell him to stop until I get there. I'm on my way now," he told her, hanging up the phone. If he hurried, he could be at her side in less than twenty minutes.
The jeans he'd worn earlier lay discarded on a chair; he yanked them on over his boxers, followed by a fresh grey t-shirt that was still warm from the dryer.
He tried to be as quiet as he could but his mother was already awake, coming from the opposite end of the hall as he left the bedroom. "Jack?" she called, pulling a wine red robe on over her nightgown. "Who was on the phone?"
"Kate. I'm heading over there now."
"At this hour? The baby…?" He could see the fear etched on her face.
"Is fine," he assured her with a smile. "Kate says h—" Despite knowing themselves, they had agreed to keep the baby's gender a secret until after the birth; he caught himself before he gave it away "—it's kicking."
"Is that all?" she scoffed, but she was smiling too. She tried to sound casual as she remarked, "You've been spending a lot of time with her lately."
"She's the mother of my child." It wasn't like he could really escape her.
"She's also a beautiful woman."
He wasn't sure he liked what she was implying. "Wait. You think this has to do with the way that she looks?" He would be lying if he said he hadn't noticed, but even without remembering what he had been like before, he knew that that wasn't enough of a reason for him to want to marry her.
"Of course not, Jack, but you need to be careful. She's been through so much. I don't want to see her get hurt again."
"Neither do I," he insisted. He'd hurt her enough already. "But I'm finally beginning to understand what I saw in her. She's so brave and sweet and when I'm with her..." He shook his head, at a loss to explain the connection that he felt to her. It was like nothing that he'd ever experienced. "I can't describe it. It just feels right." He'd already fallen in love with her once. He could easily do it again. "Don't you think I owe it to her and our kid to see where this goes? We could be a family. A real one." After all, wasn't that what they both wanted?
"And what if you're wrong? Have you thought about that?"
That was one possibility that he hadn't allowed himself to consider. There was too much at stake. "I'm not."
He didn't want to risk waking Aaron, so once he arrived at the house, he let himself in using the spare key under the mat. Downstairs was still dark, and she was nowhere in sight; he climbed the stairs to the second floor, tapping lightly on the door of the master bedroom. "Kate?"
When she failed to answer, he cracked it open, poking his head inside. She was still in bed, lying on her side with her back to him, her profile silhouetted in the dim light.
It wasn't until he got close enough to see her face that he realised that she was asleep, her chest rising and falling steadily. He was just about to leave her to it when she stirred, blinking up at him with a lazy smile; the same smile he imagined her greeting him with all those nights he came home after a late shift at the hospital. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."
"No, it's okay. I've just been so tired lately," she confessed, stretching her limbs to shake off the last remnants of sleep.
"Wait until your third trimester." She had pushed the sheets down, bunching the pale green camisole that she'd worn to bed beneath her breasts to expose her belly. He crouched down beside her, laying his palm over it. "Is he still kicking?"
She frowned apologetically. "I think he's stopped now."
"It's probably too early for me to feel it anyway," he told her, trying not to let her see how disappointed he was at missing the chance to bond with his son. There would be plenty of opportunities as her pregnancy progressed. He gave her belly a gentle rub. "Goodnight, buddy." Then, just in case the books were right and their son could recognise his voice he added, "I love you."
"You do?" Kate asked, glancing from his hand, back up to his face, the hope in her tone not lost on him.
While the feelings he had for her were a confusing mixture of nostalgia and something that he couldn't quite name, it was different with the baby. Simple. "He's my son," he agreed.
He moved to stand, but she grabbed hold of his wrist to stop him. "You know, you don't have to leave. He's quiet now, but who knows when he'll start again."
She scooted closer to the edge to make a space for him behind her, inviting him to join her on the bed.
Wordlessly, he took off his shoes and stretched out on the mattress beside her, and she wriggled back into the spot she'd just vacated, pulling his arm around her so that his hand rested on her belly, ready for the next kick.
His mother's warning resounded in his head; the last thing he wanted was to break her heart again, but he didn't know what else to do, how to say no, or even if he wanted to, so he lay very still, listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing.
As hard as he tried to keep his thoughts on the baby, his mind kept sidestepping to all of the times he must have made love to her there in that very bed. "Is this where…?" he trailed off, unsure how she would react to the question, but he didn't have to say any more, because she seemed to understand what he was asking.
"No. You'd already moved out by then."
"It's kind of amazing when you think about it."
"What is?"
"Us. The baby. He shouldn't be here. None of us should. We survived a plane crash, and if that wasn't lucky enough, in one night, without even trying…"
She turned around in his arms so that they were facing each other. "I don't know if you can call it lucky, Jack. We were careless. I was careless. He's only here because I forgot to take the pill."
He studied her expression in the darkness, trying to figure out if she was lying when she told him that she was happy that she'd gotten pregnant. "I thought you said you didn't regret it?" It hurt him to think that she might only be pretending to want the baby when he did, more than he ever would have believed possible.
"I don't," she assured him. "What I regret is how it happened. I was so angry. I wish…" A lone tear trickled down her cheek.
On impulse, he reached over and brushed it away with his thumb. "What do you wish?"
"I wish it happened when it was supposed to. When we were together."
According to her, he'd been the kind of man who believed in things like signs. The old him would have said all of this was fate. "Who says it didn't?"
If possible, she was even more beautiful illuminated by the moonlight that filtered in through the curtains. A powerful urge swept through him as his eyes locked with hers; before he could think to hard about what he was about to do, he began to lean in, resting his hand on her side to steady himself. When she lifted hers to the back of his neck, waiting to see what he would do next, he knew that she wasn't going to try to resist him.
Taking this as encouragement, he continued to bridge the gap between them; she was so close that he could smell the spearmint that lingered on her breath when he felt a soft thump against his palm, as if in protest of the slight pressure the movement had put on her womb. He froze with his lips an inch or two from hers, his eyes growing wide with shock. Then, without speaking, they both began to laugh.
He repositioned himself so that his weight was on either side of her belly. "Sorry, bud," he whispered, kissing the place where their son's foot had been instead. Her body was as soft and warm and he'd imagined it would be. He kissed her stomach again, grinning up at her when the baby rewarded him with another visible kick, sending a tremor through her skin.
"I always knew that you'd be great at this. At being a dad," she announced, watching him with a smile.
"How can you say that when our son hasn't even been born yet?"
"I can say that because he hasn't even been born yet and you're already so good with him. Just like you were with Aaron."
"What about you?" He still didn't know much about her relationship with Aaron; in fact, the more he thought about it, the more it occurred to him that he knew very little about her: just that she was a convicted murderer, that they'd met in a plane crash, and that she was very likely the love of his life, which meant that he should know.
"What about me?" She wrinkled her nose in confusion, and not for the first time, he found himself wondering if he had ever noticed how cute some of her expressions were before. Or had he really had his head stuck so far up his ass that he couldn't see how utterly perfect she was? It was strange to think that he was actually jealous of himself, but he was, because he'd had her, and for some reason that he couldn't quite fathom, he'd let her go.
"We always talk about me. I wanna hear about you."
"Okay," she agreed slowly, reaching behind her for a pillow to slide beneath her belly. "What d'you wanna know?"
He decided to start with the basics. "What's your favourite colour?"
He wasn't sure why, but this made her laugh. "Pink."
The only time that he'd ever seen her wear pink was when he took her to the obstetrician. "Liar," he teased her and they shared a smile.
"Green."
"Better." He settled back beside her with his head propped on his hand. "Favourite food?"
"Right now, it's anything. But I'll tell you what I don't like. Mangoes. I haven't been able to look at them since we got off the island." Before he could carry on with the subject, she asked, "Next question."
"Birthplace?"
"Ames, Iowa."
While he'd had her pegged as a small town girl, he hadn't expected her home to be so far away. "D'you ever miss it?"
She shook her head sadly. "No. My life is here now…"
Next chapter: Christmas, and something BIG... ;)