After tossing her bag and the cups into the back seat of her car, Penelope plugged her phone into the charger and called up Erin's address on her GPS. As she began to follow the directions, she took a deep breath and tried not to freak out about the fact that not only was everyone pregnant, but her, but now they knew that she may have had a helping hand in their situation.

"I have to call Grant," she muttered as she turned onto the next street. "Hey, Siri, call Grant Anderson on speaker."

She listened to her phone dial the number and then the rings it took before the call connected. "Penelope?"

"Hey! I hope that I'm not catching you at a bad time, Grant."

There was a short pause, and Penelope thought that she could hear him talking to someone in the background. She thought that it was most likely Gina, and mentally kicked herself for possibly interrupting a date. "Gina's over, but I think that I can carve out a little time for my friend. If I'm going to get some good intel."

Penelope let out a little chuckle as she let out a huffy breath. "Is that all you think about, Grant?"

"Well, when you're friends with someone like you, I know that I'll always get some information out of you. Does this call have anything to do with your little 'get your best work friends knocked up' project?"

"When you call it that, it sounds so smarmy, Grant! I prefer to think that I was doing my friends a wonderful service alongside my trying to end up pregnant. And my little plan may have worked a little too well."

"Oh?"

She sighed as she nodded. "Yeah. Tonight, I kind of got called out about some things, and we're all headed over to Rossi's to have a good long talk. Everyone's pregnant but me!"

She didn't mean to sound quite so petulant, but now that the reality of everyone but her living out her dearest dream was crashing into her mind, she found that she really just wanted to break down in Derek's arms and sob herself to sleep. Anderson must have heard the pain in her voice, as his response to her was gentle, but honest. "And this is what I warned you might happen, right? I know that it was always a longshot, but you should have kept your eyes on that option, too. It was always going to hurt your heart, when one of them got pregnant, and not you, but when it's everyone but you, it makes that ache just magnify into something overwhelming."

"Yeah," she whispered as she rubbed her stomach absently. "I just wanted to give Derek that gift, you know?"

"I do, because I want to have a baby with Gina, when the time is right. My desires haven't become painful, though, so I can't tell you that I feel the depth of your heart. Though this might be good for our daycare."

"What?" she asked, wondering what had brought that up.

"Yeah, with four extra babies to look after, they'll have to hire someone new. And that's always a good thing, isn't it?"

She smiled at that, and knew what he had been driving at when he brought that up. "It is, and you made me smile, which is also a good thing. I know that I'm being overdramatic here…"

"You're not, though. If I know you at all, I'd say that the fact that you even came up with this harebrained scheme was to see yourself get pregnant. You didn't really want the others to end up that way, that was just going to be a happy side effect, if one did, and then you'd be able to share all the little milestones that came along the way. In your heart of hearts, you never anticipated that everyone but you would end up pregnant, and leave you on the outside, looking in. So now your heart is doubly broken."

She let out a long breath through her nose in an effort to keep her tears at bay. "How did you get to know me so well, Grant?"

"I've been watching you, all of you, over the years. Though I think that I was able to best see into your heart when we were working the Fisher King case. It was hard to have Gideon and Hotch mad at us. And while Hotch may have only made me feel stupid, it hurt knowing that Gideon called you that. No one should be treated like that, especially by their boss. I saw him destroy a part of your soul in that moment, and how Hotch repaired that hurt by including all of us in his praise."

"I think that's when I fell in love with him, actually."

He chuckled at those words, and Penelope felt her cheeks light up in a blush. "Oh? I thought your heart belonged to Morgan?" he teased, and she shook her head, wishing that he was next to her so that she could smack his chest lightly.

"It does, but that doesn't mean I can't love other people, too! Before that moment, Hotch was just like, my boss, a stern older brother, you know? But when he stopped to make certain that we knew he was proud of us, that we had done good work, it shifted how I saw him. I never wanted to be a part of any government agency. I always saw them as the enemy. But Hotch, he just wormed his way beneath my defenses, and made certain I had a home here, just like I had had a home Underground."

"I knew you were on a list, but you were on that list?" he asked, sounding a bit breathless with awe.

"Yeah. How do you think I can get my teams their results so fast? I still know ways to hack without making it seem like I'm doing anything wrong. And now, with Hotch supporting me, I can get much more done and ask for forgiveness than just hoping I won't get caught."

Anderson let out a long laugh at that, and she once more felt her heart lighten. Turning onto Erin's road, she found herself knowing that that was exactly what she'd be doing when they had their talk, asking for that forgiveness from her friends. "I adore that part of you," he said. "Now, on Monday, we'll have a more in depth talk, once Alpha goes out on their case. Until then, I want you to take a deep breath and know that everything will work out for good. Also keep in mind that sometimes, we get what we want when we least expect it."

"I will try to do just that, Grant. Now go, enjoy date night with Gina. And just to let you know, Jessica ended up pregnant, even though she and Hotch were using three forms of contraception. Life finds a way!"

"Penelope!" he hissed as she ended the call, laughter on her lips. That talk had been exactly what she needed before heading into a more serious discussion with her friends about what the next few months would look like for them all.