It's Never too Late - By Tara Taylor Quinn Page 0,58
I slept in your bed with you?”
“I’d take the couch.” For his sake, not his grandmother’s. Nonnie was no prude. Still, she was eighty-one years old. It wasn’t right to flaunt sex in her face.
Sex. He wanted it with Addy. Not Ella.
“Why the sudden change of heart, Ella? I thought you wanted nothing to do with Shelter Valley. Bierly’s your home, you said.” She’d been willing to toss him aside because of it.
She hadn’t even seemed to consider the idea that there might be some benefit to him getting an education. Not that he could blame her. He hadn’t believed it, either.
Who’d have guessed that he, Mark Heber, would ever take to schooling? He was the dropout.
“I’m pregnant, Mark.”
Traffic disappeared. The night disappeared. His dash lights were all that were left.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you.” He could barely keep the phone to his ear. He just wasn’t processing.
“I want to have this baby.”
Of course. That was a given. Ella didn’t need and wouldn’t want an abortion. She wanted to be a mother. Wanted a family.
“A couple of months ago you asked me to marry you. Does that still stand?”
Ella...having a baby.
“I can’t leave Shelter Valley.” The air in the truck was suffocating. He couldn’t see the mountains. Couldn’t see a way out. “I’d owe too much money.”
Money that he was going to need.
“You haven’t asked if the baby’s yours.”
He didn’t want to know. “Is it?”
“Of course it is. I’m two and a half months along.”
They’d gone tent camping. She’d forgotten her pills. He hadn’t had a condom. She’d said she was safe. That missing one pill wouldn’t matter.
He couldn’t remember if she’d had a period after that.
I want kids now, while I’m still young enough for them to think I’m cool. Ella’s words came back to him. From the night she’d broken up with him. The first time he’d ever heard them.
But maybe she’d been planning this all along—from the camping trip on. Even before they’d found out about the scholarship.
Someone should really turn the air conditioner on in the truck.
Had she known that she was pregnant the night she’d told him she was going to the pig roast with Rick? Or at least suspected?
“What about Rick?”
“We broke up.”
Because she found out she was pregnant with Mark’s baby?
“Did you sleep with him?”
“Yes.”
So he could still sleep with Addy. No—what in the hell was he thinking? He didn’t know what to think.
Or do.
“Does anyone else know?” Was he pond scum for doubting her? For thinking that the baby might not be his?
“Just my mom.”
Dot and he had gotten along. Mostly because Dot liked anyone with pants who’d take care of her daughter. “What’s she think?”
“She’s excited about having a grandbaby. She’s been waitin’ a long time.” Ella’s drawl sounded odd. Unfamiliar.
“And the doctor thinks it’s okay for you to fly?” Were his doubts about the baby’s paternity wishful thinking?
“I was going to take the bus out,” Ella said. “It’d be fun, like a road trip. But I’ll need you to drive me around when I get there. Lord knows Nonnie and I can’t be spending all day together in that duplex you texted about.”
Ella had lost her license to a drunk-driving charge before she and Mark had started dating. She had to make it through another year of sobriety before she could get it back.
Biting back a retort, Mark stared out of the windshield into the darkness, as though the desert he couldn’t see would have answers he couldn’t find.
“You have that much time off work?”
“I can take that family medical leave thing, can’t I?” Things just kept getting worse and worse. “It’s not like I’ll be able to stand up all day as I get bigger, or even be able to reach the rods.”
Ella worked at a machine that required adjusting rods in quick succession. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t learn something new.
Not that he wanted the mother of his child doing manual labor while she was carrying his baby. But they weren’t financially prepared. They had to have money coming in.
And it might not be his baby.
His baby.
Not too long ago he’d thought that was all he wanted out of life. His Ella. Them to get married someday. To grow old in Bierly.
And, eventually, in the distant future, for her to have his baby.
How could all of that have changed in such a short time?
“I don’t like the idea of you traveling out here on a bus all alone.”