Sidebarred: A Legal Briefs Novella Read Free Page B

There’ll be time.”
    My mouth quirks up as her wheels spin. “Plenty of time.” I check my watch. “Speaking of time . . .” I tilt my head toward the bathroom.
    Chelsea practically vibrates next to me. “I can’t look! You should do it, you look.”
    “Okay, okay—I’m looking.” I chuckle as I walk to the adjoining bathroom to get the tests.
    Chelsea’s voice follows me. “The kids are going to freak out. Regan and Ronan will be excited—Riley will probably be glad . . .”
    I step back into the bedroom slowly, a heavy weight pressing on my stomach.
    “Chelsea . . .”
    “. . . that she’s leaving for college in a year. I’ll have to talk to my boss at the museum. I wonder—”
    “Chelsea.” My voice is firmer this time, drawing her smile to my face. “It’s negative.”
    Her smile freezes. “What?”
    “They’re negative. All of them.”
    Pink rises in her cheeks and understanding washes over her expression, taking her beautiful smile with it.
    “Oh.”
    She glances at the tests in my hand—and the weight in my stomach is replaced with an empty, sunken feeling.
    Chelsea clears her throat and lifts her shoulder. “Well, I guess that’s good news then.”
    “I guess.”
    But it doesn’t seem like good news.
    She exhales a big breath and takes the white sticks from me, tossing them in the trash can. Then she moves around the room quickly, rearranging the things on the dresser she just arranged.
    “Of course it is. I mean, the last thing we need . . .” She shakes her head. Her back is to me so I can’t read her expression. “I must’ve miscalculated my dates. Stupid. I’ll be more careful.”
    “Chelsea.”
    She turns around, head down, moving toward the door. “I have laundry to do. Rory needs his uniform tomorrow and—”
    Before she gets near the door, I catch her with my arm and pull her in close. She presses her face into my chest and a second later she lets out a deep, choked sob.
    Chelsea’s not a crier. Or a sulker. She’s scrappy, tough in that feminine, enduring, always-making-the-best-of-things kind of way. And I do my damnedest to make sure she doesn’t ever have a reason to cry. Because I’m tough, too. Hard. Some would even say callous. Except when it comes to her tears.
    They fucking wreck me, every time.
    After a minute, she hiccups. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”
    I stroke the back of her head. “You’re crying because you’re disappointed. Because, even for just a little while, you thought we were having a baby—and you were happy about it. You
want
to have a baby.” My own realization comes just a second before I say the words. “And I do, too.”
    Her head jerks up, eyes darting over my face. “You do?”
    I wipe at her tears with my thumb. “Well, I didn’t, up until a few minutes ago. But now . . . yeah . . . the idea of having a kid with your eyes and my bubbly personality . . .”
    That gets her laughing because I’ve been called a lot of things, but
bubbly
will never be on the list.
    “. . . that would be incredible, Chelsea.”
    Her brows draw together. “So, what are we saying? Are we going to try and have a baby? Like, actively?”
    Some guys would say I’m nuts, to add more time-sucking responsibility, more stress to our family situation. Especially now, when it finally feels like we have a handle on things.
    But . . . screw it.
    “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Let’s do it.” A thought occurs to me and I add, “I mean, if you’re sure you want to. This is going to affect you a lot more than it will me. You should consider that.”
    Chelsea finished her graduate degree in art history just before our wedding. She really likes her job at a small offshoot of the Smithsonian, but even with a sitter helping out a few days a week, because of the inflexibility of my hours, she’s never been able to do more than part-time. A new baby would mean she wouldn’t even be able to do that—at least not for a