Brenda Harlen - Merry Christmas, Baby Maverick!

At least she assumed it was deliberate, because he didn’t pull his hand away, even when her breath made an audible catch in her throat.

Natalie glanced at her questioningly.

She cleared her throat, as if there was something stuck in it, and picked up her soda.

She felt a flutter in her tummy that she dismissed as butterflies—a far too usual occurrence when she was around Trey. Then she realized it was their baby—the baby he didn’t know about—and her eyes inexplicably filled with tears.

You have to tell him .

The words echoed in the back of her mind, an unending reel of admonishment, the voice of her own conscience in tandem with her sister’s.

He has a right to know .

You-have-to-tell-him-he-has-a-right-to-know-you-have-to-tell-him-he-has-a-right-to-know-you-have-to —

“Excuse me,” she whispered, thrusting the bag of popcorn at Trey and slipping out of her seat to escape from the gymnasium.

The bright lights of the hallway blinded her for a moment, so that she didn’t know which way to turn. She’d spent four years in these halls, but suddenly she couldn’t remember the way to the girls’ bathroom.

She leaned back against the wall for a minute to get her bearings, then made her way across the hall. Thankfully, the facility was empty, and she slipped into the nearest stall, locked the door, sat down on the closed toilet seat and let the tears fall.

In recent weeks, her emotions had been out of control. She’d been tearing up over the silliest things—a quick glimpse of an elderly couple holding hands, the sight of a mother pushing her child in a stroller, even coffee commercials on TV could start the waterworks. Crying in public bathrooms hadn’t exactly become a habit, but this wasn’t the first time for her, either.

No, the first time had been three months earlier. After purchasing a pregnancy test from an out-of-the-way pharmacy in Kalispell, she’d driven to the shopping center and taken her package into the bathroom. Because no way could she risk taking the test home, into her parents’ house, and then disposing of it—regardless of the result—with the rest of the family’s trash.

She remembered every minute of that day clearly. The way her fingers had trembled as she tore open the box, how the words had blurred in front of her eyes as she read and re-read the instructions to make sure she did everything correctly.

After she’d managed to perform the test as indicated, she’d put the stick aside—on the back of the toilet—and counted down the seconds on her watch. When the time was up, she picked up the stick again and looked in the little window, the tears no longer blurring her eyes but sliding freely down her cheeks.

She hadn’t bothered to brush them away. She couldn’t have stopped them if she’d tried. Never, in all of her twenty-five years, had she imagined being in this situation. Pregnant. Unmarried.

Alone.

She was stunned and scared and completely overwhelmed.

And she was angry. At both herself and Trey for being careless. She didn’t know what he’d been thinking, but she’d been so caught up in the moment that she’d forgotten all about protection until he was inside of her. Realization seemed to have dawned on him at the same time, because he’d immediately pulled out of her, apologizing to her, promising that he didn’t have unprotected sex—ever.

Then he’d found a condom and covered himself with it before he joined their bodies together again. She didn’t know if it was that brief moment of unprotected penetration that had resulted in her pregnancy, or if it was just a statistical reality—if she was one of the two percent of women who was going to be a mommy because condoms were only ninety-eight percent effective in preventing pregnancy.

Of course, the reason didn’t matter as much as the reality: she was pregnant. She didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how she felt about the situation—because it was easier to think about her pregnancy as a situation than a baby.

She found an obstetrician in Kalispell—because there was no way she could risk seeing a local doctor—and then, eighteen weeks into her pregnancy, she had an ultrasound.

Everything changed for her then. Looking at the monitor, seeing the image of her unborn child inside of her, made the existence of that child suddenly and undeniably real. That was when she finally accepted that she wasn’t just pregnant—the unexpected consequence of an impulsive night in Trey’s bed—she was going to have a baby.

Trey’s baby .

And in that moment, when she first saw the tiny heart beating, she fell in love with their child.

But he still didn’t have a clue about the consequences of the night they’d spent together—or possibly even that they had spent the night together—and she’d resolved to tell him as soon as possible. He had a right to know about their baby. She didn’t know how he would respond to the news, but she knew that he needed to hear it.

Of course, at the time of her ultrasound, he’d been in Thunder Canyon, three hundred miles away. So she’d decided to wait until he came back to Rust Creek Falls. And another three-and-a-half weeks had passed. Now he was here—not just in town but in the same building. And she had no more excuses.

She had to tell him about their baby.

She pulled a handful of toilet paper from the roll and wiped at the wet streaks on her cheeks. The tiny life inside her stirred again. She laid a hand on the slight curve of her tummy.

I’ve always tried to do what I think is best for you, even when I don’t know what that is. And I’m scared, because I don’t know how your daddy’s going to react to the news that he’s going to be a daddy. I will tell him. I promise, I will. But I’m not going to walk into the high school gym in the middle of movie night and make a public announcement, so you’re going to have to be patient a little longer.

Of course, there was no way the baby could hear the words of reassurance that were audible only inside of her head, but the flutters inside her belly settled.

“Everything okay?” Natalie whispered, when Kayla had returned to her seat inside the darkened gym.

She nodded. “My phone was vibrating, so I went outside to take the call.”

Lying didn’t come easily to her, but it was easier with her gaze riveted on the movie screen. Thankfully, Natalie accepted her explanation without any further questions.

When the credits finally rolled, people began to stand up and stack their chairs. Trey solicitously took both Kayla’s and Natalie’s along with his own.

“I’m sorry,” Kayla said to her friend, taking advantage of his absence to apologize—although she wasn’t really sorry.

“For what?”

“Because I know you wanted to sit next to him.”

Natalie waved away the apology. “ I should be sorry,” she said. “When I invited him to join us, I completely forgot that you two were together at the wedding—”

“We weren’t together,” Kayla was quick to interject.

“Even the Rust Creek Rambler saw the two of you on the dance floor.”

“One dance doesn’t equal together.”

“Well, even if that’s true—” and her friend’s tone warned Kayla that she wasn’t convinced it was “—I’m getting the impression that Trey is hoping for something more.”

She shook her head. “You’re imagining things.”

“I am not imagining the way he’s looking at you,” Natalie said, her gaze shifting beyond her friend.

Kayla didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know how—or even if—Trey was looking at her because she was deliberately avoiding looking at him, afraid that any kind of eye contact would somehow give away all of her secrets to him.