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And Kyle would be beside her as they both saw their baby for the first time. It roused all the things she so badly wanted but was afraid she might never get. For the last several weeks, since she’d learned she was pregnant, she’d been so focused on what was wrong with their relationship that she hadn’t thought about all the things that had once been right.
She’d braced herself to be a single mom, not even giving Kyle the benefit of the doubt. Because of the way her father had often treated her, she’d been quick to expect Kyle to disappoint her. If she anticipated Kyle not wanting to be a father, then it wouldn’t hurt as much when that was what happened.
Automatically going on the defensive certainly wasn’t fair to Kyle. Or herself. Or their baby.
“There’s no going back,” she said.
He shot her a curious look. “Do you want to go back?”
“You didn’t ask for this.”
“Did you?”
“You mean did I try to get pregnant?” Melody wasn’t sure how to take his question.
“I wasn’t asking if you deliberately became pregnant,” he said and then sighed. He reached for her hand. “I was merely reflecting your question back at you.”
His matter-of-fact reaction to their situation should be the perfect balm for her agitation, but for some reason she was finding his encouragement annoying. At the same time, his fingers gave a little squeeze and she found herself torn between wanting to fight with him and needing to give in to his attempt to connect with her.
“If I’ve learned anything in the last year it’s that it’s really hard to maintain relationships while on the road. I thought a lot about what would happen if I decide to take my career seriously. I’d be traveling a lot on tour and making appearances. That sort of life is hard on everyone.”
“And you’re worried that you can’t have your career and a baby.” He didn’t voice the obvious question: whether she’d intended to choose between her career and continuing her relationship with him. “I think you can do it all.” A pause. “If you want to.”
This was the decision she was dreading. Did she want it all? A family? A career? Her feelings for Kyle hadn’t changed, but things were so much more complicated these days.
“Do you want to give us another shot?” she asked, her heart thudding hard against her ribs.
“I think we owe it to ourselves to do so, don’t you?”
“I do.”
He didn’t seem all that happy with her answer, however. “Just tell me one thing. Would you have been willing to work things out if you weren’t pregnant?”
“Yes, because if I didn’t, there would always be something unfinished hanging between us.”
He waited a long time before answering. “That’s fair. But you should probably know I wanted you back before I knew you were pregnant.”
“Even though you didn’t trust me?”
And there was the crux of their whole problem.
“I was wrong to think you and Hunter got together.”
She could tell that declaration had required a great deal of effort, but it wasn’t enough. “And yet last night you were wondering if I knew which of you was the father of my baby.”
Three (#ufa132254-addc-50a3-a031-0396b4b245c9)
Kyle knew he deserved her sarcasm and let it slide off rather than get defensive. “It was the roses and that weird card that threw me off.”
“It was pretty weird, but it was probably just a screwup on the florist’s part. Maybe they neglected to add the person’s signature to the card. It could be from any number of people.”
“You don’t think it’s unusual that someone sent you a dozen red roses?” The last thing he should be doing was arguing with her.
“Okay, it’s freaking me out that I don’t know who sent them. But it was a nice gesture.”
Melody might not think the roses came from Hunter, but Kyle was pretty sure he’d sent them.
“Can we forget about the flowers?” Melody continued, smoothing her hands over her knees. “I want to focus on this appointment. I’m really glad you came along today.”
“So am I.” But even as he spoke, Kyle recognized it was going to take more than accompanying her to a doctor’s appointment before the tension eased between them.
He would have to make an effort to put his doubts to rest and get back in Melody’s good graces. If that required romantic gestures like flowers and candlelit dinners, he would do whatever it took.
“You can take a right at the driveway coming up.” Melody pointed the way into a parking lot beside a plain five-story building.
“You’ve been here before?”
“A couple times.”
“So, you are planning to have the baby in Las Vegas.”
Melody’s mouth opened, but no words came out. She bit her lip and stared down at her hands. “It makes sense.”
“But your life is in LA. With me.” Or at least it had been before she’d gone on tour.
“We haven’t really lived together these last nine months,” she said.
“When I encouraged you to go on the tour, I thought you’d be coming back. All your stuff is still in my house.”
“I just need a little time.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know.”
Kyle parked the car before responding. “I don’t like living in limbo.”
“Then maybe we should break up.”
This wasn’t at all what he expected her to say. “Where is this coming from?”
“I just don’t know where we stand anymore. We’re not dating. We’re not living together. Are we even still friends?”
Her bald statement of the facts as she saw them swept his feet out from under him. It was as if his world had tilted and his head connected with the pavement. His thoughts grew foggy and indistinct.
“My feelings for you haven’t changed.”
“You can’t seriously believe that’s true.” Melody opened her car door and slipped out, leaving Kyle staring at nothing.
She was halfway to the building before he roused himself and chased after her. “Okay,” he said as he caught up with her. “Maybe we’re not in the same place as we were before you left on the tour, but that doesn’t mean I’m done. I want you in my life. I want to be there for our baby. How do you see your future?”
“Honestly, I sort of go back and forth between wanting us to be a happy family and thinking it might be better if I raise this baby on my own.”
“That’s not going to happen.” His father hadn’t been there for him. Kyle intended for his child to have a loving, attentive father.
“Because it hurts when I think how much I love you and wonder if you’ll ever feel the same about me.” They stopped before the elevator and she gave him a long searching look. “I’m afraid to have my heart broken.”
Kyle wished he could tell her he’d never hurt her, but he already had when he’d assumed she’d hooked up with Hunter that night in New York City. And again just yesterday when he jumped to the wrong conclusion about the baby’s paternity. Why couldn’t he just put his faith in her and in their relationship?
Because he didn’t know how.
His parents hadn’t given him the emotional tools to be successful in a romantic partnership. His father had ruthlessly controlled all feelings good and bad, preferring to navigate through life’s up and downs with logic. Kyle’s mother on the other hand was a fearful, anxious woman who loved her son almost too much. Trapped between an emotional storm and an impassive granite wall, Kyle had stopped expressing how he felt and let everyone think he was okay all the time.
His teammates in school and then in the major leagues called him the Iceman because he was always chill. But it was a mask, not a true representation of how he felt. No matter how relaxed and unaffected he looked, inside he seethed with doubt, desire and sometimes disappointment.
But thanks to his father’s tutelage, Kyle’s first reaction to everything life threw at him was to slide on his aviator sunglasses and summon an enigmatic smile. No matter what the stakes, how bad the loss or how well he pitched, he was the Iceman. Even after his first no-hitter, he’d given only a sly smile to the mass of reporters who’d come to interview him in the aftermath.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Kyle said and meant it, but he knew he didn’t always behave the way she needed him to.
Sometimes it was as if what made him so happy in their relationship was the exact thing that caused him to regress back to the self-protective behaviors he learned in childhood. He retreated from strong emotion instead of owning it. These last few months since he’d thought he lost her to Hunter had been some of the worst of his life.
Instead of reaching out and telling her how afraid he was to lose her, he’d shoved down his fears and made it seem as if he was okay. But he wasn’t okay. In fact, he was a mess, which was why he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about her feelings for Hunter.
While Melody checked in with the receptionist, Kyle glanced around the waiting area, seeing women in various stages of pregnancy. This was really happening. He was going to be a father. Time to step up and take care of the mother of his child. Whatever that meant.
“I think we should get married,” he said as she took a seat beside him.
Her eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not at all. It makes sense. I don’t want to be a part-time father and we are good together.”
“Good together?” She looked at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “We’ve barely spoken to each other these last few months. Neither one of us is very good at communicating how we feel.” Like Kyle had, she regarded the other expectant mothers in their various stages of pregnancy. “I don’t think we’re ready for marriage.”
Although her answer frustrated him, Kyle reminded himself that it wasn’t always going to be like this between them. He would find a way to make things all right again.
“So we work on our communication,” he said, hoping she grasped how determined he was to make things work.
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’ll go see a couples counselor. Someone who can teach us how to express ourselves in a positive way.”
Her stiff posture highlighted her discomfort. “I don’t know.”
“Look,” he said. “We might have been able to walk away months ago, but things have changed. And I’d like to point out that while we’ve hit a rough patch, I don’t see either one of us calling it quits.” He chose to ignore that not ten minutes earlier she’d suggested they break up.
“I agree we should make an effort to be friends again for the sake of the baby.” She looked flustered and unsure what she planned to say next. “But marriage is a huge leap.”
“Let’s table that for now.” Now that he’d suggested they marry, he was convinced it was the best idea. He didn’t want to be his child’s part-time father. “We’ll have dinner tonight and talk about it.”
She shifted on the cushioned chair as if it was made of hard plastic. “I can’t tonight. I’m working late. Nate has given me until the fifth of December to finish my album.”
“Good for him. You’ve been working on it on and off for a year. I know you’re a perfectionist, but at some point you have to let it go.”
And maybe then he’d be able to refocus some of her attention on their struggling relationship. He knew her music was important to her, but there had to be a way for her to be a success in her career and still have room for her personal life.
“I know, but it’s my first album and I want everything to be the best it can.”
He understood her quest for perfection. As a teenager he’d spent hours learning how to place a pitch over the center of the plate. The familiar repetition of wind up and throw allowed him to forget his troubles and focus on the here and now. Watching Melody get lost in her songwriting process, he’d recognized the same need to make something flawless and beautiful.
“And yet you won’t know how good it is,” he said, reaching for her hand, offering her both support and encouragement, “until you put it out there.”
She squeezed his fingers and gave a little laugh. “Or how much people are going to hate it.”
“Stop channeling your father. If the man knew good talent when he heard it, he wouldn’t have run his label into the ground.”
“You’re right, but it’s hard to ignore all the times he told me to stick with the violin because I didn’t have what it took to be a songwriter or a singer.”
Kyle wondered what it would take for her to believe she deserved to be successful. He’d tried to reassure her, but often felt as if she couldn’t accept his uplifting words because he didn’t have any musical cred.
“And yet you’ve proved him wrong so many times,” he reminded her. “This album is going to do great. You’ll see.”
“You’ve always supported me and I really appreciate it.”
The warmth in her eyes aroused a pang of longing so acute he almost couldn’t breathe. Damn. He missed her.
“Melody?” A blonde woman in pale blue scrubs appeared in the doorway.
Melody practically sprang to her feet and shot him a worried look. “Are you ready for this?”
Kyle gave her a reassuring smile as he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Absolutely.”
* * *
Melody followed the nurse into the patient room. Kyle’s broad shoulders and strong presence filled the small space. He sat beside her in attentive silence while the nurse took her blood pressure, frowning over its elevated status, and asked routine questions. She answered automatically, trying to ignore the doubts that flickered on the edge of her awareness brought on by his shocking proposal.
What was he thinking to ask her to marry him without forethought or fanfare? Not that she needed a whole huge production made out of getting engaged, but it would’ve been nice to be proposed to in a romantic setting by a man who adored her instead of in a clinical setting by a man who just learned the day before that he was going to be a father.
I think we should get married.
His blunt declaration had been more practical suggestion than impassioned plea. Once the shock faded, her first impulse had been to hit him. How dare he presume she would agree to marry him because she was pregnant? And then tears had threatened and she’d had to grip the edge of her chair to keep from bawling her eyes out in reception.
“Your blood pressure is a little high,” the nurse said, glancing at her with a thoughtful look.
“I’m nervous about the ultrasound,” she lied. It was the conversation with Kyle that had upset her.
He might not have told her he loved her, but she knew that he was committed to her and their baby. Whether that meant they would find their way back to being happy with each other was the big question.
“That’s not unusual, but we should check it again before you leave.”
