Page 12 of Until You

chapter

four

Cora

Three months later…

If I’d known the hottest man I’d ever met was going to disappear into the night like some kind of emotionally unavailable cowboy cryptid, I might’ve at least stolen his wallet.

Or his driver’s license.

Something.

Instead, all I got was one perfect night, a hat crease still burned into my memory, and a baby currently the size of a lime making me gag every morning before eight.

“Not that I’m blaming you,” I mutter, rubbing a hand over my soft stomach. Currently, I’m standing in my new house. Okay, technically it’s not my house, but I am living here. Being an in-home healthcare worker for Mimz and Pops Blankenship definitely has its perks. Including room and board and stellar pay.

Frankly, I’m not even sure why they hired me. They’re currently off on a seven-day Caribbean cruise. They might be senior citizens, but they are still spry and active. More active than me, at least these days.

Morning light pours through the window above the sink, catching the dust motes that float lazily through the warm air. The whole room smells like butter and toasted bread. Well, bagel, but same difference.

“Your father and I were both active participants in the poor decision-making.” I tell my stomach.

The toaster pops.

I jump hard enough to slosh coffee onto the counter, the hot liquid pooling against the tile backsplash.

“Cool,” I say to no one. “We’re all thriving.”

I grab a towel and wipe it up, pressing the heel of my hand against my sternum where my heart is still hammering like a startled rabbit’s.

I need to get it together. My nerves have been like this for weeks—raw and close to the surface, like someone peeled a layer of skin off my composure and forgot to put it back.

That’s what happens when you grow up believing that childhood cancer and subsequent radiation treatments left you infertile, then you get pregnant from a one-off in a truck with a condom. This baby is meant to be. I know that much for sure.

The house has felt too quiet since Mimz and Pops left for their cruise five days ago. Not the peaceful kind of quiet—the kind that hums. The kind that gives my brain room to spiral. Without their voices filling these rooms—Pops humming off-key while he shuffles to the coffeepot, Mimz calling out Cora, honey, come look at this ridiculous bird from the back porch—the silence just becomes space. And space is where all my worst thoughts live.

They’d tried to take me with them—which was sweet, if not completely insane.

“Come with us, and you can flirt with old people in matching visors,” Mimz had said while packing sixteen outfits for a seven-day trip, her silver hair pinned in hot rollers, reading glasses dangling from a chain around her neck. “We might need your assistance finding our room.”

Pops had leaned in and stage-whispered, “She means she plans to drink enough umbrella beverages to forget I snore and maybe where our room is.”

They’d laughed. I’d laughed.

But truly, if morning sickness had me this queasy on land, I knew I couldn’t abide it on a ship. So I’d made an excuse about a class I needed to update my certification in.

They’d left, and then I’d cried in the bathroom after they left because apparently pregnancy hormones are legit and I now weep over elderly people enjoying maritime vacations. I’d sat on the edge of the tub with my face in my hands and sobbed until my ribs ached, and when I was done, I washed my face and ate an entire sleeve of saltines standing over the sink like a raccoon.

Still, this job had dropped into my lap like a miracle.

Two kind people who’d found out I was pregnant and reacted by arguing over whether I needed more iron or more naps. Not horror. Not judgment. Not the long, pitying silence I’d braced for. Just—love. The plain, uncomplicated kind I’d spent my whole life not knowing how to receive.

I’d never had anyone fuss over me before.

It was… nice.

Dangerously nice.