"You're having a son." I get right to the point. "You're going to be a dad."

His gaze slides from my face down my body before his eyes level on mine. "Bridget."

I wait for more but I'm only greeted with the sullen silence that envelopes the space between two people who don't know what to say to one another. I can't stand the tension. There are countless things sitting on the edge of my tongue that I want to say to him. "What are you going to do about it, Dane?"

"Do about it? About my son?" he asks, his voice cracking with emotion. "That's simple."

No, it's not simple. It's a living, breathing human being who is part of Dane and will always be. There's nothing simple or straightforward about that. It's not supposed to be. Everything that comes with being a parent can't be put in a small box with a perfectly tied ribbon on it. Sometimes our choices in life have consequences that reach beyond today, tomorrow or even next year. We have to accept the hand we've been dealt and in Dane's case that includes raising a child with a woman who he doesn't live with anymore. It may not be ideal, but it is real and ignoring it won't make it go away.

"How is it simple?" I fight to control the anger in my tone. "Explain how any of this is simple?"

His large hands dart to his brow. He covers his eyes briefly before he looks over my shoulder and into my apartment. "It's a baby, Bridget. That's not complicated. It just needs love and care."

I smooth my hands over my hair, knowing that it must have taken on some curl from the humid air during my hike around the city earlier. "It just needs love and care? Do you think everything will just fall into place? You can't hide from something like this. You have to think about where the baby is going to live and who is going to have him during the week and who gets custody on the weekend."

"Custody?" His brows shoot up. "What does that mean?"

I don't need to define the word for him. He told me that Maisy's father is an attorney. It couldn't have taken more than a day or two after Dane ended the relationship before the issue of custody was tossed about. He's smarter than to play dumb with me. He's either trying to squirm his way out of our conversation because I've caught him so far off guard or he hasn't thought seriously about his own custody rights.

"Where will the baby live?" I push because I want, and deserve, to know what's waiting for him once Maisy gives birth. Even though I know that I was falling in love with him, I can't be with a man who hides such important parts of his life away from me. Beyond that, I can't fathom loving a man who tries to push his pregnant girlfriend out of his home right before she's about to have his baby.

His mouth thins. "I'll take care of it."

"You'll take care of it?" I seethe as I point my finger in the air towards him. "Time is running out, Dane. You need to start taking care of this now."

The air stills as he struggles to say something. He reaches out to touch me and just as his fingers brush against mine he drops to one knee in one swift, graceful movement.  I don't have time to comprehend anything as I stare down into his tear filled eyes.

"Marry me, Bridget," he whispers the words as his hand clutches mine. "I love you. I'll love our son forever. Marry me before you have the baby so we can be a family."

Chapter 5

I'm not one of those women who have sat for hours endlessly imagining the moment when the man I loved would drop to one knee and propose to me. I've never actually given it any thought. Marriage is something I definitely want but right now, the fact that Dane asked me to be his wife is only trumpeted by the reality that he told me he loved me and that he believes I'm having his baby. I'm not sure how I ran this conversation so far off the rails that he thinks I'm pregnant too but that ends now.

"I'm not having a baby." I pull on his hands trying to get him back to his feet. "I was talking about Maisy's baby."

He almost falls onto his jean covered ass as he scurries to his feet. "What? What did you just say?"

I repeat it all because I'm not sure which part of the truth he didn't catch the first time around. "I'm not pregnant, Dane. I know that Maisy is. I know she's having your son."

"You're not having our baby?"

I don't look up. I can hear the raw emotion in his voice. I don't know how he jumped to that as a foregone conclusion considering the fact that his ex-girlfriend is already pregnant. "I was talking about Maisy. I found out last night that she's pregnant."

"Wait." His voice is breathless. "Who told you she's pregnant?"

It's not an outright admission, but it's not a denial either.

"No one," I begin before I stop to adjust the hem of my sweater. "I met her weeks ago. Judging by how pregnant she was then, she may have already had the baby by now."

He exhales slowly. "You've never met Maisy. There's no way you've ever met her."

I fidget on my feet. "I met her the day before I met you. I mean I saw her. We never formally introduced ourselves."

His arms cross over his chest. "What? Are you talking about the day before I saw you at the restaurant? That was the day before my birthday."

It may be a stall tactic or it could be that he's genuinely looking for confirmation of the exact moment I laid eyes on his pregnant almost fiancé. "I saw the two of you at the museum that day. It was the MOMA. I was there drawing people. I drew her, but you already know that."

"Slow down." His hands dart into the air between us. "You're not making any sense. You didn't draw Maisy. It couldn't have been her. I can't remember the last time I was at the MOMA and Maisy hates art."

He's the one not making any sense. He'd held that pencil portrait in his hands when he'd been on my bed the first time I showed my work to him. I'd watched in silence as he'd studied that drawing in particular. It had struck a chord deep within me when I drew it and since his were the first eyes, besides mine, that saw it, I wanted to gauge his reaction. I'll never forget how his lips curled at the sides as his eyes slid over the paper. He'd lowered his head slightly as his gaze took in each fine line of the portrait.

"You saw the drawing," I begin as I motion down the hallway towards the closed door of the spare bedroom. "I showed it to you."

His eyes follow the path of my hand. "You didn't show it to me. I haven't seen it. Was it at the gallery?"

I tug on the small pendant that's hanging from a thin silver chain around my neck. "I didn't take it to the gallery. It's here.  You saw it right after we met. It was on that night when you asked to see my drawings in my old apartment."

He scrubs his left hand over his forehead. "No. There wasn't a drawing of Maisy there."

I've only ever assumed that Dane is honest with me. Before yesterday I may have questioned the legal merit of Maisy's refusal to leave his house, but I'd never actually believed that he was consciously withholding the truth from me. Maybe that means I'm naïve and unaware or perhaps it just means that I wanted whatever we had to continue into my future so I chose to ignore the obvious signs that he wasn't being completely transparent.

I motion for him to follow me down the hallway. I don't look back as I take each step quickly until I reach the door of the spare bedroom. I push it open with a quick twist of my hand on the doorknob. I turn towards the easel where the pencil portrait is sitting near the window. "It's there. That's Maisy."