What was wrong with her?
She felt like a block of cement had taken up residence in the pit of her belly, right between the two fetuses she’d seen on the ultrasound screen just a few days before. She hadn’t felt quite right all day, actually, had chalked it up to morning sickness.
Jake looked up with a smile as she joined him. “Perfect timing.”
She took a seat beside him at her kitchen island, where he’d slid the full plate. She picked up her fork, speared some of the eggs, and blew on the steam rising even though the thought of food made her feel like puking.
“Sophie? Are you all right?”
Jake had moved beside her, was looking at her with deep concern etched across his face.
She tried to smile to reassure him, but all she could say was, “I’m just tired. Really, really tired.”
“Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have dragged you all over the city yesterday.”
She didn’t resist as he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Her limbs felt terribly stiff and heavy, exhaustion taking her over head-to-toe at almost the exact moment her head hit the pillow.
* * *
Jake sat in a chair in the corner of Sophie’s dark bedroom and watched her sleep, each breath she took pulling and tugging at his chest as if he were breathing with her.
He had sworn he’d never let himself feel this way, that he’d never let himself care about someone this much, that he’d never ask for help again. He could still remember the day he’d come home to ask his father for help. He was in fourth grade and it was getting nearly impossible to fake his way through class every day.
“I can’t read.”
His father had looked at him with disgust. “It’s your mother’s fault. The stupid bitch couldn’t even give me a kid with brains.”
Jake had turned and run from their apartment before he could shame himself even more with tears. It was easier, after that, to skip out of class on reading days. Until the day he’d been put on a project with Zach Sullivan. The cocky little jerk had everything and Jake had hated him on sight. He hated Zach even more when he flat-out told Jake they weren’t going to skip the book report they were supposed to be doing together.
Jake remembered how cool he’d try to play it. “Books are for losers.”
Zach had seen right through him. Maybe there had been other people who had guessed, but none of them had dared call Jake on it. Not flat-out like Zach had. “You can’t read, can you?”
Jake threw the first punch, but Zach was barely a beat behind him. The two boys had done a pretty good job of smashing each other up before the teacher had pulled them apart. Zach’s mother came to the office to take her expelled son home. But they'd heard the secretary say that no one was coming for Jake, and before he could figure out how to get out of it, Mary Sullivan had both of them in the backseat of her station wagon. A few minutes later they were sitting in front of a huge plate of cookies with tall glasses of milk. The book they were supposed to do their report on, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, sat on the table between them, along with a thick blue dictionary that had clearly seen plenty of use.
“Let me know if you need any help, boys.”
She hadn’t yelled at them, hadn’t smacked Zach or called him stupid. She didn’t smell like booze, either. Jake couldn’t believe anyone like her existed, couldn’t stop himself from fantasizing about what his life could have been like if he’d had a mother like that.
After Mrs. Sullivan left the room, he’d been coiled into a tight ball of nerves and bravado, expecting Zach to smirk and rub in his stupidity, but all the guy did was shove a chocolate chip cookie into his mouth and open the book to start reading it out loud, spitting chunks all over the pages.
Zach never brought up his reading problem again, but somehow they always ended up working on reading projects together after that.
He’d met most of the crew that afternoon in their backyard, with the football to the back of his head. Lori swept into the middle of the group at some point, demanding the attention of her big brothers, wanting to know who the new boy was.
He couldn’t imagine having six siblings. How great it would be to have someone to play with all the time. And then, from the corner of his eye, he saw one more. She should have looked just like Lori, but he could never get them confused. Not even when they were five years old.
She was sitting in the corner of the yard beneath a large oak tree, with a big book open on her lap. But she wasn’t looking at the book.
She was looking at him.
He’d never seen anyone so still. So calm. Or so pretty. Sophie Sullivan had looked like a princess from one of those movies he snuck into the theaters to see sometimes.
Sophie shifted on the bed just then, as if she were reaching for something. For him. She frowned in her sleep before putting her arm around a pillow and hugging it close to her.
Trust.
If there was anyone he wanted to trust, it was Sophie. But after a lifetime of hiding the truth from everyone, keeping secrets was what he did best.
Never share.
Never trust.
Never give anyone another chance to say you’re nothing but a whore and a drunk’s stupid kid.
But this time, Jake knew, everything was different...because he couldn’t stop himself from loving Sophie. And he’d never wanted anything more than for her to love him back.
Which meant he would have to tell her soon, have to warn her that their children might not be able to do the one thing that came so easily to her.