Stealing the Show (PolyAm Fam #3)

Chapter 22

twenty-two

raine

Once Leo and Maggie both left, Bonnie stumbled out of her bedroom and into mine. “What the fuck is going on?” She was wearing her Care Bears nightgown that had seen better days, and her strawberry blonde hair was plaited in a long braid down her back.

“Sorry for all the noise.” I sniffled and reached over to grab a tissue from my nightstand.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She sat across from me on my bed. “I’m wide awake now. You want coffee?”

I looked around my room, my gaze finally landing on the clock on my dresser. “Three a.m. Nice. I don’t want to keep you up. Don’t you have to go to work in the morning?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” She sighed and pulled my comforter over her. “Did you get into a fight with Maggie and Leo?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Not really. But I think we broke up.”

She blinked a few times, trying to make sense of my words. “Wow. Don’t you have a contract or something?”

I already felt pretty shitty about myself, but the fact that I was breaking our contract made me feel even worse. What were they going to do about it though? There was a clause that we could back out if I wasn’t pregnant yet. And if I turned out to be…what would they do, sue me? It wasn’t like I had any money. The contract was more to protect me than them…except for when it came to who got the baby.

“Well, if I got pregnant, then I guess I’ll just give them the baby and that will be the end of things.” I scrubbed my hands down my tear-streaked face.

“Wasn’t that your plan anyway?” Bonnie leaned forward. “I thought you were doing this to finance a gap year so you could look for a job. Even if your intimate relationship is over with them, they’ll still have to pay you the money if you don’t break that part of the agreement, the growing their baby part.”

“Yes, that’s true.” I closed my eyes as the circumstances closed in around me like prison walls. “I guess there’s nothing I can really do now except wait and see if I’m pregnant.”

“And that takes what, like two weeks?”

“Some tests you can use a few days early. So maybe ten days?” I had done a little reading on this. “I don’t have time to worry about that right now anyway. I have to get my thesis done. It’s due next week, and the Costume Czar, who is on my committee, already hates me, especially since she found out I wasn’t responsible for the antique jewelry that went missing. I have to really wow the committee so everyone else passes me because she probably won’t.”

Bonnie’s nostrils flared. “Well, that doesn’t sound fair.”

“To quote my mom, ‘life’s not fair.’” My adoptive mother had told me that so many times, I might as well have gotten it tattooed on me I was finding out how right she was the hard way this summer.

My phone rang before I could say anything else. I figured it was Leo or Maggie, hoping to work things out, but I could see Danielle’s face illuminated on the screen from across the room. I dove for it, getting to it just in time before it went to voicemail.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Aris,” said a smooth male voice.

My heart immediately began to race. “Where’s Dani? Why are you calling me at three in the morning?”

“We’re at the ER with Dani,” he explained, more calmly than what seemed reasonable for three o’clock in the morning. “She started having contractions around midnight, and we thought we better get her checked out.”

“Oh my god! Is she okay? Is the baby okay?” I practically screamed into the phone. Bonnie leaped up and rushed over to where I was pacing across the rug, her features wide with panic.

“They’re monitoring her and the baby, and they’ve given her some medication to stop the contractions. They’re admitting her. She wanted me to let you know what’s going on. She hoped you’d be able to stop by in the morning.”

“What’s wrong? Is Dani okay? Is the baby?” Bonnie was trying to ask questions and play charades with me while I was trying to digest Aris’s words. I started to rip my dresser drawers apart searching for some real clothes.

“I’m going to come now,” I told him. “I’m already awake, and I can’t sleep anyway. I need to make sure she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate the company. Noah had to go back to bed because he has surgery in the morning. If you come, maybe I can get a few hours of sleep before work. I don’t really want her to be here all day tomorrow by herself, but we’re short-staffed this week at my office because one of the other nurses is on vacation.”

“Sure, of course, no problem. Bonnie and I will come now.” I turned toward her, and she nodded.

“Thanks, Raine,” he sounded relieved. “You’re the best.”

I didn’t feel like the best. I still felt pretty much like the worst, but I was worried about my friend and about her baby.

I filled Bonnie in, and her face filled with determination. “Yeah, I’m in. Let me get some clothes on, and we’ll get out of here.”

maggie

I sat in my car in the dark silence for a few minutes. The crickets were so loud, the silence made them seem deafening. I shouldn’t have gone to the conference—that was the main thought that started a cascade of other inadequacies and mistakes I needed to contend with. Atone for.

My hand hurt after a hard pound to the steering wheel, which did absolutely nothing for my sanity or stress levels. I started up my car and backed out of my parking space, weaving my way out of Raine’s apartment complex.

What the hell were we doing? We met this twenty-something-year-old woman and expected her to have the maturity and poise to handle not only a poly relationship with an almost forty-something couple but to somehow also be their surrogate?

Were we absolutely insane?

I pointed the car toward our home on the other side of town, dipping down side streets aglow in streetlights until I reached the back country roads that would take me to our address. What would it be like to escape for a while? Pretend to be someone else, someone with different problems, and one of them wasn’t a broken reproductive system?

But I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t rely on my family. Leo wasn’t close to his family either. Maybe that was why we desperately wanted a baby—we wanted to create a family because ours had continually let us down.

The garage door opened, and I walked into a dark house. Blue greeted me, tail wagging as he licked my hand and welcomed me home after my trip. Oh, yeah, my suitcase. Well, I’d get it in the morning. Later in the morning. It was already three o’clock, but I was still sort of on Mountain Time.

The bedroom was dark, but my eyes had adjusted enough to make out the broad-shouldered lump on the far side of the bed that was my husband. I stripped down to nothing, not wanting to rummage through the drawers for pajamas, and slid in behind him, the big spoon to his smaller— well, he could never be considered small, but you get the picture.

I listened to his steady breathing—he was already asleep. I knew without a doubt that Leo had done the best he could with Raine. I wasn’t thrilled they had sex when she was so upset—I hoped she didn’t feel like she was obligated to because of the contract. But Leo had insisted it was her idea.

He wasn’t able to pull out of Raine what the issue was, but I did. Was it because it was easier for her to talk to me, a woman, or had we attained a closeness she hadn’t with Leo?

My head hurt, my heart hurt, and the future was one jumbled, convoluted tangle of mangled hopes and dreams.

I didn’t think things would look any better in the light of dawn, which was only a couple of hours from now.

But we would see.

leo

I felt my wife slide in behind me, wrap her arm around me and snuggle up to my back, but I didn’t move. My breathing stayed deep and steady as I pretended to sleep. Fake it till you make it, right? I did want to get a few hours of sleep, and I knew Maggie needed it too after the conference and travel. We would be able to discuss this with clearer minds if we both got some rest.

I was reminded of all the domestic situations I had ever responded to. Not that she and I were having a domestic situation. Yes, we’d said some snarky and hurtful things to each other, but it was nothing like the fights that escalated to the point where the police needed to intervene.

I had responded to a fair number of domestics, and they could be scary as fuck. Especially when one or both of the couple had access to weapons: almost always knives and often guns. Police nearly always separated the two warring partners. Especially if it was nighttime. We would find a place for one of them to stay, usually with relatives. If there was violence or threats of violence, that other place would be jail.

But the point was they needed to be separated, to cool off, to get some time apart. Clearer heads would prevail once time passed. Once sleep washed over volatile emotions.

That was what all three of us had encountered tonight: volatile emotions. And they’d clashed. There was no way three people could always be on the same page, but one thing I felt when I left Raine’s apartment earlier tonight was loss.

I was afraid I was losing her, that I had already lost her. And I wasn’t just sad about that. I was sad for Maggie too, that Maggie may be losing her as well.

It had nothing to do with the surrogacy or a baby who didn’t exist yet—probably—and everything to do with what Raine had come to mean to me and to Maggie over the past couple of months.

Maggie’s soft snores fell on my bare back, and I smiled at the blessing of sleep, of the peace it would bring her. I rolled over to face her, pulling her into my embrace, and she barely budged. I leaned in close, smelling her unique scent and thinking about how much I loved her.

As if she’d heard my internal thoughts, she whispered, “I love you, Leo. So much. We’ll figure this out in the morning.”

That’s my girl , I thought as she drifted back into the realm of dreams. But then I saw the empty space on the other side of us and wished our beautiful Raine was there with us too.