“My parents love you, Wheeler. You’re part of the family and always will be.” She tentatively lowered a hand to her stomach and gave me a surprisingly steady look. “We are in this together, but you have no idea how hard it is realizing your life is never going to be the same. It’s scary enough coming to terms with that on your own … thinking about how my parents might react …” She sighed and shrugged helplessly.

I nodded at her. “We are in this together, but you have someone else that’s in it too, Kallie. If you plan on keeping Roni around, then you need to be honest with everyone, including yourself, about the role she’s playing and will play in our baby’s life.” I wasn’t going to reassure her that her parents were going to be reasonable and understanding again. I’d said the words a million times in a million different ways but it hadn’t done any good. She was going to have to have that conversation with them and find out for herself that they would love her no matter what. She lowered her gaze and her teeth bit even harder into her lip. Knowing well and good those were signs that she was done with the conversation, I changed the subject. “What did you want to talk to me about that couldn’t be handled over the phone?” She’d begged me to meet her this morning, and like a sap, I caved and agreed. “I have to get going soon.” I didn’t really since I made my own hours and I was the boss, but I could only handle so much time around her. It still hurt, being with her but not (with) her.

She shifted nervously in her seat and let go of her tea. She started tapping her fingertips on the table in front of her and I wanted to reach out and put my hand over hers to keep them still. I didn’t want to make her anxious but until we found our way to some kind of new normal with each other, this was how it was going to be. I felt cut open and raw, she was fidgety and unsettled. I’d never realized how deeply we’d relied on each other to keep our worst traits at bay from the rest of the knowing world. She held me together and kept all my jagged edges smoothed out and less dangerous, I kept her calm and quieted all the restlessness in her that made her so volatile and needy.

“I have a doctor’s appointment next week. I wanted to see if you would come with me.” She was heading into the second trimester, so the baby was starting to seem very real. Soon she would be showing and we would be to the point where we would know if we were having a boy or a girl. I’d gone with her to one doctor’s visit but her mother had been there as well and it was a terrible afternoon for all of us. She’d asked me to go a couple more times and I’d refused thinking it would be easier for all involved. Seeing the nervousness on her pretty face right now, I understood that wasn’t the case.

“Did you ask your mom to go this time?” My tone was flat because she could make this all better if she just stepped up to the plate for once in her life. If she took care of someone else instead of expecting everyone to take care of her.

“No.” The word squeaked out and she jolted. “Uh … I talked to Dixie and she sort of mentioned that it’s our baby and that we’re the ones who are going to raise it, not Mom and Dad, so we needed to figure out how to coparent without them in the middle of us. I don’t want to go alone because it’s scary, but Dixie is right. It should be you and me.”

Dixie was a fixer. It’s what she did. She also had the annoying habit of seeing straight to the heart of a situation and knowing the best way to get everyone involved on the right path. Even more, she was the only person in the world that could make Kallie see beyond her own selfishness.

I groaned a little as I nodded in sullen agreement. “I’ll go with you. Just text me the date and time.”

Her lips quivered into a tiny grin. “Thanks.”

I finished my coffee and pushed back from the table. I stopped and went still as stone when her fingers touched the back of my hand. I expected it to burn or for a familiar tingle to shoot along my skin. There was nothing. There was no jolt like the one that had almost taken me to my knees when Poppy’s shaking fingers lightly grasped mine yesterday.

“Um … I know it’s none of my business and I have no right to pry, but Dixie mentioned you’ve been dating a lot recently.” A tight expression pinched her face and her eyes narrowed. “I … ugh … I just want to tell you to be careful. You’re a really nice guy, Wheeler. There are a lot of women out there that will take advantage of that.” She should know. She was one of them.

I shook her hand off. “I’m fucking … not dating.” She recoiled, which made me soften my tone when I told her, “You’re right, it’s none of your business.”

“Rebounds never work out.” There was some of the old Kallie shining through.

I rolled my eyes at her. “I gotta go.” I turned my back on her and headed toward the door only to be brought up short when she called my name. One of these days all those years of conditioning to heel at her command would break. I couldn’t fucking wait. I looked at her over my shoulder, impatience clear in every line of my body.

“I was the wrong one, but the right one is still out there.” Maybe she really did want me to be happy, or maybe she simply wanted me to find someone so that I was less likely to screw up trying to raise our kid on my own. Either way her words weren’t ones I wanted to hear.

“When you figure out where you want to live, you can have all the furniture in the house. I’ll put it in a storage unit and cover the cost. If you plan on staying with your parents for the long haul, or get to the point where you’re playing house with Roni, you can sell it all and use it for whatever we need for the baby. I’ll see you at the appointment, Kallie.”

I heard her quiet gasp as I pushed out the door into the bright Denver sunshine. That meeting had gone as well as could be expected and I was surprised that spending time with her wasn’t as awful as it had been the first few months after we’d split up. She still wasn’t my favorite person to be around, but seeing her and sharing the same air as her didn’t make me feel like I was suffocating and bleeding to death from a broken heart anymore. Things between us had been rocky before the split, so I think the reason everything felt so exposed and sensitive after the breakup was more the loss of what I’d thought I had, rather than the loss of what I’d actually had. She took my stability with her when she walked away and left me with something totally shakey and unsure. She ripped the foundation I’d steadfastly built out from under me, and that left me in the wind … exactly how my mother had. Exactly how the child welfare people had left me each and every time they had to place me in a new home with a temporary family.