And they had. Immense and wonderful, what had been between them had driven both of them nearly mindless. It was wildly out of character for her—she was vigilant about protection—but their conversation earlier in the evening had taken a rather personal turn when both admitted to seeing to their health with regular testing. And she’d believed herself covered with her birth control pills.
Pills she’d forgotten to take with the rush of running around for the holidays and again, after she’d gotten home that day. A lapse that had paid an incredible dividend. One they would now share for the rest of their lives.
“I never wanted to hide this from you, Gavin. Whatever else you might believe, please know that.”
“When were you going to tell me? We spent all evening together, and if you hadn’t thrown up, I’d still be blithely unaware I was going to be a father.”
“Not for long. I was trying to figure out how to tell you and when, but it never crossed my mind not to tell you at all.”
He remained where he was but had stopped pacing to stare at her from across the room. That large form she’d so admired, both in and out of clothes, struck her through a new lens as she stared at him.
And in a heartbeat, she saw him, their child nestled against his broad chest. She saw him again, hands wrapped firmly around a toddler’s as they tried to walk. And even once more, a proud, doting father on one knee adjusting their child’s backpack as they headed for the first day of school.
They were bonded by this tiny person who would be here in half a year. A blessing and a gift, one handed to two people who didn’t know a thing about each other.
The edge of his lips twitched, a rude awakening in the midst of her thoughts.
“What?”
“Well, come on. You mean you didn’t want to share the news in a conference room the size of a cracker box?”
Sera couldn’t quite hold back a small smile of her own. “I was actually thinking I’d start our next task force meeting with the entire team. Make the announcement then.”
“That certainly gives new meaning to collaborating with your partner.”
The humor caught her low and deep in the belly, and she couldn’t hold back the peals of laughter that, once started, quickly raged out of control.
Gavin crossed back to the couch, dropping down beside her. His own laughter joined hers, and it was long moments later before they both came up for breath.
But it was that dark brown gaze meeting hers that silenced the lingering humor. “We’re actually having a baby?”
“We actually are.”
“Garbage scents aside, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
One lone eyebrow shot up. “Try again since I’m finding it hard to believe you. How are you really feeling?”
“I have good days and bad days. It’s more the time of the day, to be honest. And I’ve sort of figured out how to deal with it.”
“All by yourself.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Do your aunt and uncle know?”
It was her turn to shoot him a dark look. “Do you think they’d have been quite so welcoming this evening?”
“Probably not.” He waited a few beats before asking, “And your parents?”
“They’re not an issue.”
He looked about to say something further, but stopped himself. It touched her that he could read her discomfort so easily, even as she felt a strange sort of sadness that she hadn’t gotten to share some of that history with him. Some of what had shaped her.
But she stayed quiet and didn’t say any of that, either.
They might share one explosive night of passion and a child, but there were some boundary lines she still couldn’t cross. And there was no way she was ready to talk about that aspect of her life.
Which made his next move, so gentle and so innately kind, enough to set her heart to aching.
His hand found hers, his big palm layering over the back of her hand. “Whatever worries either of us will carry for this child, you can remove abandonment from the list.” He turned to look at her, his brown eyes searching. “I will be a father for the rest of my life.”
He was going to be a father.
The thought flowed in and out of his mind along with his breathing.
Inhale: I’m going to be...
Exhale: ...a father.
Over and over as he and his partners worked the churning waters around Hell Gate.
It was an incongruous thought in an even more incongruous place, yet it was his. All his, Gavin thought as his heavily gloved hands moved the silt at the bottom of the East River after a hit on his metal detector. When he only came up with what looked like a key ring, he kept going.
His comms kept up a steady flurry of activity in his ear, both from the team up on the surface. Instructions continued coming down to him and Wyatt, along with separate details for the other pair in the water, Kerrigan Doyle and Jayden Houston.
They took no chances when they dived this area. It was always two teams, and they’d be called up when they still had at least ten minutes of air. It was an extra series of precautions Captain Reed had insisted on after a dive on his watch early in his career had nearly resulted in a Harbor team death.
