Off-Limits

Chapter Thirteen: The News

Veronica had taken the test on a Tuesday morning, alone, sitting on the edge of the bathroom counter with her heart doing something erratic while she waited out the two most excruciating minutes of her adult life, and when the second pink line appeared, steady and undeniable, she didn't cry or laugh or do any of the things she might have expected. She just sat there, very still, feeling the entire shape of her life quietly rearrange itself around a single small piece of plastic.

She didn't tell Jake right away. Not because she was hiding it — she just wanted, for a few hours, to hold the knowledge by herself first, turning it over, testing how it felt before she handed it to anyone else. By the time he got home that evening, she'd moved through disbelief, terror, a strange fierce joy, and back to terror again, and had landed, finally, on something steadier underneath all of it.

She met him at the door before he'd even gotten his shoes off, and something in her face must have given it away immediately, because he went very still, keys still in hand.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." Her voice wavered, caught somewhere between laughing and crying. "I'm pregnant, Jake."

The keys hit the floor. He didn't seem to notice, crossing the distance between them in two steps and pulling her into him, and Veronica felt the specific, full-body exhale of a man who'd apparently been holding some fear of his own without saying so.

"You're sure?"

"Three tests sure."

"Veronica." Her name came out rough, disbelieving, his hands framing her face like he needed to confirm she was actually real. "We're having a baby."

"We're having a baby," she repeated, and this time the tears actually came, warm and sudden, and he kissed them away before they'd even properly fallen, laughing against her mouth in a way that had nothing performed about it at all.

"I'm going to be somebody's dad," he said, half to himself, wonder threaded all through it. "The guy with the office pool is going to be somebody's dad."

"God help that child."

"I'm serious, though." He pulled back just far enough to look at her properly, some of the laughter giving way to something more solemn. "I spent years being someone I'm not proud of, Veronica. And now I get to be someone's father. I don't know how to be worthy of that yet, but I want you to know I'm going to spend the rest of my life figuring it out."

"You already are worthy of it," she said, resting her forehead against his. "You've spent two years proving it to me, one decision at a time. This is just the next one."

• • •

They told Mason and Cassidy first, over dinner the following weekend, and Veronica had barely gotten the sentence out before Cassidy was up out of her chair, shrieking loud enough that the neighboring table turned to look, pulling Veronica into a hug so fierce it knocked the wind out of her.

"I knew something was different about you," Cassidy said, pulling back just enough to study Veronica's face, delighted. "You've had this weird glow for a week. I thought you'd just started a new skincare routine."

"It was not skincare."

"Clearly not." Cassidy turned to Mason, who was still processing, staring at Jake with an expression somewhere between shock and pure, unfiltered joy. "Mason. Say something. You look like you've short-circuited."

"I'm going to be an uncle," Mason said slowly, like the words needed testing before he trusted them. He looked at Jake — really looked at him, the way he had that Tuesday night three years ago when Jake had first confessed to seeing Veronica — and something passed between them that didn't need words, three years of friendship and complication and forgiveness all folding into this one quiet moment. "You're going to be a father, man."

"I'm terrified."

"Good. You should be." Mason grinned, pulling him into a hug that turned into a rough, affectionate clap on the back. "Terrified is the correct response. Welcome to the club nobody warns you about."

"Wait." Veronica pulled back, catching something in the way Mason had said it. "The club?"

Cassidy and Mason exchanged a look, some private conversation passing between them before Cassidy's grin widened even further.

"We were actually going to tell you both tonight too," she said. "We've been trying for a few months. Found out last week." She reached for Mason's hand, threading their fingers together. "Looks like this family's about to get a lot bigger, all at once."

The table dissolved into noise after that — Veronica half-laughing, half-crying again, Jake and Mason doing some ridiculous handshake-hug hybrid they'd apparently invented for exactly this occasion, Cassidy fielding a barrage of due-date-comparison questions with the calm of a woman who'd clearly already run every calculation herself. It was loud and messy and entirely unplanned, four people who'd started this whole story as two reckless best friends and their entirely separate lives, now sitting around a table calculating whether their children would be close enough in age to grow up together.

• • •

They told Veronica's parents the following Sunday, at the same kitchen table where the whole story had started — Jake walking in on a party he'd never meant to attend and finding out, in the worst possible way, exactly whose sister he'd fallen for. Veronica's mother cried into a dish towel for a solid five minutes before she'd even gotten a coherent sentence out, and Veronica's father, a quiet man who'd never fully warmed to Jake in the early days, shook his hand with something that looked suspiciously like genuine pride.

"You've come a long way," he said, low enough that only Jake heard it. "From the man I met that first Sunday to this. I see it."

"I had good reason to change," Jake said, glancing toward Veronica, who was currently being smothered by her mother's second wave of hugging. "The best reason, actually."

"Don't let her hear you being sentimental. She'll never let you live it down."

"Too late," Jake said, and grinned, because Veronica had, in fact, already heard every word.

• • •

That night, back home, the two of them lay tangled together in the quiet dark, the whole enormous day finally settling into something calm.

"Scared?" Veronica asked, her hand resting over her still-flat stomach, his hand covering hers.

"Terrified," Jake admitted. "In the good way, if that makes sense. Like standing at the edge of something enormous and jumping anyway because I trust the person jumping with me."

"That's a good way to put it."

"I've had practice with terrifying leaps." He pressed a slow kiss to her temple, then lower, along her jaw. "Turns out they keep working out for me."

"Don't get cocky."

"Never," he murmured, kissing her properly now, unhurried, the day's noise and joy settling into something quieter and more intimate between just the two of them. "I just intend to keep being grateful for every single one of them. Starting with this one."

She pulled him closer, and the rest of the conversation dissolved into something wordless and warm, the kind of night that needed nothing more said, just two people quietly, thoroughly grateful for the strange, winding path that had brought them here.

• • •

Chapter Fourteen: Nine months later — arrivals, all around, and the family this whole story was always building toward.