Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Me too,” Harper muttered.
“Oh, we know,” Wick said, reaching Harper and putting an arm around his shoulders. “Believe me, we know.”
Harper turned around fast, hands on Wick’s chest, staring into his eyes. “I don’t want you to be unhappy living here and not living your dream, so if you have to go to New York, we can do the long-distance thing and––”
“No,” Wick told him. “My dream job is going to be here. I’m actually going to be heading up the new urban anthropology department at Sutter in partnership with the Field Museum, and more importantly, you’re here, so…don’t worry about me leaving anymore.”
Harper searched his face. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “My parents are thrilled, and so is my sister, which was a surprise.”
Deep sigh from Harper. “I would miss you if I was here and you were there, but I would do it, faithfully, and make it work because I can’t lose you. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
“I feel the same,” he said and wrapped Harper in his arms.
“Awwww,” Kola teased them.
“Knock it off. You’d be the same way if I had to go,” Finn told him.
“You just promised to never leave me!” Kola sounded both belligerent and defensive.
Finn’s laughter was good to hear.
Hannah, Aja, and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking over steaming cups of lemon balm tea, when my daughter announced that she was going to move home.
“Oh?”
She nodded. “I need to give Jake back to Kola and Harper. They’re both slowly slipping into a funk, and Finn and Wick told me to make it stop.”
I smiled at her.
“Maybe Jake would rather stay here,” Aja suggested.
She shook her head. “He loves Dad and Pa of course, but I know him, and being away from them is hard. Finn and Wick came along too late. Kola loves Finn, wants to marry him, but Jake is his touchstone. Same with Harper.”
I just listened to her.
“Jake keeps Kola grounded and not too up in his own head. Jake helps Harper decompress. They’re both a bit high-strung, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“We’ve noticed,” Aja told her with a smile. “I wish Gen had friends like that. Robert does, Smith and Kramer, those are his guys. And they haven’t been around as long as Kola’s had Harper and Jake, but it’s been a while.”
“Those are their first names? Smith and Kramer?”
Aja nodded.
“What are their last names?”
“Kramer…Sullivan and Smith Weir.”
“They sound like FBI agents.”
She shrugged.
Hannah took a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to do.”
Aja cleared her throat. “Have you and Jake talked at all?”
She nodded.
“And?” I pushed.
“He asked me if we broke up, would I go to a sperm bank, and he wasn’t being awful, he was posing it as a serious question, and when I said no, that’s not what I wanted, then he said, either way, a baby right now is off the table.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I just—I thought this was so smart, you know? It makes so much sense, but if we break up…it has to be his baby,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “It can only be his baby. It doesn’t work without—and now I have to wonder, how do we even come back from this? And what if he thinks I would try and trick him? Is he going to insist on us using a condom because he thinks I’d get pregnant on purpose?”
I scoffed.
“What?”
“Love, this is Jake. He knows you so well. If you gave him your word that you are good to wait, do you seriously think he would second-guess you?”
She thought a moment and then shook her head.
“Of course not. His trust in you is infinite. He does call you a freight train, but only when you try and go through him without considering his feelings—like you did with the baby—but unlike everyone else, he always qualifies it with, she’s my freight train.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her voice thready.
I took a breath. “But will you be all right waiting? And more importantly, will you resent him for making you wait?”
“That is the most crucial question,” Aja told her. “Because you can still love him, but over time, slowly, insidiously, him denying you what you wanted in your heart will change from sadness to anger because he’s taken your choices from you.”
Hannah nodded.
“I have friends who have left the man they knew was the love of their life because he didn’t want kids,” Aja explained. “Conversely, I also have friends who left the love of their life because they themselves didn’t want children, and they knew that they couldn’t deny that to their partner. This, what you’re going through, is the same.”
“Maybe you and Jake have to part now, and down the road, when you’ve both done more living, you can come back together,” I suggested.
Hannah’s eyes were quickly welling with tears. “I don’t want to be apart. He’s the one. I know that because we’ve already broken up once and––I…and…”