I couldn’t help it.

I threw up into the nearest trashcan before I managed to stumble my way through Central Park and flag down a taxi. I didn’t trust my legs to support me and I had no desire to trudge down into the underground.

I was not sure what the hell had just happened. I was not sure if what had just happened was a figment of my imagination. For all I knew, my mind was beginning to play horrible tricks. The only thing I was sure of was that that man had been insanity itself, and there was no way I would ever let him get near Hadley, no matter what he had claimed had happened.

But try as I might…I still couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow that man had been right. Was there something Hadley wasn’t telling me?

Something as outlandish and farfetched as the man had claimed had happened was something entirely different than hiding a pregnancy.

Was there something Hadley wasn’t telling me?

I let out a groan and dropped my head back against the lumpy head rest. I was starting to have the urge to throw up again.

There were plenty of times where I’d been utterly and completely baffled, but this one really did have to take the cake.

Why me? Was there some sort of invisible sign taped to my forehead advertising that all of the city’s freaks should just come up and strike up a conversation with me?

I wasn’t sure what the truth was and what wasn’t. Of course I was more inclined to believe anything that Hadley had to say than some random man on the streets. And as much as I wanted to interrogate her about what had just happened, we sort of had more pressing matters to discuss at the moment.

I managed to scrounge up the fare for the cab with a few bills left in my pockets and walked shakily up the steps into the apartment complex. I cursed the damn elevator as I trudged up the stairs to the third floor. My hands were shaking while I fumbled with my keys to try and unlock the front door. I’d only just slid the key into the lock when the door swung open and Hadley stood in the doorway, looking completely bewildered.

Another wave of heavy guilt washed over me as I looked at her.

Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot and she was wrapped up in one of my old jackets, looking like she’d just been caught in a rain storm.

Damn it, I really was such an asshole.

There were hundreds of things I wanted to say to her.

I’m sorry, please forgive me, what the hell are we going to do?

But instead, I just reached out and pulled her into my arms, holding her tightly against me. I would feel sorry for squeezing her later, but at that moment, I had the irrational, overpowering urge to know that she was here, with me, and not somewhere else.

“Archer…” Hadley mumbled into my chest. “I can’t…breathe.”

“Oh.”

I quickly let go of her and stepped back, suddenly feeling very awkward. Should I start the groveling now?

Hadley gave me a curious, saddened look before she grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind me and sliding the locks home. A bowl of cereal was sitting on the coffee table, along with a mug of what I bet was one of my mom’s special brews of tea.

I looked over to the TV and saw that sure enough Spongebob Squarepants was flashing across the screen. My wife was twenty-five years old, but that was still her go-to show whenever she was sad.

But this time, I was the reason she was upset, and we both knew that.

“You’ve been smoking again,” Hadley stated as she stepped around me to settle back down on the couch.

No point in denying it, if I’d been smoking like a train for a good hour.

“Yes,” I said, swallowing hard. “Hadley, I – “

Hadley beat me to the punch.

“Look, Archer, you don’t need to apologize,” she started babbling as she grabbed her cereal bowl and started shoveling cereal into her mouth. “I know you’re…shocked about the whole thing, and I understand that. I’m shocked, too. And I know you’ve never wanted kids, but I do, and…well, honestly, I don’t know what we’re going to do about it, but I’m keeping this baby. I can’t just not keep this baby. I’m sorry if that – “

“Okay.”

Hadley’s spoon fell into her bowl with a loud clatter, her jaw dropping. I would’ve laughed at the expression on her face if the situation wasn’t so overbearingly serious.

“What…I mean…you’re…but. Okay?” she repeated, her voice hoarse.

I had no idea what I was saying. Words were just spewing out of my mouth. As much as it didn’t make sense, I knew that somewhere deep down inside myself I did mean what I was saying.

“Look, Hadley,” I said, moving across the living room to her until I was kneeling down in front of her. “I’m not going to lie to you and say that I’ve always wanted kids, because I haven’t. I still don’t want kids. But this…this is a kid with you. I’m…I don’t really know how to explain this, but I… I mean, I just…”

Hadley was smiling as she watched me floundering for the right words to say. I could feel myself getting hot and my palms were starting to sweat. I knew it wasn’t the manly thing to do, to get really nervous, but I couldn’t stop the nervous shakes starting to take over me.

“Hadley, willyoujust – “

She clapped a hand over my mouth when I tried to say something again.

“Try saying that again without hyperventilating,” she told me, a smile on her face as she looked at me.

When she moved her hand, I took a deep, shuddering breath and then blurted out, “Iwantyoutokeepthekidbutdon’tlaughbecauseI’mscaredofthiswholeparentingshit.”

Hadley stared at me in utter confusion for a moment. I stared at her in complete, unadulterated horror.

What the hell had I just said?

She started laughing. Not just a hearty chuckle, but a throw-your-head-back-tears-streaming-from-your-eyes type of laugh, the one thing I couldn’t stand for her to do.

I dropped my head into my hands and groaned, rubbing my eyes. “God, Hadley, stop laughing. I told you, I – “

She grasped my chin, forcing me to look up at her and then swooped down to kiss me. When she pulled away a moment later, I fell backwards onto my ass, lightheaded.

“You are so stupid, Archer,” she said. “So stupid.”

“…What?”

“Of course I’m scared, you idiot.” She reached out to flick me in the forehead. “I’m scared out of my freaking mind. You aren’t the one that has something growing inside them.”

Huh. She did have a point there.

I was suddenly very thankful again that I was not a woman and never would be.

“Okay…” I trailed off, clearing my throat. “Good to know we’re of the same understanding.”

“Look, Archer," Hadley said, sliding off the couch until she was sitting in my lap. “I know this is going to be hard. Believe me, I so know this going to be hard. But I’m not an idiot and your mother certainly did not raise a fool. I know we can do this. Sure, we’re going to fight a lot – well, more than we do now – and it’s going to make us want to rip our hair out, but we can do it.”

I dropped my head on her shoulder and took a few deep breaths, running over what she’d just said in my mind.

A baby was so much more than just a little human being. A baby changed everything. Everything about my and Hadley’s lives were going to change. It wasn’t going to be just the two of us anymore. Nothing was going to be the same anymore.

We would have this small, completely new and completely our baby with us – something that only Hadley and I were responsible for, something that we both had made.

The thought of that was enough to make me have a panic attack.

Could Hadley and I really do this? She was right. We weren’t fools. We had a strong relationship despite our differences, but could we really do this?

“Can I see?”

Hadley leaned back to stare at me with a confused look. “What?”

“Can I see?” I repeated, a sheepish expression coming onto my face.

I helped her stand and she shrugged out of the oversized jacket, tossing it on the couch. I reached out and gently pulled her t-shirt up, revealing the smooth skin of her stomach.

Oh, hell.

She really was pregnant. I mean, she wasn’t that pregnant, but she was showing enough to start becoming noticeable. Her stomach was protruding by a few inches, firmer and rounder than before. Anybody would a brain could obviously tell that she was obviously pregnant.

So how on Earth had I not noticed it sooner?

I tugged her t-shirt back down, my breathing shaky. “Wow.”

Hadley raised her eyebrows, looking nervous. “Wow? Wow in a good way, or wow in a bad way?”

“Just…wow,” I said. “I feel like even more of an asshole because I never noticed it sooner.”

Hadley sat back down on the couch with a sigh, pulling me down with her. “To be honest, neither did I. I just thought I was getting fat.”

“You? Fat?” I scoffed, pulling her into my arms, resting my chin on the top of her head. “Impossible.”

She giggled, lacing her fingers through mine.

“How long have you known?” I asked after a beat of silence.

“Not long. It didn’t even occur to me that I might be pregnant. I mean, I’ve always been irregular, but when I started to gain weight and I skipped two months, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a test. It was positive, so I followed the directions and went to see a doctor. They confirmed it. Turns out I’m pregnant”

“That phone call this morning…that was from the doctor’s, wasn’t it?”

“Bingo.”

Wow.

That seemed to be the only thing my brain could think of at the moment. Wow.

That, and this conversation with Hadley had gone a lot better than I expected it would. Sure, we didn’t exactly have a game plan yet and it was anybody’s guess as to what we were going to do. But at least for now, we were on ground level with each other.

This baby wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m almost thirteen weeks, by the way. We’ll get to find out the gender next month.”

I almost started hyperventilating again. Gender? That sure happened fast, didn’t it? Hadley had only just found out she was pregnant, and now were going to find out if it was a boy or a girl?

“Um…” I gnawed on my lip, dropping my head back on the couch to stare up at the cracked ceiling. “What do…do you think it’ll be? I mean, do you want a…”

“It’s a girl,” she said firmly. “Trust me.”

Thoughts of having a daughter suddenly came rushing through my mind so fast I swear I got whiplash.

If we ended up having a girl…Jesus. If she turned out to be anything like Hadley or my three sisters, I was liable to explode the second she was born.

Hadley and I lay there intertwined on the couch for a few more quiet moments, neither of us saying anything. I was glad that we weren’t talking. What was there to say, anyways?

Then my stomach let out a loud grumbling noise, loud enough for Hadley to twist around in my arms and look up at me in amusement.

“Hungry, much?”

I grinned. “Sorry, I didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast before I ran out of here like an asshole.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes, before she pulled herself up off the couch and wandered into the kitchen.

I stood and followed after her as she started pulling things out of the fridge to start throwing together something to eat.

I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms, watching her as she moved. She moved to the kitchen sink as she popped the top on a case of blueberries and ran water over them.

“Holy shit!”

Hadley jerked in surprise as I moved forward, grabbing the blueberries and taking her hands in mine. This was where I’d seen those symbols before. Tattooed across Hadley’s palms were symbols identical to the ones on that man’s skin, except hers looked like they made a number zero. That’s why they had looked so familiar.

“What?” Hadley’s voice pitched while she snatched her hand back. “You’ve seen that tattoo before.”

“No, I get that,” I said slowly. “But today, earlier, when I was at Central Park, there was this man that – “

“What guy?”

Hadley looked at me as if I’d just announced an impending apocalypse. She sucked in a harsh breath, her eyes widening, and she quickly clutched at the counter for support.

“He was just a guy,” I said quickly, becoming concerned. “A really crazy guy, at that. He had those same symbols tattooed all over his hands and arms. Actually, he was bit of an asshole – took one of my cigarettes and started blabbering about how he knew you and – “

“Archer.”

Hadley grabbed my face in her hands and locked her eyes with mine. Her eyes were welling with tears and her face had gone starch white. I’d never seen her look like this before. I’d seen her right after she was in a near fatal car accident and she looked better than she did right now.

“What?” I said uneasily. “Hadley, you’re kind of starting to freak me out. The guy was a nut. Nothing he said made sense, and I – “

She cut me off again. “What color were his eyes?”

“What?”

“What color were his eyes?” Hadley repeated, gritting her teeth. “Come on, you have to remember what color his eyes were. This is important.”

Of course I remembered what color his eyes were, because they’d been –

“Mismatched. One was blue, the other brown.”

Hadley’s face fell blank at my words. For a moment I was afraid she’d suddenly gone catatonic, but then she squeaked something that sounded like havoc and then fainted.

I caught her before she could hit the floor and gathered her up into my arms.

This was not good. This was not good.

“Hadley?” My voice cracked when I spoke, giving her shoulder a gentle shake. “Hadley! Come on, wake up! Please, don’t do this to me!”

Hadley remained eerily silent, her head lolling against my shoulder like a rag doll.

I immediately wanted to dump cold water on her. Wasn’t that what people did in old movies when somebody fainted?

That wasn’t the smartest thing to do, though. And besides, Hadley was pregnant. It wasn’t just her wellbeing I had to worry about now.

My chest began to constrict and I struggled to breathe properly.

Anything happening to Hadley or our unborn child suddenly seemed like the worst possible thing ever. I had to keep the both of them safe, away from harm.

I quickly weighed the pros and cons of flagging down a taxi and heading to Bellevue, the nearest hospital. Traffic was terrible at all times of the day. At best, it could take up to an hour before I actually got there. There was no way I could wait that long. I was going to have to take my chances with an ambulance.

I shifted Hadley in my arms and stood, swiped her cellphone off the counter and gently laid her down on the couch.

My fingers were trembling as I pressed the appropriate keys, and I thought I was going to pass out myself.

“911, what is your emergency?” A dispatch officer answered in a bored voice.

“My wife just collapsed,” I blurted out frantically. “She’s not waking up.”

The dispatch officer probably could hear the hysteria in my voice because she then said, “Okay, sir, I need you to take a deep breath and calm down.”

That was impossible, but I did as she said anyways.

“Okay, sir, now I need you to tell me if she’s breathing. Is your wife breathing?”

“Yes, she’s breathing,” I snapped. “I can feel her pulse just fine. But she’s not waking up.”

“Sir, please don’t take that tone with me. I’ve traced your call and I’m sending paramedics to your address as we speak. Now, does your wife have any medical history we need to be informed of?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Okay, sir. Just hold tight. The paramedics will be there as soon as possible.”

I could not just hold tight and wait for the paramedics to be here as soon as possible. I had no idea if Hadley was going to be okay or not, or the baby, and…

Thoughts of everything that could possibly go wrong were running through my head, making my stomach churn with nausea.

Everything had to be okay. Everything couldn’t just not be okay. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if something went wrong with Hadley or the baby.

It was amazing to me to find that I had only known about our unborn child for all of five hours and it was already so important to me I could barely comprehend it.

It was a blur of flashing lights, paramedics rushing in and out of the apartment, bags of medical supplies and a gurney. I was pulled off to the side by a paramedic and could only watch in horror as two men and a woman bent over Hadley.

“Steady heart rate, low blood pressure,” one of them was saying. “No signs of any bleeding. Get her started on an IV. We need to get her down to Bellevue for a sonogram.”

“Sir? Excuse me, sir?” One of the paramedic was shaking my shoulder, snapping me away from Hadley. “Do you want to ride with us to the hospital?”

I nodded uneasily, unable to say anything.

I wanted to hold Hadley’s hand as they carried her down three flights of stairs on a gurney to the ambulance parked outside, but I couldn’t. Too many people were swarming around her.

I didn’t know what else to do to comfort her, to be there for her.

Somehow I managed to climb into the ambulance and take a seat across from her.

The ride to Bellevue seemed to last an entire lifetime. I kept my eyes fixed on Hadley, saying every prayer I knew that Hadley would wake up and that everything would be okay and that the baby would be okay. I wasn’t sure if I had ever wanted anything more than this in my entire life.

I stumbled my way out of the ambulance when it came to a screeching halt on the sidewalk outside the hospital. I followed after the group of paramedics with Hadley through the ER entrance, but one of them stopped me with a hand and said, “We’ll have someone find you when you can see your wife, okay?”

Before I could respond, they were gone.

I stood there in the middle of the ER, staring after them. Right at that moment, I had never felt so hopeless.

“That your wife, son?”

I jerked in surprise and looked over at the rather tall man that stood beside me. Looking at him more closely, my first instinct was to take an immediate step backwards.

He skin was starch white, and with his hollow cheek bones and sunken eyes, he looked as if he’d just walked out of a grave. His dark hair, black leather jacket, and scuffed up boots made me think that he was a mafia bag boy or something.

“Yeah,” I said awkwardly, clearing my throat. “She is.”

“Poor Hadley,” the man said with a sigh, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Always seems to be getting herself into trouble, doesn’t she?”

I stared at the man with a blank expression.

“Oh, I’m a friend, of course,” he continued, flashing a creepy grin. “Hadley and I go way back.”

Oh, you have got to be kidding me.