Hadley and I were locked in a furious glare, so intense I was surprised we hadn't burned a hole in each other's foreheads yet. We'd narrowed our eyes at each other plenty of time - we got into far too many spats for that to simply be avoided. Yet this glare had to top all glares.

"This is all your fault."

"No. No way. Don't you try and put this one on me, Archer. We agreed we - "

"No, you agreed we should - "

"Okay, so maybe I did, but still, this is not that big of a deal. We can work through it, right?"

"Uh, no, obviously we can't, if we can't even pick out damn socks, Hadley."

We were starting to get looks from all of the expectant mothers with their men walking round the stupid baby store whose name I couldn't even pronounce - Baby Whatsit? - but the clerks looked as if they could hardly care less. They'd probably seen this a thousand times over, if pregnancy hormones were anything but predictable.

In retrospect, though, this whole thing could've been avoided if, at her last checkup, Hadley had just agreed to let the ultrasound tech tell us the damn sex of the baby after weeks of waiting. She was adamant that it was a girl and that there was no need to have it confirmed.

I had aptly disagreed, more under the impression that genetics hadn't entirely decided on the baby being a girl before it'd even happened.

But I digress.

"They're just socks!" Hadley picked up a pair of white socks with pink stripes on them and gave them a shake. "What's so bad about these ones?"

"Nothing is wrong with the stupid socks, Hadley, but my point is, what if the baby is a boy?" I told her for what felt like the thousandth time. "I don't think our son will thank us in the long run if he's wearing pink socks for the first year of his life."

"But it's not going to be a boy. That's my point."

"And how do you know that?"

"I just do. Can't you just accept that?"

"Well...no."

"Excuse me, is there anything I can help you with?"

A blonde, middle-aged clerk had wandered over to us in the girls' newborn section and was giving us a sympathetic, almost embarrassed look.

Hadley shot me a disgusted look before saying, "Sorry about that. Do you have a gender neutral section?"

The clerk smiled and said, "Of course we do. This way."

I stared at Hadley in astonishment. Gender neutral section? We could've saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble if we'd just gone straight to the gender neutral section as soon as we walked in.

"Why are you looking at me like that, Archer?" Hadley said in confusion. "I don't - oh."

Then she got it.

"Ah. Right. My bad." She tapped a finger to her forehead. "Scatterbrained lately."

"Scatterbrained," I repeated. "Uh huh."

Scatterbrained probably wasn't the right word for it, not since the time she had put her purse in the freezer.

The clerk happily lead us over to the aisle containing a whole slew of gender neutral baby things, everything from shoes, jumpers, bottles, rattles, stuffed animals, and - crap, did I have to elaborate on all of the things on the shelves?

At least with all of the things here we'd actually be able to purchase things that the baby needed - like clothes, for instance. I would be a little concerned for our kid's welfare if they left the hospital without clothes, God forbid.

Whatever wavelength of animosity that had been between us seemed to have disappeared as soon as Hadley and I were able to agree on a couple of pairs of socks.

"It's hard to believe people are ever this tiny, you know?" I examined a pair of yellow ribbon socks before tossing them into the shopping cart. "It's...kinda frightening."

"Yeah." Hadley snorted out a laugh, dropping a pack of teething rings into the shopping cart. "Try carrying that tiny thing inside you for nine months."

I thought about that for a moment, and then my face screwed up into a pained expression.

"No, thanks. I think I'll pass."

"Yeah, I thought you might say that."

This was...different. Different in a good way, I guessed, but still different. I couldn't remember the last time Hadley and I had ever gone shopping together, and now we were shopping for baby things. Even weirder.

It was nice, though, if I thought about it.

We were facing reality with this head-on (like we had any other option) and so far...well, it wasn't so bad. Kind of. I was not a fashion expert by any means, but I would make sure no child of mine ever wore some of the clothing in this store women were all but gushing over.

The shopping was inevitable, anyways. We'd gotten next to nothing for the baby, and with the weeks winding down, we needed to get our heads in the game. If they ever had been in the first place, that is.

So over the next two hours and twenty-three minutes, we threw every baby item into the cart that we could think of that we might possibly need. Boxes of diapers, wipes, bottles and pacifiers, soaps and shampoos, baby powder, pants, shirts, jackets, onesies, and just about the majority of the store's gender neutral section.

We were both satisfied that the shopping - even if we had been at odds about the gender of the baby - had gone so well and so quickly, but my wallet was aching at the thought of paying for all of this stuff. Even if it was necessary for our kid.

I checked the price tag on one of the packets of swaddling blankets Hadley had chucked into the cart and let out a whistle.

Yup. My wallet was definitely groaning now. A photographer's paycheck was never set in stone, and grief counselors weren't raking in the big ones, either.

Hadley gave me a confused look. "What?"

"This is...well, kind of expensive," I said, gesturing to the overflowing cart.

She rolled her eyes and gave a small sigh. "Babies are expensive, Archer."

"Yeah, I know that, thanks. But don't you think we could have...I don't know, picked a more economical place?"

Honestly. The pregnant women meandering through the store looked as if they had never even stepped foot in a Walmart before.

How we were supposed to afford all of this?

"Um...well..." Hadley's cheeks turned pink as she fiddled with the sleeve of her coat, not looking me in the eye. "About that..."

Suspicion ran through me at the guilty expression that crossed her face.

What was she on about?

"Hadley?" I said. "What aren't you telling me?"

And she definitely wasn't telling me something. She was such a bad liar.

I was higher up on the list of things kept secret compared to Hadley, but I thought we were past the "keeping secrets" phase. Not with everything going on, at least.

"Okay." She took a deep breath, finally looking at me. "D'you...do you remember me telling you about the trust fund my parents set up for me?"

"Trust fund?"

She had mentioned a trust fund, maybe once, but it had been years ago, something said in passing when I'd asked her what she would do if her counseling plans fell through. I'd honestly thought she had been joking when she'd told me that, though.

Hadley's parents just hadn't seemed like the type of parents that would set up a trust fund for their kid. They seemed more like the parents who would pay copious amounts of money to put their kid through college and then sever all ties, as depressing as that sounded.

Hadley nodded, her cheeks flooding with more color. She was the color of a brick right now.

"Trust fund. Right. Well, last year, when I turned twenty-five?"

I felt my stomach starting to twist with unease. I really did not like where this conversation was going.

"Yes?" I said. "You turned twenty-five last year. What of it?"

She cleared her throat several times, her head turned away from me. I heard her sniffle once or twice, and I silently prayed that she was not crying.

"Don't be mad, okay? But...well, when I turned twenty-five my trust fund was opened. And I just received my first yearly payment, one of the many I'll be getting for the next twenty years."

Obviously I wasn't understanding something here.

"Just how much money are we talking here?" I said slowly. "Why are you looking so guilty?"

"Well..." Hadley sucked in a breath, gnawing on her lip. "My payment was about...um..."

I crossed my arms and waited expectantly for an answer. "Your payment was...?"

"$450,000."

She mumbled that last bit so quietly at first I'd thought I had heard her incorrectly, but the expression on her face said otherwise. She wasn't that good of an actor, and why would she make up something like this?

Her parents had more money than God. Of course her trust fund would be insanely large.

I got the fact that people were rich. It wasn't something that I was necessarily comfortable with, but something I could understand.

Why hadn't Hadley ever brought it up before? It was just money. They were far more pressing matters than money. She knew that just as well as I did.

"$450,000? You're getting $450,000 every year until you're forty-five?" I said aloud, just for confirmation.

Hadley nodded, her face slipping into an even more pained expression.

I quickly did the math in my head.

"That's...oh my God." I sucked in a sharp breath. "Jesus, Hadley, that's nine million dollars."

My wife was a millionaire and I'd had absolutely no idea.

"Keep your voice down!" Hadley hissed, flapping a hand at me, shooting furtive glances at the people around us. "It's a lot of money, I know, but it isn't like I can just give it back. I'm not going to stop working because of it, if that's what you're worried about, and I just figured, now that we're expecting a baby, she - or he - will be set financially for the rest of their life, and - "

She went on and on, babbling about how she promised the money wouldn't be used for frivolous reasons and how I had no reason to worry about anything.

I let her ramble on because I figured it was good for her to get everything out - despite the fact that we were getting looks again - but after about two minutes I figured it was time to shut her up. There were only so many things you could discuss while in public, after all. Nobody needed to get any ideas.

So I did what worked best to get her to be quiet.

I kissed her.

"Look, I'm not mad, so stop worrying," I said, leaning away, cupping her face in my hands. "Actually, I'm a little pissed that you didn't tell me, but we really should be having this discussion somewhere else and not in the check-out line at some store, okay?"

Hadley nodded, lips turned down in a frown, her hands gripping my forearms. I wanted to erase the worry lines etched across her face.

"That went a little better than I thought it would," she admitted. "I thought you would freak out and start shouting in Italian."

"That's still an option, if you want," I said.

"Uh, no. I think I'll pass."

"I agree."

The clerk at the cash register had just finished ringing up and bagging the mountain of clothes some couple in front of us had bought, so I quickly went about loading our items onto the counter.

I'd been right. The total was insane.

Hadley had no problem paying for everything, since she was a millionaire and everything.

Yeah, that was definitely something that would take a huge amount of time to get used to. And it was also probably something that we would never, ever mention to anyone else. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to consider this unexpected windfall a blessing or something to be considered a hindrance. Either way, I wasn't all that fond of it. Money caused more problems than it was worth.

Thankfully Mom had no problem lending the SUV to us for the day, so I was able to load up all of our purchases with room to spare in the trunk.

"Mission accomplished," Hadley said as I navigated the SUV through the early afternoon traffic. "I think the baby ought to be set."

"Which is good," I agreed, "but I never want to set foot in another baby store like that for a long time."

Hadley giggled, shooting me a bemused look. "Why?"

I shrugged, keeping my attention fixed on the road. "It's a man thing."

"Uh-huh. Right."

We arrived at the apartment complex about a half hour later, right about when a light drizzle began to fall.

I parked the SUV in the parking garage and sent Hadley on up to the apartment while I hefted as many bags as I could into my arms. It took another trip to get everything out of the SUV and by then I was ready for a nap.

"You know," Hadley began as I set the last of the bags down into the spare bedroom. "We could always think about...I don't know, look at maybe getting a house?"

I stared at her in complete shock.

A house? A house?

"Or not," she said quickly, noticing the look on my face. "I just figured it might be a good idea, you know...with the baby coming. More space?"

"No, no...that's a good idea," I said slowly, quickly mulling over the idea in my mind. "A house."

She grinned slightly, still apprehensive about my reaction. "Really?"

"Really," I said with a laugh, reaching out to chuck her under the chin. "You're right. This apartment is too small for the two of us and a baby. It doesn't hurt to look."

Hadley let out a cute, happy laugh, clapping her hands together and then pulled me down to her level to kiss me.

"Oh my God, this is exciting!" she squealed when she pulled away. "A new house on top of a baby? This is a new start for all of us."

I was about to agree with her, share my thoughts, but the words died in my mouth before I could.

She was right, I knew she was, about this being a new start for us - a new start that was probably long overdue - but still...hanging there at the back of my mind like an incessant itch, was Havoc.

Somewhere deep down I knew that I had faced my fears. Things I never would have dreamed about bringing up or approaching. And I had gotten over them.

...At least I thought I had.

I felt no sense of satisfaction or relief, like I thought I should have after conquering everything I did.

Shouldn't Death have shown up to give us the all-clear, that everything was okay again?

I was more than ecstatic that Havoc hadn't shown his face in months. I'd been keeping close tabs on Lauren as often as I could - checking her Facebook, texting, calling zia Karin - without rousing her suspicion, and as far as I knew, she was all right.

But what was going to happen now? Was every trace of Havoc just going to disappear with the wind and that was it? No mention of these past few months would ever be spoken about again?

Somehow, that just...didn't seem right to me. Something was still off balance. I couldn't put my finger on it. If I didn't even know what the hell it was, then how could I go about fixing it?

"Archer." I was snapped out of my reveries by Hadley gripping my face in her hands, forcing me to look her straight in the eye. "One day. That's all I'm asking for. Just one day where we don't have to think about that, okay?"

Guilt washed over me again, per usual of the late.

The least Hadley deserved was this. Hell, she deserved more than just this. But at the moment? This might be all I could offer her.

"Sorry," I mumbled, nuzzling against her hand. New start, officially beginning now. "We should probably get to work putting all of this shit away."

"Shit?" Hadley let out a bark of laughter. "This shit is for our child."

"I meant shit as a term of...affection."

"You're such a bullshit liar, Archer."

"When it comes to you, maybe."

~

My phone was ringing loudly, playing some random tune by The GooGoo Dolls. I shot an anxious look towards it on the coffee table, wondering if it was one of my clients calling to tell me they needed to cancel a session or extra prints.

Hadley narrowed her eyes at me, looking up from the book of names in her lap. "Don't you dare answer that."

"But what if - "

"No buts!" She clutched at my wrist before I could snatch at my phone. "You're not answering any phone call until we pick out a damn name."

"Can't we just - "

"No, we can't."

I wanted to throw my head back and groan loudly, curse at the ceiling - picking out a name was way more complicated than people made it out to be - but I was a little afraid that Hadley would smack me if I did.

I had no idea she was this determined to pick out a name.

I cared about a name just as much as she did, but...I wasn't quite as hysterical about it as she seemed to be.

"Fine, fine." I went back to my own book of names, biting at the inside of my cheek to keep from sighing. "What about...Jacob?"

"No," she said immediately. "Not after Twilight."

Okay, I had to agree with that one.

"Charles?"

"No. This isn't the Regency era."

"Andrew?"

"No."

"Oh, come on - what's wrong with Andrew? That's a nice name."

Her lip stuck out in a determined pout. "I had geometry with a guy named Andrew."

"And?" I hinted when she didn't say anything.

"He was a dick."

I rolled my eyes. "You're really not making this easy, you know."

"Well, excuse me for wanting our kid to have the best possible name and - "

Her phone started ringing loudly, vibrating on the coffee table beside mine.

She glared down at the phone, like all of the world's problems were caused by it.

"Don't answer it," I warned. "You're not allowed to until we pick out a damn name."

"Fine," she snapped, then went back to flipping through the pages. "What about - "

My phone started ringing again, cutting her off, and I snatched it before she could start objecting again.

"Hello?"

"Finally, you answer your damn phone!"

"Mia?" Why the hell was Mia calling me? Wasn't she supposed to be in school? "What's up? Is anything wrong?"

"Never mind that right now," Mia said in a fast, hushed voice. "You and Hadley need to get your asses over to the coffee house right now."

"Wait - you're in the city? Why?"

"Stop asking questions! Just get over here, all right? And bring your camera, too."

And with that, she hung up.

"What was that about?" Hadley said, frowning at me. "Who was it?"

"Mia," I said, dropping my phone back onto the coffee table. "She told me we need to go to the coffee house right now, and that I need to bring my camera."

We both thought about that for a moment.

This wasn't making any sense. Mia was going to school in Albany and this wasn't a holiday weekend, so why was she in the city?

"Well, since we're obviously not going to be coming up with a name right now," Hadley said before chucking the baby name book across the living room. "Let's go."

"Yeah?"

"What the hell."

It took us about fifteen minutes to gather up our things and get out of the apartment, then head down the stairs to the parking garage to the SUV.

I wondered what could possibly be going on at the coffee house that Mia was there for, and that we were required to be at.

Nothing came to mind during the half hour car ride. My brain must have been fried from all that damn baby shopping.