It's Time

Operation Spencer

Spencer's POV

Olivia grabs one of my t-shirts out of my drawer and heads toward our bed, drawing back the covers. She slowly slips out of the pajamas she threw on when we thought we would be making a distraction breakfast and swaps them out for my shirt.

"OLIVIA," I whisper yell. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Well, my sleep was prematurely interrupted. I figure I'll get in a few more hours of peace and try this day again." She climbs into bed, completely unbothered by the chaos brewing outside of our door.

"Liv, we can't just hide out in here." I sigh.

"Says who?" She shrugs as she rolls over to turn off the lamp.

"What about our son? He's on the other side of that door." I try to pull at her parental heartstrings.

"He has to grow up at some point, Spence! No one told him to choose last night to finally stop sneaking in our room in the middle of the night. He could be safe in here with us had he made better decisions." She pulls the blanket up over her head, effectively shutting me out.

I'm not sure if this is some kind of coping mechanism, but I've had enough sessions of my own to know this can't be therapist-approved. I walk over toward her side of the bed, prepared to make Liv face our problems head-on, but am distracted by my phone ringing. I look down, and of course, it's my mom. Why wouldn't it be?

Grabbing the phone, I quickly hit the side button to silence the call and then head to the bathroom to call her back.

"Hey, ma!" I greet her with a smile as her face appears on my screen.

"I see the cat is out of the bag. That didn't take long." She laughs a little.

"The news is out, and it is a war zone in here. That is exactly why I knew better than to keep this from you." I rest my free palm on my head in frustration.

Okay, I probably should've told Liv I told my moms, but I knew, no matter how much she kept insisting otherwise, that keeping the news from our parents only had one ending, and it wasn't a good one. As soon as we picked the Bakers up and our charade began, I knew that if I wanted to live to see the birth of my second child, I needed to tell my mom before anyone else got the chance to. I sent her one of the pictures from the cabin with the message 'There's a new James in the house.' I made sure to tell her that she still gets to have all the input she wants when we have the public wedding, and I think that softened the blow a little. Liv and I were already having a field day with the lies; what was one more?

"I told you y'all were playing a dangerous game, Spencer James." She lays on the 'I was right' demeanor.

"Ay, I agreed with you, ma. You ever tried arguing with Liv? I don't know if even you would stand a chance." I shake my head.

"Did you tell her I know?"

"About that. Not exactly. Or, at all." I quickly turn the phone away, not wanting to see my mom's reaction.

"I see you've got this marriage thing all figured out." She doesn't even try to hide her sarcasm.

"I'll go tell her right now. She thinks we're going to hide out in this room all day, but I got some bad news for her. We tried it her way, big fail. Now, I'm in charge."

My mom laughs so hard that her phone shakes, and I replay my words in my head, trying to find the humor.

"Boy, you haven't come anywhere close to being in charge since the moment you met Olivia." She chokes a little on her laughs. "But it's like you said, y'all are knee-deep in playing pretend over there right now, maybe today is your ch—chance." She can barely get the word out before the laughter returns full force.