Head Down

Chapter 37

A/N: So I'm skipping around a lot in this chappy, sorry, but I feel like it fits the mood and moves things along worlds faster. Anyway, two chapters left and possibly a prologue. Spinoff might be postponed because of my fan fiction (yes, while I don't like 1D my friends wanted me to write it so there!) but will definitely happen.

I have a itsy bitsy feeling y'all are going to like this. ;)

Comment, Fan, Vote! Love you all so much and thanks for the support *many many awkward hugs and kisses*

NATE'S POV

So there we laid for a very long time, wrapped up in each other as much as our thoughts. The room was warm and stuffy as always, and more than once I wondered if Katie was comfortable with this. When I'd opened my mouth to ask everything had felt dry and sticky, and the words never came. Katie didn't speak either, though I caught her humming once or twice. I think we both felt heavy, weighted down by the rapidly altered paradigm of our future.

~

KATIE'S POV

After what feels like all day, Nate speaks.

"What would you have named them?"

His words vibrate from his chest to mine, creating the feeling of an invisible string pulling us together. I sit up into a less awkward position on his lap, giving me a better view of him. His hair is messier than usual, though its more tousled than unkept looking with the black locks all in his eyes. The downward cast line of his lips and the slightly glazed appearance of his green eyes strikes a chord within me, immediately making me feel worse than before. Not that I wasn't already rattled to the core.

Yes, children make me uncomfortable, and obviously they have their qualms with me as well, but now that one of my darkest suspicions is confirmed I can see it all from a different perspective. I never had a childhood, really, and therefore have no clue how to interact with them, but who truly knows what they're doing around kids? Experienced mothers. Not teenagers  

-the only reason Nate and Chris and James and Tom are at ease around Lucy is because they have been desensitized to her. It would've undoubtably been terrifying as well as difficult to have one, a child, but not impossible, and certainly not unpleasant all around as I had thought.

I was cowardly and foolish, and there's nothing I could do to take it back...except for maybe being honest with Nate. Even so, there's no room for me to right my wrongs, really. I'm stuck -and in being so, Nate is as well.

The guilt I feel at this is even more triumphant than my surprise at Nate's reaction -calm and saddened, where I had expected him to be angry with me. I'm used to being inadequate, but this is an all time low. Not being able to do the one thing a woman is biologically supposed to is a whole new level of sucking, and while I know it's essentially John's fault I still feel wholly responsible. After all, I'm the one ho CAN'T, the one who didn't protect herself well enough. What I said before was true, Nate would've been a wonderful father  

-maybe I wouldn't have been the best mom, but surely he would've made up for it- and now I'm denying him that.

"I never thought about it before," I tell him honestly, deciding being truthful here would be best. I might regret even more otherwise.

"Like with college?" he asks, leaving absent, soothing circles in my back with both hands.

"Yeah," I say weakly, looking down -away from his eyes. "Like with college."

"Guess anyway," he replies softly. I can sense his eyes beseeching me, but don't look up to meet him halfway.

To be honest there are a few names that come to mind. 'Caitlyn' and 'Nate' are among them, but that seems unoriginal, somehow. Perhaps someone I've read about, like Susan B. Anthony or Winston Churchill -but what child would want to be named after a girl remember for her death, or what boy a grumpy British prime minister? Maybe just a simple name would do, like Henry...but that sounds like a train conductor. Emma...would be to common. Madeline....or is that a book character?