It Must Be Love - Jacob and Connie

Chapter Thirty Six

There are no excuses for my inactivity... I'm so sorry, and hope you're still with me on this!

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Connie woke up, and turned her alarm off quietly. She'd only had it on a low volume - enough to wake her, but hopefully not enough to disturb Jacob. It was 3am, as she'd hoped, and she climbed out of bed quietly and headed to the bathroom. As she adjusted to the light, she could feel her inner demons taunting her for being so stupid and for falling in love with a man like Jacob. She knew that it would only cause trouble, falling in love with a colleague, and now the trouble was beginning to start. She just needed some time alone to work everything out in her head before she told Jacob. She had no intention of keeping him in the dark, certainly not when it was about something as important as this, but she needed to make sense of it all herself before she could expect anyone else to understand. After staring at her nervous reflection in the mirror for a short while, she went to the bathroom bin in the far corner, and peered anxiously behind it, expecting to find what she needed to face up to. What? It had gone. She looked on in complete disbelief, her eyes darting frantically around the room to ensure she hadn't misplaced it, and she felt her heart rate increase. She needed to find it. She paced up and down in the bathroom for a good few minutes, before she heard a faint knocking on the door.

"You okay sweet-cheeks? I heard you get up."

"Fine, just came to the loo," she stuttered, regaining a little bit of her composure.

"You've been in here ten minutes, baby." He stepped into the bathroom, and it was then that he noticed that she looked pale. Not sickly pale, but it was as if she'd seen a ghost.

"I told you I was okay, what don't you understand about that?" She snapped at him, and as soon as she saw the shocked expression on his face, she felt guilty. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "You didn't deserve that."

"Oh, Connie. We need to talk." He reached out to her sympathetically, and she took his hand, walking with him to the bed, where they sat on the edge together. "I just want to start by saying I love you."

"If you knew what I knew, I believe you'd change your mind about that." She looked down to the floor, as she couldn't bear to see the look of disappointment on his face. "Jacob, I've loved this time with you. You're a wonderful man, you really are. We haven't been together that long-"

"Woah, woah, Mrs B, what's with all the past tense? You're talking like this is the end."

"I'll let you work that out," she answered. He opened his mouth to reply, but she put her finger to his lips to silence him. She wanted to speak - she needed to say it, before she changed her mind about telling him. She was acting as if she held the world's greatest secret on her shoulders, or as if the words to bring down a nation were on the tip of her tongue, but in reality, it was a conversation that couples like them had al the time. "Jacob, I think I might be pregnant." They sat looking at each other, unable to read one another's blank expressions. He let go of her with one hand and opened the bedside cabinet. He pulled out two pregnancy tests and showed them to her.

"I bought one a few days before I found yours in the bathroom. I didn't want to push you to tell me, so I figured I'd just stand back and let you tell me when you were ready. I realised that by taking it, I was essentially pushing you, so I was going to return it last night, but I was a little preoccupied. I suppose I just wanted to know the same time as you - I didn't want you to go through something this large on your own because you felt as though you couldn't tell me. Please, just forgive me."

"Forgive you?" She asked, slightly humoured. "There's nothing to forgive!" He placed his arm around her, and they sat in silence for a while, staring at the two boxes. "How did you know?" She asked eventually.