You Could Have Stayed

Chapter 5

Three full weeks and her husband still hasn't shown up. Nobody around town had seen him or heard from him and her own phone was silent, no special ringtone she had set for him, he still don't understand texting so he only called.
It was getting difficult to hide it from people now. She was coming up with more bizarre excuses as to where he was. Nobody was believing her anymore but pretended they were, pretended that they weren't mad at Hook, pretended that there was still hope. It was for her sake, she knew that.
  Emma herself was starting to give up hope. She had thought Killian was her true love, the one person who would never abandon her and always stay with her. Clearly he didn't see it that way. She had gotten so mad one day that she ripped off her wedding ring and threw it across the room, a few minutes later she found it again and put it on the same chain as the ring that belonged to Liam which Killian had given her. If he wasn't acting like her husband then she didn't need to act like his wife.
   She finally decided to take the initiative and contact him herself, even if he didn't reply that meant she was letting him know he could come back. She would make him work for it though, he had another 4 months to grovel and apologize and try to make it up to her before she would even consider letting him see the birth of his children.
  She got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Opening up her phone's camera, she lifted up her pajama shirt and turned to the side. Her baby bump seemed to be growing steadily every day and now it couldn't be mistaken for anything else, she was having twins so it was already quite large. She would send him updates on the babies from her own body and the ultrasound photos. Even if he never came back to her she wouldn't keep him completely cut off.
   She snapped a few photos, with and without flash before going back into the bedroom to grab the most recent ultrasound photos from earlier in the week. She put those on the counter next to the sink and took more pictures. She started a new text conversation with him, adding one picture of her and three of the babies, one of each baby and one together. They were bigger than they were when he had seen them.
  She also added a little message. 20 weeks along and everything is going well. It's a boy and a girl, if you care. She quickly tapped the send button before she could change her mind. The little swish noise confirmed that they were sent.
   Emma sighed and went into the nursery. Henry was out with Violet so she had the house to herself. The nursery was almost completed, the only essentials missing were the cribs but Geppetto and August assured her that they would be done by the end of the week. She had enough diapers and clothing to last a lifetime and she hadn't even had a baby shower yet.
  You typically didn't have a baby shower for your second pregnancy but Ruby, Snow, Ashley, Granny and basically every other woman in town insisted that she have one since she didn't with Henry. Regina even agreed to help organize it and had already given her some of Henry's things she had kept as keepsakes.
Emma was excited. She still had a ways to go but she felt ready to take care of these babies sans their father. Random people who she barely knew would come up to her on the street and rant about how terrible Killian was and that he should never have abandoned her. The dwarves had taken it upon themselves to "find and skin the bastard." They hadn't had any success yet, Killian was very good at hiding from those who wanted to find him from his pirating days.
   Emma sat down in the rocking chair in between the spaces saved for the cribs. She placed both hands on her stomach and started to sing. Most people didn't know that she was a good singer, it was something that she didn't do very often but it would always calm the babies down if they were moving a lot, which they did. She smiled as she thought they just liked the sound of her voice in general, she didn't have to be singing. They would like Killian's voice too, so smooth and soothing with that accent.
  She checked her phone and saw that the texts she had sent were read nearly an hour after she had sent them. She didn't even realize she had been in here that long.
  Emma sighed shakily and continued to sing as she started to cry.
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Killian saw his phone light up the second he got the text. He barely glanced at it at first, expecting it to be another surprising explicit text from David but when he saw who it was from he straightened up and hit his head on the side table.
   He was staying with Smee, scaring him into secrecy so nobody knew. But staying with the rat of a man meant that he had to sleep on the small, hard couch in his living room. His legs hung over the end when he slept and his head would always hit the side table if he didn't pay attention.
  She had finally contacted him. He was being a coward and that was probably what she told him in her message. He debated whether to read it or not for a good 45 minutes, draining a bottle of rum in the process. He was entirely drunk when he finally opened up the text. He just stared at it for a while, not comprehending.
There were pictures. One of his beautiful Swan, well probably not his anymore, he could clearly see the curve of her stomach where their children were growing. He couldn't see her face though, he didn't have to be a 21st century man to see that she deliberately cropped it out. He was ashamed to admit to himself that the first emotion he felt was longing. Emma was beautiful and the changes to her body were only making her more so; he may have left her but he would never find a woman more beautiful.
  The next images were from that strange machine, the ultrasound. They were of the actual babes. Different from the last time he saw them, bigger and more defined.
  The last part of the text is what got to him most. 20 weeks along and everything is going well. It's a boy and a girl, if you care. He read it over and over again until his eyes started to dry out.