Hired 2 (Richard Camacho Fanfic)

Part 27 || falling

j u l i e t t e

"Fuck! Fuck YES!"

I shook it over and over, because maybe the timer didn't take long enough but it never changed. I wasn't pregnant. I really wasn't pregnant.

"Yo! What the fuck is going on in there?" If I wasn't as excited I may have realized that hiding something and coming into the bathroom screaming profanities encouragingly may have sounded like a sexual situation. I run to the door, opening it to find a frowning Richard. I hold up the test to him, and his eyes widen at it then he looks back at me.

"It's negative!" I whisper yell, not wanting to wake up the sleeping child a few feet away. "You see the SINGLE pink line?"

Richard shook his head, "what the hell are you doing taking this?"

"I thought maybe, just maybe, a little tiny bit that I could be pregnant, and since I didn't know for sure I didn't think to tell you because what if you would worry about something that isn't even clear?" My explanation did nothing to smooth over the frown on his face, but I was too thrilled to care. "I acted weird because I was psyched the fuck out I mean I never really thought I was pregnant to begin with, but then Lia made that comment today and I just lost it, you know?"

"I don't know, I mean I didn't think you could be..." he motions with his hand over my stomach and then sighs.

"Because I'm not!" I finish, throwing my arms around him happily.

"Why aren't you happy? I mean you don't want kids for a while....right?" I eyed him when he didn't hug me back, why the hell was he acting so damn weird after what he had said earlier?

"I don't know, I didn't think this was all serious. Did you tell Lia that you thought..?"

"Oh, God no! That's why I thought she was like a future teller when she mentioned wanting a sibling." Just thinking about earlier almost sank me back to the anxiety I'd been carrying all day. "Can you believe that? I never stopped to think how crazy it sounds because I thought it would happen."

"Did you lose a baby then?"

"No." I chuckle, waving the thing in front of his face again. "It was never there to begin with! Like poof, never happened —magic reset." That was so corny, but my happiness was too great for me not to laugh.

"Juliette, I'm serious. Were you pregnant? Did you do something?"

"No, duffus. If I was you know I'd never get rid of a human like that." The smile on my face faltered as I let his words sink in. I mean, I never wanted a kid, but I'd never be capable of killing one.

"Why didn't you come to me about it?"

"I tried my best to not put more stress on your shoulders. There's not even anything to worry about, anyways." I repeated, not seeing where any of this doesn't resonate with him. "Just forget everything, this is all in the past, nothing happens and we're going back to normal." I offered a smile as I placed my hands on his arms, trying to comfort him, only to have him back away from my touch.

"This is just one test, what if you are?"

"I'm not."

"How would you know for sure?" He presses, arching a brow at me, his words practically pinning me to the wall from intimidation.

"This test was pricy, okay? No cheap shit would give me accurate $15 results, and confirm what I knew all along to be in my head." If there was a child growing inside of me, I would feel the changes way before getting a test. This was just a small result of paranoia over a slightly late period, which has every right to delay itself with all that's going on in our lives. "Richard, I have no reason to stand here and lie to you." 

"You have kept shit from me in the past, so I'm not sure what to do for something like this. It's a baby we talking about, not some little shit."

"There is no baby," I point out. "If this was serious I'd take it like that, but it was just a small freak out and it's finally over with."

"I can't get over news you just decided to tell me!" He said incredulously. His actions proved to be way different than the happy and relieved ones I thought would come from him in my head.

"It's not like I was never going to tell you, and it wasn't easy to keep this from you." I state, trying my best to not become angry too. "The last thing I wanted besides actually being pregnant was for you to be mad at me."

"And the last thing I wanted was for you to keep something from me, but here we are." Richard scoffs as he turns away from me, grabbing a blanket and tossing it onto the couch a few steps away.

"Are you serious? You're really mad over something you know you didn't want."

"How would you know what I wanted if you never came to me in the first place?"

"You told Lia a long long long long time from now, and that doesn't sound like tonight. So please tell me exactly what you meant." My arms cross before me, and I watch him slap a pillow down on the arm of his couch.

"Because it's Lia, she's a kid. I do want a baby, but I don't want her to keep her hopes up for the next few weeks. I also don't want her to go home to Yocelyn and say she's having a sibling way before we got a chance to talk things over. And it's not that you're not pregnant now that's making me feel mad it's that you kept shit to yourself like always." I never really thought about things this way. I never even thought we should be talking about kids when we have only known each other for months, and only started to see each other under a contract. This isn't the type of things I went into thinking about because it was so out of my plans. My life now was completely a different path.

"You are right, I should have never kept this from you and I'm sorry." I give in, watching as he slips inside the couch to sleep. "This," I held up the test yet again. "Drove me completely into a place I'd never been in, and when you love someone you protect them from what you know to be scary, and for me this was it. This is the furthest I have strayed from my vision of life and I'm not ready to skip so many dreams and jump to this one." I'd always been a girl believer in my own intentions of life, and that's something so true to me no matter how much I love Richard and our life together I am willing to give up on. He knows what is like to be a parent because of Aaliyah and my turn will come later on in my life.

Richard's exhale brings me out of my trance, and I fixate my gaze back on him. Richard opens the blanket, and I welcome the opportunity of being wrapped in the security of his arms. His warm breathing hits the back of my neck for a few minutes before he speaks. "I've waited for you for so long I'm sure I can wait as long as you want for this." He gives the hand that holds the test a squeeze, and I continue to listen. "Just please come to me. Let me be the one you come to all the time. You'll never be alone again."

"No matter what?" I whisper back, not exactly knowing how to feel since I've never had that connection with a man. Weirdly enough, I felt vulnerable, even if it was just baby talk, it felt like I exposed that nurturing part of me that is being out on hold and it was a little scary.

"Yes." Richard nuzzled into my neck, bringing me closer to him so I wasn't close to the edge anymore. And as uncomfortable as it was, I felt like I could stay like this forever.

While the night didn't end in perfect resolution, it felt like we did find a common ground of down sort. And as my eyes eased into a good night, I felt the test slip from my fingers.

And that's when I realized everything was slowly falling into place.