Read Online Finding Center by Katherine Locke - Free Book Online

thoughts. She lowers my hands. “I’m scared, Zed.”
    I
am too
is the wrong response here. So is,
It’s going to be fine
because how the hell do I know that. I only know that I can’t say those things. Even if they’re truthful, I know better than to say it. I pull her close to me again and we wrap our arms around each other. “I know.”
    “Are you happy?” she whispers into my neck.
    “Incredibly, joyfully, absurdly ecstatic,” I whisper back. “Of course I’m happy, Aly.”
    She won’t be able to dance.
Fuck
,
Aly not dancing.
Where are we going to live?
No.
Wait.
Not yet.
    Then Aly’s phone goes off, the soft words of an unfamiliar ringtone filling the space. She sighs and untangles herself, leaning over to the table. She answers the phone, one hand still on my chest. “Hi, Dr. Ham.”
    I lean forward a little at the mention of Aly’s therapist. She listens for a minute and then her eyes flicker up to mine. “He’s home. He got home a few minutes ago. Yes, I told him. We’re okay.”
    Ham must be saying something because Aly looks at her hand on my chest, smiles, and then laughs a little. “I’ll keep that in mind. Okay. Thank you.”
    She hangs up and I pull her back against me. Her hands are warm and small, her hair brushes against my face, and she is everywhere. “I know your brain is working a million miles a minute.”
    She smiles into my neck, her fingers curling behind my ear. “That easy to tell?”
    “But tonight?” I whisper against her forehead. “Forget everything else. Just be happy.”
    Her breath draws her closer to my body, but nothing like the way she lets it out, sinking into every curve and slope of my own body. “I am happy. I
am
.”

Aly
    I lost my first pregnancy. I barely knew I was pregnant when trauma ripped that tiny heartbeat from my body. No one other than Zed had known I was pregnant until the accident, and without him, there was no one with whom I could share my grief. My mother, who endured multiple miscarriages before adopting me, tried, and I know that she understood better than most.
    But I still had to go home to my apartment after the accident and clean up all of the books I’d bought about pregnancy. The first time I opened my laptop after the hospital, the browser popped open to a website where I had just registered to track the baby’s development. For weeks, I’d get an email that said, Congratulations! Your baby is this many weeks old! Today your baby developed these body parts.
    But it was a lie. My baby was dead. And my baby was so small, there was nothing to bury. Nothing to hold. Nothing to name. Someone told me it’d be easier that way, the same way that someone else told me that it must be easier knowing that I hadn’t done anything wrong, that I could just blame the car accident.
    Maybe that’s how blame works but it is certainly not how guilt works. The night after I tell Zed, I wake up with a jerk. For a moment, I think I’m back in Philadelphia, in my tiny apartment in a small bed facing the window. For a moment, my body pounds with the deep muscle aches that lingered for months after the accident. I take another breath and the memory of pain fades.
    I wait for the nausea but my stomach’s steady and sure. I swing somewhere between the past and present.
    I roll over toward Zed and the sound of fingers tapping away on keys. He’s upright in bed, legs stretched out in front of him, laptop on his thighs. The blue of the screen reflects back in his eyes and his mouth’s set in a small frown. His left leg ends just above the knee. We’re here, in the present.
    He glances over and closes the laptop. “Hey. Good morning.”
    “You’re up early,” I say softly, sliding my fingers over the sheets to his bare hip. “What’s up?”
    “Reading. Researching,” he admits, catching my hand and pulling it up to his mouth. He kisses each of my fingertips. “It’s been a while since I read about pregnancy.”
    I stiffen, pulling my hand