Maybe Baby (21 page)

Then I saw the words, small, perfectly carved in cu
rsive script:
Uanset hvad framtiden byder os, vil jeg altid være gled for at du åbnede døren til dit liv og lod mig elske dig
.

My breath caught in my throat as I imagined Mads saying these words to me. Tears were already welling in my eyes as I asked him,
"What does it say?" 

"
You know." He kissed my neck softly. "Your Danish is better now."

"
Tell me." I wanted to hear him say it to erase any doubt clouding me.

Behind me, he smiled. I could hear it, feel it, the way his body relaxed against mine. The way his lips brushed my skin. His breath was hot on my neck as he said,
"No matter what the future has in store for us, I will always be glad that you opened the door to your life and let me love you."

A tiny shiver went through me. He loved me. Neither of us had come out and said these words yet, but they trembled in the air between us, waiting to be acknow
ledged and held dear. I turned to face him and smiled up at him. "I'm glad, too," I said as I laced my arms around him. "
Jeg elsker også dig
."

"
The next time you get scared, think about me. Think about this desk, and what it says to you every day."

I nodded and whispered
, "Okay."

We held onto each other for a long time, swaying t
ogether to music playing in the other room. I relaxed in his arms and enjoyed the comfort of being loved, and knowing I loved him too.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Consequences

I
didn't want to face up to reality. Not yet. There was something so comforting in still being stuck between dreams and reality. But then Mads climbed back into bed with me, fully clothed. He smelled fresh and clean like soap.

"
I picked up breakfast. Come. I'm hungry," he said in between kisses.

"
Couldn't we stay in bed all day?"

"
After we eat, yeah. I'm starving."

"
What have you told Trine and Adam about me?" I asked, keeping my face buried into his chest. "Why does she think I am just some floozy who's just with you to have a baby?"

"
I haven't told her anything like that about you, Laney." He kissed me softly. "The only thing I ever said to her or Adam was that we met at the mingle, and we hit it off. Anything she said was just an inference on her part."

"
She was awful, Mads," I murmured. "I know I have to meet her again. Am I the first person you've dated who came to the clinic?"

He paused long enough for it to become awkward.
"I haven't really dated anyone from the clinic, no."

"
It sounds like there is a 'but' coming."

"
A few weeks before we met," he said, finally. "I'd just met one of the women from the clinic for coffee. She'd looked me up in the phonebook. I thought she was nice. She had one of those faces everyone says is honest and open. We had coffee, and then she told me she and her husband couldn't afford the sperm donation fee. She was desperate. They'd used all their savings on three other IVF attempts and she said I was her last chance. She wanted me to just... you know, sleep with her, and not tell anyone we'd done it."

"
Did you do it?"

He nodded.
"I wanted to help them. The clinic had said they could help by giving them a payment plan, but then they said they weren't eligible for it. Ida said Sabina and her husband made too much money but... if you see how they live, you know they couldn't afford the clinic."

"
That was... weird." I waited for his confession to explode inside me. I should have been upset he'd slept with another woman, but all I could think of was how anxious and desperate she must have been to search him out and beg him to do this. "Did... did you do it the same day? Or after me?"

"
I went with her to her apartment. I thought it was weird, thought maybe a hotel would have been better. The first two times I was with her, we met at hotels. But she said she wanted to do it at home so it wouldn't feel sordid."

"
How many times did you do it?"

He glanced away. His skin flushed red.
"I slept with her three times. And then she texted me last week and said it worked, she was pregnant."

Three times? He'd fucked another woman three times. I kept telling myself it didn't matter. He'd prob
ably slept with a lot of other women before we met. She was before me. She didn't matter. But... it was a kink. I didn't want to think about how she'd touched him. Or if he'd liked fucking her.

"
Were you still fucking her when we...?"

"
No, it was done by then. That time in the café... it was the last time."

"
It's okay, Mads." I kissed a tiny trail from his shoulder to his chin. "I'm glad you did it. She needed your help. Just... don't..."

"I won't do it again," he confirmed as he pulled me closer.
"I'm all yours now."

"
She must have really wanted to have a baby."

"
So do you, don't you?"

"
Maybe not right now. But I do, before it's too late." I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to picture my family in my head. I didn't have anyone.

"
In the beginning, I just did it to pay bills. I didn't really think about how I was helping people. It took a couple of months before reality set in."

We lay there for a while, holding one another. Mads stroked my hair.

"Are you going to go inactive?"

"
Do you want me to?"

I nodded. "
I'm selfish, aren't I?"

"
Then we're both selfish. I already told Ida I don’t want to do it anymore."

"
Good, I'm glad." 

"
I'm sorry about Trine." He watched me unbutton his flannel shirt. "Adam liked you, though. He thought you were too good-looking for me. He figured you'd break my heart."

I paused.
"Why does everyone think I'm going to break your heart? Maybe you'll break mine."

"
I wouldn't do that." Mads cupped my face in his hands and then kissed me gently. I wanted to believe that we could never hurt one another, but I had too much experience in the game of love.

"
Sooner or later, everyone's heart gets broken." In that instant, all the men I'd dated flashed through my mind. The London City Boys, the New York hipster who wanted to be the next Scorsese.  A few of them didn't have hearts to break. One told me I didn't have a heart. It was one of the London City Boys.

His name was Rufus. We dated for seven months when I was living in London. The longest amount of time I'd spent with anyone at that point in my life. I was twenty-five, and the thought of being one of those girls who was counting the dates until a proposal came my way was not for me. Rufus was one of those beautiful London boys who wore suits for his day job as a risk an
alyst, and spent his weekends playing rugby. 

From the first time we met, he was clear he wanted to find a woman to settle down with. For a while, I let m
yself think that woman was going to be me. And when he took me away that weekend and we arrived at the most picturesque village in Kent, I was certain he was going to take things too far. I liked fucking with him. I didn't want to play happy families with him. Every time I tried to imagine us moving in together, or taking our relationship beyond simply fucking, I knew we wouldn't be happy. But then he didn't propose. He took me to that beautiful place to tell me he'd met someone else.

"
I want to love you, Lanes," he said as he delivered the final part of his it's-not-me-it's-you speech. "I want to be that guy who makes you happy, but I can't. And... let's face it, I don't think you saw this going any other way."
              And he was right.

But it didn't stop me from feeling like he'd ripped me apart. And when I returned to London, I let a layer of ice
crust my heart. I wasn't going to fall in love. I didn't even realize it had happened, that I'd fallen for him, until he said he didn't want me.

Later, when Mads fell asleep, I crept out of bed and wandered into his living room. There was only one picture of his ex-wife around, and it was a framed picture of the two of them standing on the steps outside Stockholm's Rådhuset. A ten-years-younger Mads squinted against the sun. One of his arms was looped around his then-wife's slender waist. Her face was turned away from the camera, and the wind had caught her long blonde hair. Neither of them looked dressed for a wedding. She was wearing tight white jeans, a lace T-shirt and ankle boots. Mads was wearing faded jeans, a white shirt, and white Converses. His hair was shorter and his face much thinner.

I wondered what he was thinking when his friends snapped this shot. Was he thinking he and Karin had a love that would last forever? Was he stunned that they'd actually gone through it? Niklas always said men didn't think that way. Women were the ones who believed in that sort of fairytale. Men asked women to marry them because they were good company, or because they liked fucking them and didn't want anyone else to have a chance. I hoped there was more to it than that. And I hoped someone would look at me and think, Now there's a woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.

But so far, none of the men I'd ever been involved with had proposed, and I'd begun thinking no one ever would. Maybe I was impossible to love. It's what my father used to say about me. Whenever he was furious with me or on the outs with my mother, he'd turn on me and berate me the same way he went after my mom. He'd tell me I was his biggest disappointment, he'd tell me I wasn't worth the effort anyone put in me. And then, once he'd ripped at every part of my self-esteem, he'd deal the final blow and say, "One day, you're going to look around and realize no one loves you, and no one ever will. You're too cold inside to be loved."

And I was always afraid this was true. Maybe it was. Maybe it was why Niklas never wanted me enough to marry me. Maybe Mads would never see me as someone who was worth holding on to. I shook my head and closed my eyes, hoping the darkness would wash away my doubts. I needed to stay focused on now. My dad was dead to me.  When he left my mother, he cut off all co
ntact with me. Whatever he thought about me didn't matter anymore. I didn't have to be the type of woman he said I'd become.

Mads was still living in Stockholm when I moved there to work for Jensen, Ogilvy and
Fogh. He left two years later, once his divorce was final. And as I sat there on his sofa, trying to read every detail of his one and only wedding picture, I wondered what would have been if we'd met one another that night in the Hilton Slussen. That night when I met Niklas seemed so long ago. I tried envisioning Mads in that bar, striding toward me, approaching me the same way Niklas had done. Would he have seen something, anything, special in me? Or would he have looked at me and seen a woman desperate to be noticed, even as she pretended she wasn't interested?

"
Elskede
." Mads stood naked in the doorway. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Don't sit there alone. Come back to bed."

I nodded. It was late. In a few hours, I'd need to be ready for another day at the office. It was too late to put his wedding photograph back in the bookcase. I left it on the trunk he used as a coffee table and went over to him. He folded me in his arms and held me tightly. The strong rhythm of his heartbeat steadied me.

"Are you all right?" he asked in a whisper.

I nodded again.
"I think so."

"
I'm not going anywhere, Laney," he said softly. "I'm in this with you for the long run."

It was exactly what I needed to hear.

As news of my defection from
Niklas's life spread, the number of "concerned" emails and telephone calls increased. I ignored most of them or sent text messages promising to call once things calmed down. Most of the calls were from our mutual friends. They were probably only interested in getting the inside story so they could report back to Karolina. The only call that gave me pause was Jesper's. I hadn't expected him to call. I was in a brainstorming meeting with my art director when the call came. I excused myself and took the call in one of the private conversation rooms.

"Is everything okay?" I asked him. "Is your father okay?"

"He just works. He doesn't talk to me, he just works." Jesper said in a strange voice. "Why did you leave? Was it because we had that stupid party? I didn't want to have it. It was Siri's idea."

"It wasn't that,
Jeppe."

"I told her it was a stupid idea, but she said it was your rule that we couldn't have parties when you guys weren't home, not Dad's."

"Actually, it was your father's rule, not mine," I said. "But everything that happened between your dad and me... it wasn't all about you and Siri."

"Siri said you were playing Dad for a fool."

"Siri says a lot of things."

"Laney, are you breaking up for good with Dad? He's really unhappy without you. And I miss you, too. I was going to ask you to come to Manchester. I thought you'd like the football match. I just didn't say anything to Dad, because he said we needed some father-son time."

He sounded so despondent. I wasn't used to my stepson—l had to admit it, he was my stepson no matter what, and of my two stepchildren, he was the one I'd always liked—being so forthcoming. 

"
I'm sorry about all this, Jeppe," I finally said. "I don't know if your father and I are ever going to be friends again. I wasn't very good to him toward the end." There was no point in lying to Jesper. He was fifteen; he wasn't a child who needed to be protected from the truth.

"He told my mom that you had a new boyfriend a
lready."

"I do. I met someone this summer, right after your f
ather and I came back from the US. And... I need some time away from your dad to see if this is what I want."

"Siri's trying to convince Dad you brought your new... boyfriend... into the apartment."

"That never happened, Jesper. I may not have been very nice to your dad at the end, but I never brought Mads to the apartment. I kept everything outside of our home."

"I think my dad still loves you, Laney,"
Jeppe told me. "Heck, I love you, too. I know I never told you before. But you're a pretty cool stepmom."