After Rejection, Divorced Luna Becomes a Famous Doctor novel · Chapter 19 of 32

Chapter 19: Upstairs

I didn't answer right away.

I looked at him in the red light from the sign.

His hands were on his knees.

He was waiting, the way he always waited.

"Can I ask you something first?" I said.

"Anything."

"I'm twenty weeks pregnant. With another man's baby." I put my hand on the curve under my sweater. "My body isn't the one I had in March. It isn't going to be for a long time. Are you sure you..."

"Doc."

"Let me finish."

"No. You're asking the wrong question." He leaned his head back against the seat. "You came into my diner at one in the morning, green, in the rain. I looked up from the grill and I thought, that one. I didn't know your name. I didn't know you were pregnant. I just knew."

"You gave me toast."

"I gave you toast because I didn't know what else to do with my hands."

I laughed, and my eyes stung.

"Then ask me the right question," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

Outside, the relief cook dropped a basket of fries in the window and somebody laughed at the counter.

"Two years ago my phone rang at two in the morning," Fergus said. "A trooper. My sister's car on the Schuylkill. I drove up there with flour on my hands. And by noon I had a seven-year-old asleep in my bed and no idea how to braid hair."

"Fergus."

"I learned. The braids. The school forms. The doctors who told me she was making it up." He looked at me. "I'm not scared of the baby. I'm not scared of your ex-husband or his mother. I'm scared of having a family again and losing it. So if I take you upstairs, I'm not doing it halfway. That's the question. If you're not sure, say so, and I'll make you toast and walk you across the street and never be sorry I asked."

The sign buzzed above us.

The second R went out, and came back.

"Is it a bed?" I said.

He stared at me.

Then he laughed, the big laugh, the one you could hear from the street.

"It's a bed."

"Then yes," I said. "I'm sure. All the way, not halfway. Take me upstairs."

The stairs to his apartment went up from a door beside the diner's kitchen.

They were steep and narrow and smelled like coffee.

He went up behind me with one hand at the small of my back, as if I might fall, and I didn't.

His kitchen was small and very clean.

There was a table with three mismatched chairs.

Ciara's drawings covered the whole fridge, held up by magnets from pizza places.

One of them was a woman in a white coat standing in a red booth.

It said DR. LUNA in purple marker.

I stood in front of it and couldn't speak.

Fergus came up behind me and put his arms around me, over the bump, his chin on top of my head.

"She drew that the night you diagnosed her," he said. "She wouldn't let me take it down."

I turned around in his arms.

I put my hands on his chest and pushed him, gently, backward, toward the hall.

"Show me the bed," I said.

He backed down the little hall with me pushing him, and he let me do it.

His bedroom was at the front, over the street.

The red sign came through the blinds in stripes, the second R flickering on and off across the ceiling.

He sat on the edge of the bed when his legs hit it.

I stood between his knees and pulled the tie out of my hair.

It came down over my shoulders, and his breath went out in a rush.

"Jesus, Doc."

"You've seen my hair down before."

"Not in here." He reached up and wound a piece of it around his finger. "Not like this."

I pulled his T-shirt up over his head and dropped it on the floor.

He was broad, and warm, and his heart was going hard under my hand when I put it flat on his chest.

The burn scars ran up both forearms, shiny and ridged, and I ran my fingers over them, the way I'd wanted to for months.

"The fryer," he said.

"I know."

"I don't mind them."

"Good." I leaned down and put my mouth on his shoulder. "Because I don't either."

I undid his belt and his jeans, and he lifted his hips so I could pull them off.

← Chapter 18 · All chapters · Chapter 20 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend