I Slept With My Enemy, Now He Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Heartbeat

Jude comes to the Portland clinic and hears the baby's heartbeat. The doctor warns the pregnancy is risky. Britt catches them in the parking lot, and a photo of the two arrives from the unknown number.

Neil deleted the text and the number, and his hands would not stop shaking.

Somebody had been close enough to hear him through a pantry door.

Or somebody had followed him to Portland five weeks ago.

He told himself it was a prank.

On Thursday at nine fifty, he walked into the clinic waiting room with his jaw set and his collar up.

Jude was already there.

He had been there so long that the receptionist had given him a coffee.

"You're early," Neil said.

"I'm never late for you."

"You were late every day of tenth grade."

"I was busy," Jude said. "Sit down. You look sick."

"I'm pregnant."

"You look sick and pregnant."

Neil sat down two chairs away.

The doctor called his name at ten sharp.

Jude stood up with him.

The doctor was a tired, kind woman who had treated Neil since he was seventeen, and she looked at Jude once and then at Neil.

"He's the father," Neil said. "He knows. He's staying."

"Then he can sit by the wall," the doctor said, "and keep quiet."

Jude sat by the wall.

Neil lay on the table and looked at the ceiling.

The gel was cold.

The doctor moved the wand across his belly.

"Twelve weeks and four days," she said. "That matches your dates."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Neil, I need to be honest with you," she said. "Your body is not built the way most are. Carrying this to term is possible, and it is risky."

"How risky?"

"You'll need to rest more than you want to. No lifting at the yard, no long hours, no stress. If you start bleeding, you call me, not a friend."

"I can't stop working."

"Then you'll stop when your body stops you, and that will be worse."

Jude was gripping his own knee so hard his knuckles had gone white.

"What do you need from me?" he said to the doctor.

She looked at him over her glasses.

"A man who does what he's told. Come here."

He crossed the room.

She turned the screen toward both of them.

On it there was a small gray curve and a flicker, quick and steady.

"That's the heart," she said.

She pressed a button.

The room filled with a fast, wet drumming sound.

Neil stopped breathing.

He had known for five weeks.

He had not known it would sound like that.

Beside him Jude made a noise in his throat.

He stood with his hand over his mouth, and tears ran down past his fingers.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, hello."

"Jude," Neil said.

"Shut up. I'm busy."

He kept staring at the screen and did not look away once.

Neil turned his face to the wall.

His own eyes were stinging, and he told himself it was the bright light.

Afterward the doctor handed him a printout and a sheet of instructions and said, "Come in every two weeks, and bring him."

In the parking lot, he stopped at his truck.

"You cried," Neil said.

"I told you I would."

"I'm not telling anybody."

"I know."

Jude leaned his shoulder on the truck door, close enough that Neil could smell salt and soap.

"Neil, whatever you decide, I want you to know where I stand."

"Don't."

"I want it."

"You don't want it. You want the idea. You've known for forty minutes."

"I've wanted something with you for twenty years," Jude said. "I just didn't know what to call it."

Neil's mouth went dry.

Across the lot, a car door slammed.

A woman with red-blond hair in a knot, in boots and a Halvorsen Marine jacket, was staring straight at them.

Britt.

Jude's little sister.

She was holding a clipboard and a cup of coffee, and her mouth was open.

Neil did not stop to think.

He shoved Jude hard in the chest.

"I said stay away from me, Halvorsen!"

Jude staggered back one step and understood in half a second.

"Make me, Ashworth!" he shouted.

"You smell like a bilge!"

"You drive like one!"

Britt dropped the coffee.

By the time she reached them, they were both red in the face and breathing hard, nose to nose, and shouting about a bid from three years ago.

"You two are here together," she said. "In Portland. At a medical building."

"He followed me," Neil said.

"He wanted my parking spot," Jude said.

Britt looked from one to the other for a long moment.

"Uh-huh," she said. "Sure."

She got back in her car and drove away without another word.

Neil let out a shaky laugh he did not mean.

"She knows something."

"She knows everything," Jude said. "She'll say nothing until she's ready."

"That's worse."

"That's Britt."

Neil's phone buzzed in his hand.

The same unknown number.

This time it was a photograph.

It showed him and Jude beside the truck, standing too close, with Jude's hand on his arm.

Under it, the message said: *You two look so sweet together. Does the board know yet?*

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