The Soul Mate (Roommates, # 4)

MasonProperty of Nô)(velDr(a)ma.Org.

“How is it I always find myself standing in front of you, asking the same question?” Trent walked into my office unannounced, almost catching his lab coat as he snapped the door shut behind him.

I set down my sandwich on my desk and glanced at him. “And which question is that?”

“What the actual fuck, man?” Trent raised the clipboard in his hand then dropped it down in front of me.

“What?”

I glanced at the chart.

“Mrs. Ramirez. You filed her paperwork all wrong. In fact, everything you’ve touched this morning has been fucked in one way or another and the nurses are blaming your assistant and your assistant is blaming the nurses. Before all hell breaks loose with every employee of the female persuasion, tell me what’s going on?”

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Shit. Okay. I’ll look at the files and fix everything. I’m sorry. I’m just a little distracted today, that’s all.”

“No kidding. You’ve asked Jean seven times if the hematologist reports are back. Do you think someone has leukemia or something?”

“No, not that.” I blew out a sigh, then pushed my sandwich away from me before motioning to the chair in front of my desk.

“You remember the girl I was looking for? Bren? The one who-”

“Snuck out of your apartment like you’d been holding her hostage? Yeah, I remember. You about to tell me you tracked her down and don’t know what to say?”

“Oh, I talked to her. Yesterday when she came in to see if she was pregnant.”

Trent’s jaw slackened. “You’re shitting me?”

“Oh, how I wish that were the case, because it was awkward as fuck, but nope. It definitely happened.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?” Trent demanded, spearing me with that betrayed and pissed off look like I’d just violated the man-code.

“There’s nothing to tell for sure, yet. I didn’t want to be an alarmist,” I reasoned, kicking back and stretching my legs out in front of me.

“When you couldn’t find her after your night together, you deemed it a dire emergency, holing up in your apartment like a pussy-whipped fool. Now she might be pregnant and you decided it wasn’t worth mentioning?” His voice had hopped up an octave as he stared at me, incredulous.

“When you say it out loud it sounds stupid,” I admitted with a half-smile.

“So, you’re waiting to see…” Trent started.

I nodded, finishing his sentence for him. “…to see, when her blood results come back to find out if she’s pregnant.”

“So, what are you going to do?” Trent leaned back in the chair and folded his hands in his lap. “You seem pretty chill about the whole thing, weirdly enough.”

“Only one thing to do. If she’s pregnant, I take care of the baby and figure out how to be a good dad.”

“Obviously. But what about her?” Trent pressed.

I leaned my head back, staring at the tiled ceiling for a long moment before answering. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? I like her-”

“I remember that much.”

“But I mean, I really like her. We went on a sort of impromptu date last night, and I like who she is as a person. I want to get to know her more, but with this baby thing between us and not being sure how she actually feels about me, it makes things way more complicated.”

“Well, seems like it would make her want to make it work, right?” Trent shrugged.

“Exactly why I want to get to know her better before we find out about the pregnancy. There’s no way to know our real feelings. Once those test results come in, we’ll never know if a natural relationship could have developed between us. We’d always wonder if we were just trying to make things work for the baby.”

“I don’t get what’s so wrong with that,” Trent said. “We’ve seen plenty of couples who are trying to make it work because they got pregnant.”

“I know that. It’s just that don’t want either one of us to settle, you know? If we didn’t know the results-if there was some way of keeping the possibility of a baby out of the equation-we could date like normal people and see if there was a chance. If not, no hard feelings. And if so…”

“Then you know it’s the real thing with or without a baby.” Trent nodded. “Sounds good to me. So just don’t look at the results, then. Seems simple enough.”

“Are you kidding?” I said with a harsh laugh.

“No. What do you have to lose? She wants to keep the baby regardless, right? So what’s the harm in waiting a little longer?”