To Build a Home –– Lip&Emily
Good things don’t happen to Emily Hayes -- that was a well established fact, cemented in fact into every aspect, every facet of her life. Wealth had come with benign neglect, marriage with abuse and violence, and motherhood with death. Everything good had inevitably been followed with something terrible, something soul-crushing that had changed and broken her in ways that she could not mend. It was of course no surprise then that she was still waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop in her relationship with Lip Gallagher. He had come as a planned one-night stand, one she had anticipated to regret because he was her patient and held the possibility and power to destroy her career –– the only thing she had left to hold onto with a vicious determination to not be destroyed.
But he’d continued reappearing in her life until she was sure she never wanted to let him go, until she knew that he wasn’t just a one-night stand or a good fuck (yes, he was definitely good) when she needed to forget. Lip Gallagher was someone she fell in love with –– against all odds, against the statistics of her life and the calculations she’d made about the probability of her future. She’d fallen in love, honest, true and head-over-heels cliché love, for a south side kid that her parents would gawk at, and whose family would have them mortified. Emily had fallen in love with his family though, not over-night, nor they with her (with the exception of the littlest Gallagher, her Liam), but she had never felt so blessed.
It was a new sensation, having a family that cared and while his family were their own unique strain of chaotic, Emily –– even given her contrary up-bringing –– had fallen into their rhythm quickly.
Lip had proven to be one of the most stable relationships she’d ever had, which in itself was astounding considering their beginning, considering they’d first met as doctor-patient in the Emergency Room of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital. It was something she was still surprised to be on the receiving end of, a man that loved her as much as she did he, someone intelligent and witty and fun. It helped that he didn’t beat the shit out of her or regularly find his way into the bed of another woman. No, he was no where near what she’d had before, no one even brushed the sides of what he was to her.
But as things seemed to go for, whenever Emily was happy, there was always something waiting to pummel her back to earth. This time, it appeared in the form of a small white stick, decorated after five minutes by two bold lines –– her worst nightmare. Pregnancy hadn’t been a wonderful experience for her the first two times she’d endured it, one had ended in tears and the other had ended in her beautiful Gracie –– and that had of course had ended in absolute, heartbreaking ruin. This time, she was sure, would be no exception and the thought of medical intervention, an abortion, before Lip had a chance to find out briefly filtered through her mind, until of course the vast majority of her conscience mutinied against the idea.
A baby –– if her hostile uterus even let it reach that stage.
Delicate hands ghosted over the flat expanse of her stomach and for a moment everything was quiet, the calm before the proverbial storm –– and that thing hit in a tsunami of feeling. Her stomach twisted, turned and had her breakfast doing the electric slide before it rose up her throat and into the toilet bowl, her knuckles white with the grasp she had on the porcelain. A fucking baby. How it had happened was beyond her, she was safe; always cautious and as far as she had known, her body had made this scenario impossible. Obviously not, chided the self-deprecating part of her mind, and Emily spent the next five minutes emptying the contents of her stomach.
When she was sure the initial nausea had past, she stood on shaky legs and brushed her teeth. Lip was in the next room, presumably fast asleep and Emily was still trying to wrap her mind around the fact that there was something taking refuge in her womb. The honey blonde was tired of the things life continued to throw at her, exhausted by the brief glimpses into happiness before it was torn away from her –– and Lip, he was young and she was sure this hadn’t been what he’d had in mind when he’d agreed to love her. No one signed up for the constant torment of her life, it was very possibly why very few stayed.
Their bedroom was lighter than it had been when she’d made a bee-line for the bathroom three hours ago, the sun was reaching tentative hands through the cracks in the curtains and the man she loved was splayed where she’d left him, wrapped in expensive white sheets. Their bedroom –– the one they’d agreed to share when Lip had agreed to move into her recently acquired apartment –– was a mess of clothing, memoirs of last night. Emily toed a blouse to the side, moved to stand at the end of the bed and admire him for a moment longer, because in those three hours spent trapped in the bathroom, she’d all but convinced herself he’d turn and leave at the news.
Still, the obligation to tell him sat in her throat like a lump of coal.
Lip began to stir and Emily was overcome with instant regret. She should have conjured another way to tell him, one that would prepare him and ease him into the news of potential parenthood, but now it was too late for clever ideas. When arctic eyes opened to meet hers, wincing against the bright of the morning, Emily pursed her lips and tapped an anxious toe against the carpet. Her lips squeezed together hard, teeth biting down on the inside of her mouth to stop the tears that had gathered in the curves of golden-green eyes from eventuating past her lashes. The offensive little stick was still held between her thumb and forefinger and she held it out as if it had personally offended her –– which it had.
Standing there in nothing but her sleep-shirt, she’d never felt so exposed.
For a long minute, a silently deafening minute, Emily couldn’t get anything out. When she did, it was a quiet and strangled.
