It's Your Love, It Just Does Something To Me, Beau <3

June 15, 2012
4:00 p.m.
The Lindstrom Residence

In the aftermath of Trevor Arnold, Katie wasn't sure how things were going to work themselves out. In horror she had to witness her husband, the very man she loved being put into such a harmed state that she herself would have never imagined possible for someone she loved. But she had made the foolish mistake of underestimating Trevor, not believing everything he was capable of and when she made the mistake, it was her husband who took the fall. What Trevor had done was unforgivable, and in her moment of rage she confronted him, something that she would learn that night to regret.

It had seemed that things would just coast back into their flow; she had assumed that she and Beau would be fine, they would get past this horrific event together with the support of their friends and families and they would heal from the terrible accident. It wasn't until she took the pregnancy test that she learned that her assumption was very wrong. She felt degraded and violated even more than that night at Trevor's and she felt almost to blame for the possibility of carrying a child that ultimately could have been the product of rape. However, Katie wasn't the type to just give up something so precious, so pure.

Even when she hesitated telling Beau that she was pregnant, both of them knowing that there was a possibility that the child she carried could have been Trevor’s, she still stuck through it. And now, she was in her second trimester and still she had not heard from her doctor about the results of the paternity test. Frustrated, she worked in a fury of impatience at Coffeebeans, sure that her employees were starting to grow impatient with waiting as well. It was killing her not knowing.

Then finally, she felt her phone vibrate and the number registered in her head on the second ring. She listened to the doctor's information carefully, her hands shaking as soon as she got off the phone. Without putting much thought into it, she told her Assistant Manager that she was going home for the day, a grin on her face even as she hurried into her car. The long drive home was unbearable even if it was only about fifteen minutes or so. By the time she made it to her front door, she practically burst through the front door in her mission to find her husband.

In the short time she had been married to her husband, it was safe to say that he surprised her often but this, the sight before her eyes when she finally located him was the best one yet. Maybe it was the hormones, or maybe she was just grateful that he stayed, that all those nights where she clung to him that he didn't push her away. After all the chaos she brought to his life, it surprised her that he was so willing to still protect them, and the bump that may have not been his.

”Beau, the doctor called today with the results.” She said softly, leaning against the door frame of one of the spare bedrooms, watching her husband as she took sight of the tools on the ground, the project her husband had gotten himself into, which wasn't really uncommon to see, what with him fixing practically anything and everything that needed fixing. ”What are you doing?”

As much as Beau wished that life would just go back to the way it was after everything that had happened, it just... wasn't possible. Life had changed irrevocably. Beau had changed irrevocably, and it wasn't just because of his confrontation with Trevor, his hospital stay, or every horrible thing that had happened to Katie. He'd... grown up, or at least started to. (About time, one of his brothers had said, in that typical ragging way that brothers had. Took you long enough.)

The prospect of a baby, too... that had sobered Beau up faster than rehab. A baby. Possibly Trevor's baby. That thought had haunted him for no short while, though eventually he'd decided he just had to stop connecting the possible pregnancy with Trevor at all. No matter who the father was, it was Katie's baby; that was the realization that helped him accept matters, and actually start moving in the right direction again. Katie was the most important thing right now -- was, to be perfectly honest, the most important thing in his entire life. And since the baby was going to be important to Katie, that meant it was going to be important to him, too, and that... was that.

Even more than before, he'd taken to building things -- maybe not from planks of wood, but more than just putting together that Ikea shit, anyway. Their house was small, and they didn't have a ton of stuff, since most of their money had first gone into making any necessary repairs to Coffeebeans (after all, that would end up paying them back relatively quickly in profits, if Katie's books were any indication) and then to medical care, which had been an unfortunate leech on their bank accounts. The ready-made stuff was more expensive, and Beau liked working with his hands, so putting together sturdy furniture for their house was a good way to spend his downtime.

He was in what would be the nursery, working on a bookshelf with drawers in the bottom half (perfect for holding toys and books, he thought) and pondering what color to paint it when it was done, when his wife's voice caught his attention. He looked up from the floor at the young woman in the doorway, and the smile that spread over his face was instant and genuine -- though as the significance of her words filtered into his consciousness, it became more than a little nervous, too.

"Deep sea fishing," he replied with a soft little snort, the joke mostly a way to handle the sudden pang of anxiety that had struck him. He set down the shelf he'd been holding and stood, hands in his pockets, to face her. He had to know; it was the moment of truth. "What'd he say?"

Stressing wasn’t even close to what she was feeling over this whole situation, it was if all of Katie’s emotions just clumped together like cookie dough in one plopped up mess. For someone who was pretty much at ease with her emotions and keeping herself pretty close to happy go lucky, this whole situation was kind of a huge damper at the moment. She had been dreading as well as anticipating the phone call for a long time now; she needed to know for both her and Beau’s sake. It was safe to say that this little snag in the road wasn’t exactly making her marriage run perfectly smooth. She knew, she felt it and even though she wanted things to just slide back into their normal transition, the gloom lingered in the air that she could be carrying another man’s baby.

And Beau, her amazing husband was still there when she climbed into bed at night, his arms serving as a protective barrier to fight away all the bad dreams, she couldn’t have asked for a better husband, a better man to love and to raise a child with and even though she knew she’d love this child inside of her, she found herself praying everyday that the baby wasn’t Trevor’s. She found herself fantasizing at work how great it would be, having Beau’s child and how good things would become once she just knew. After what seemed like an eternity, she had her answer.

Things had been rough, it wasn’t the easiest thing to go what they’d been through, hospitals, police, psychotic exes, and now pregnancy but they survived and the house that kept them together was slowly becoming nested in preparation for the new addition. Katie’s husband had always seemed busy, but she had never expected him to be busy doing this… the thought of him preparing for a baby that may have not even been his was so overwhelming that she thought she was going to cry and that was saying something since Katie didn’t herself as a complete cry baby (well, not all the time anyway). These baby hormones were sending the sensitive Katie into frenzy.

Instead, she found herself laughing at the sight before her. Only her husband could make her go from on the verge of tears to a fit of giggles instantly, and she was pretty sure it had been like that since the day she met him. ”I see the fish seem to really biting today.” And there was the moment, the source of relief that change things for the both of them, the mere thought of speaking had her heartbeat pounding like crazy. She looked up at him, debating on how exactly to form her sentence. "The baby is yours." Four words, four words that alone seemed so pointless and unneeded but together they formed a sort of light, a shimmer of hope that things would get better. "You got me pregnant, Beau!" And there were those happy tears that she fought back before, covered by his chest and she wrapped her arms around him. Things would get better, she would have the man she loved, their small house filled with love and a baby that represented everything they were together. "How long have you been working on all of this?" She asked, gesturing to the nursery and the work in progress status of things.

It seemed to Beau like a lot of the most important moments in his life had hinged on relatively short statements. He remembered, back when he'd been with the band, his best friend Hunter saying to him, "I think you have a problem." Then -- rehab. He remembered an ex girlfriend saying to him, "You're just not long-term material." Then -- the Vow. He remembered, with a soaring feeling in his stomach, the look on Katie McCabe's face as she said "I do," and became Katie Lindstrom. And now... now she'd said four of the most beautiful, wonderful words Beau had ever heard, and he knew that his life would never be the same.

"The baby is yours."

Her arms were around him, then, and his were around her, feeling the way their bodies didn't mesh quite as perfectly as they had before but not in the least minding it because it meant that she was pregnant with his baby. His. Beau Lindstrom's little one, his firstborn, his child, was growing inside of his wife, and his happiness was enough to make him feel like his face was going to split cheek to cheek from the sheer force of his grinning. He squeezed Katie's shoulders and held her close, a laugh of relief escaping.

"Just a couple hours," he replied to her question, not moving his arm away from where it lay across her shoulders, even as she moved away to gesture. He wasn't looking at the room; he was looking at his wife. "I knew it. I knew it was our baby. God. Have I mentioned I love you today, Katie? Because I do. I really goddamn do, like you wouldn't believe," he laughed, kissing the top of his lovely girl's head. He couldn't believe he was this lucky.

Terrified, nervous, relieved, those were the three things that Katie was made out of right now, that and a baby that was Beau’s. There was absolutely no way in the world that anyone could make her feel any better, that statement alone would be enough to keep her happy for pretty much ever. Still, she was crying and she felt stupid and emotional all at the same time. Sure, in retrospect she was probably the most emotional out of the three McCabe girls, Maggie seemed to always just keep everything to herself and Beth was very to herself in pretty much everything but still, crying sucked, even if it was happy crying.

She was pregnant with her husband, the greatest man alive, except her father of course. Despite the fact that the baby could have not been his, he still stepped up to the Daddy plate and that made Beau a real man. and what made it better was the fact that he was her man. He just, she couldn’t believe that she was this lucky and you know what… it was way overdue that Beau and her had a good thing happen to them especially after all their rotten luck but the way she saw it, she wouldn’t have changed a single thing because it made her and her husband stronger.

[b”I couldn’t possibly love you more, Beau.”[/b] Her face grinning, ”Our baby, our perfect little baby.” Maybe she’d have a boy, a little Beau to run around the house that would look just like his Daddy. Her father would have so much fun with that, he could wear a cute little fireman hat! ”You are the best thing I could have ever asked for.” Being safe in his arms was the most amazing feeling; this was their life, their little family. ”I can’t wait to have a little Lindstrom running around our house, following his or her Daddy around. They’ll love you almost as much as I love you.”