Baby For The Bear

He paused for a very thoughtful moment. In the silence, in which he hoped she would not begin to cry because that would truly tear him to pieces, he tried to gather the right words. Finally, his thoughts gave him the words he hoped were the ones he needed. “Samantha,” he went back to her full name again, meaningfully, “I don’t think of you as a…a ‘contractor.’ That’s not how I see you. After the way we’ve been, in your bed and mine, I don’t think of you that way at all.”

“Then what am I to you, really? And what will I be if we still go through with this?”

“You’ll be the woman who did for me the most important thing in my life. Someone that I’ll always care about, who’ll always matter to me. And if you want…you can be a part of the cub’s life, help me raise it. Be there for it.”

“Be its mother, you mean.”

“That’s what you would be, Sammie. Little him or her would be a part of both of us.”

“And what would I be to you? Just the mother of your cub? With…what, visitation rights? You’d have custody and I’d be like a glorified governess who just happened to bring him into the world?”

Ken exhaled heavily, a heaviness of the heart. “Sammie, I don’t know. I don’t know; we’d have to figure that out. But we would be a family. We’d have nine months to work out the why’s and how’s of it all. We’ll have longer than that, because we don’t know how long it’ll actually take to get you pregnant. But I think this is worth doing.” He squeezed her shoulder as if to press the meaning of his words through the touch of their skin. “Samantha, I chose you to be my cub’s mother because I didn’t want it to be anyone else. And I still don’t. I want it to be you. I want my cub to come from the way we enjoy being when we’re in bed: our connection, me connecting with you. I want this, Sammie. And I hope you still want it, because I don’t want to start over. Be with me. Figure this out with me. Turn this into something good with me. What do you say?”