Disclaimer: I own nothing, Janet owns everything.

Late

I was late.

I sat on my bed and looked out my window over the rooftops across the parking lot. I had been in this position for the last 30 minutes. No other word in the female language strikes fear like late. Not even fat.

I brought my legs up and wrapped my arms around them, resting my head on my knees. It was early evening and the slowly approaching darkness seemed like a heavy omen. I mentally counted the days again, but there was no getting around it. I was two days late.

"Please," I whispered to my bedroom. My heart beat faster as I realized I didn't know what I was saying 'please' for exactly. I loved Joe, he loved me. We had been talking about marriage lately and I had even been considering it. Once or twice I had seen a baby in the mall and hadn't felt like running away.

But in my darkening bedroom with my calendar and birth control pack spread out before me, the realization hit me in full force. 'Please' was a scared and desperate word. It was the same 'please' that countless others had whispered over the years when they realized that their lives were teetering on the brink and that, perhaps, someone would hear their plea and somehow grant them a second chance.

A second chance to change things.

It was crushing, this realization. After three years, or perhaps 27 if we started from the beginning, of dancing around Joe, our relationship had come to a frantic halt in my darkening bedroom with the awareness of one thing. I was late.

I felt sick to my stomach. I needed to call Joe but I knew what the outcome of that call would be and I was too chicken to face it. He would want to marry me. He would be scared and flustered but when I took the test he would hold my hand and smile at me and I would see the glint of light in his eyes.

And I knew, beyond a doubt that I didn't deserve to stand there beside that light while I prayed silently for there to only be one line and not two. I couldn't do this next to him. It would be the ultimate betrayal. So I would wait until I knew for sure. And if it was positive then I would cry and grieve and then force myself to find the happy. I could do that for Joe.

And he wouldn't ever need to know that I had whispered please to God in my bedroom on a Tuesday evening by myself.

I slid my legs down and over the side of the bed, picking up the pregnancy test and the egg timer as I rose. It was now or never, I realized. I glanced over the box and saw that the results would be ready in three minutes. Three minutes. My stomach gave a sickening lurch and I had to put my hand against the headboard for a moment. McDonald's, donuts and a Snickers bar had seemed like a good idea earlier this afternoon when I was still desperately in my denial phase.

When I was sure my stomach was under control I walked into the bathroom and opened the box. After reading the directions again, I managed to hold the stick for the required 'exactly 5 seconds' without peeing on my fingers. I put the cap back on the test and set it level on my counter.

I finished up with the toilet and set the egg timer for three minutes, and picked up the discarded box. I looked down at the test and my stomach rolled again. Before I could stop myself I fled from the bathroom, unable to be in the same room with the realization that my whole future had been reduced to a slowly spreading stain on a small piece of cheap, white plastic.

I came to a stop in my bedroom again, clutching the crushed box to my chest and trying to get my breathing under control. I almost missed the sound of my locks tumbling open. I sat on my bed and closed my eyes. This was a complication I did not need at the current moment.

I felt him before I saw him. His quiet "Babe" however, had me opening my eyes to him. I saw him take in my face and he walked over to me, gently extracting the crumpled box from my hands as he sat next to me. He looked at it for a moment and when he raised his eyes back to mine his blank face was firmly in place.

"Do I need to offer you congratulations?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know yet," I whispered and despite my best efforts, my voice cracked slightly on the word 'yet'.

Ranger's eyes softened faintly and I saw just the barest hint of something I had never seen there before. Regret. It was the final straw and tears pooled in my eyes. I tried to fight them but it was no use, and when Ranger pulled me to him and pressed his face in my hair, it was all I could do to keep the crying quiet.

He pulled back after a minute and brushed the tears off my cheeks with his thumbs.

"You need to call him, Babe. He should be here with you."

I shook my head, staring and my hands on his chest. "I can't. He'll want to marry me and…I'm so confused."

"Do you want to marry him?"

I squeezed my eyes tighter for a moment, trying to make sense of what my answer was to his question. For there it was, laid bare before us…all of my emotional baggage condensed into a six word sentence. I looked up to him to tell him that I wasn't sure but I found myself frozen in place, my eyes looking into his. Gone was his mask, his wall… and in its place was emotion that I had never seen, not even on the night he had walked into this apartment ready to die for his daughter and me. He looked vulnerable and as confused as I was as he held my face in his hands. There was nothing around me but Ranger and without thinking, the answer found itself.

"No," I whispered in the silence. "I don't want to marry him."

The sudden relief and awareness was in stark contrast to the desperation I had felt just a few minutes ago before I looked into the eyes of the man before me. I watched as emotions ran over his face, though neither one of us moved or breathed.

"Babe…I-" His sentence was cut off by the sudden beeping from the bathroom that ended the moment with perverse finality.

We both took a breath as we remembered what that beeping meant, the test forgotten. Ranger closed his eyes and lowered his head for a brief second before releasing my face and standing up, once again in control of his emotions.

I reached for his hand. "I don't think I can do this alone. Will you look with me?"

Ranger stood for a moment looking at our joined hands before he dropped it and stepped back.

"Babe, there are very few things in this world that I wouldn't do for you, but this isn't my place or my business. You need to call Morelli. He should be here with you. Not me."

Ranger turned around and walked to my door. He paused when he reached it, placing one hand on my doorframe, looking down at the floor. For a few heartbeats he stood there with his back to me before he opened the door without looking back, and left me alone in my dark bedroom with a beeping egg timer and the sickening reality that he was absolutely right.

TBC…