But I held fast.
“You meet this beautiful, smart, funny as hell woman one day, and then the next thing you know, she goes and changes your whole world. Makes you see things you never could’ve imagined. Or could ever think might be yours.” I tried to swallow despite the fist around my throat. “First, I fell in love with you. And that wasn’t enough. Now you’re saying…” I took a breath. “Now you’re saying you’re giving me—us—someone else to love too.”
She started to speak but then frantically swiped at her cheeks and shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re probably hungry. This is a lot. Let’s go to dinner.”
“Go to dinner? We can’t do that. We have plans to make.”
“Plans? What plans?” She finally succeeded in yanking her hands out of my hold.
“You just said that you’re—” I gestured wildly at her stomach before my gaze drifted slightly north. And lingered while all the moisture in my mouth dried up. My woman was smoking hot. “That’s why your tits look so huge.”
“Do you know where you are?” She smacked my arm. “You can’t be talking about or looking at my breasts here.”
“I can when I planted that baby in you.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. You are not going caveman on me.”
I crossed my arms. I could go caveman if I wanted to when my sperm had emerged victorious.
Granted, in a town like the Cove, it wasn’t as much of a feat. But my swimmers had carved a renegade path through two layers of birth control. That deserved some celebration. Maybe a small party with streamers and pointy hats.
Luna arched a brow. “Maybe I’m not.”
A bolt of ice shot down my spine. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t actually taken a test. Maybe I’m just gaining weight. What about that?”
“Just in your tits? Not likely. Besides, you have to know if there’s…a thing inside you.”
“A thing? Now you’re calling our baby a thing?”
“It’s not a thing, it’s a fetus. I’m just saying, I’d damn well know if I was carrying one around. It’s not like an extra bean burrito, for God’s sake.”
“No, right now, it’s so much smaller than that.” She rubbed at her dripping nose. “I wasn’t prepared for any of this. You’re just supposed to be a summer fling. I’m happy with my life. I didn’t want it to change.”
Some part of me wanted to demand her to admit I was the best thing to ever happen to her, as she was for me. But from somewhere down deep, a sense of calm rolled over me as I stepped forward to wrap my arms around her.
“We were meant, Lu. You know it as surely as I do.”
She sniffled against my chest, but she didn’t argue.
“And maybe this was just the universe making sure we didn’t screw it up.”
“I wouldn’t have screwed it up.” She drilled her pointy nail into my biceps. “You’re the screwer-upper.”
“No arguments there.”
“You’re the one who gets drunk on bad rum and mixes it with antibiotics and sneaks into my bed to impregnate me so I can’t even get on my freaking pole anymore without a backache.” She jabbed again. “You did that. You made me bust out of my bras, and you aren’t even sorry.”
My lips twitched as I took a long, leisurely look at the body part in question. Poetic speech or not, I wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t be my last one, since apparently, pregnant women were erratic and emotional.
Dear God, she was actually pregnant.
With my baby.
I was going to be a father to an actual human child I couldn’t send home with someone else while I kicked back with a cold beverage.
I wavered a bit on my feet, and this time, she gripped my arms to support me. “You okay?”