“I….” He pauses, his eyes getting glassy as though he’s thinking of the future or the past. “If I found the right person, yeah, I’d like kids. How many would you want?”
I want to ask him about that line. If he found the right person.
Could I be the right person?
He’s said nobody has ever made it so he can relax before, nobody except for me. A mean voice hisses, He’s lying. It’s a line so he can take your virginity from you. But I don’t believe it. I refuse to. After all we’ve shared, I simply find it impossible.
“Maybe three,” I say. “Or four. Even five, if we had the money, the ability to give them the life they deserve. That’s it. It’s not so much the money. As long as I knew they could be happy and wouldn’t want for anything.”
He leans forward, staring hard at me. “You’d need somebody older, someone who already has money – more than he knows how to spend. You’d need a man who wants a young, beautiful woman to give him a family.”
I drop my fork, the clattering noise far too loud.
“Are you teasing me?” I snap.
He leans back, studying me. His expression is a map of tension. It’s like there’s so much he wants to say, would say, but something’s holding him back.
“I was just….” He pauses, lips twisted. “I’m not teasing you, Becca bee. I wouldn’t joke about this.”
“So, what are you saying?”
I know I should stop. My voice is getting way too loud, my tone heavy with anger. Or maybe it’s not anger. Maybe it’s pity aimed at myself because the life he hinted at can never happen.
Unless he tells me it can. Unless he shatters my world and makes all my dreams come true.
“Because you don’t mean that, do you?” I go on, bolting to my feet, waving my hand. “You don’t really want to be the…the….”
“Say it,” he says gruffly, rising slowly to his feet.
“The father of my children,” I yell. “You can’t really want that. So you must be teasing. It’s fine. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be yelling like this.”
I tell myself it’s for the best. If he wanted the impossible, we wouldn’t be able to act on it anyway.
We’d have to separate for Alex’s sake, and it would only make it more painful.
But then he walks around the table, his footsteps slow.
He reaches out and softly cradles my cheek, turning my gaze to his. I almost let out a gasp as I stare up at him.
I’ve never seen him like this. It’s like he’s ready for murder, for marriage, for something drastic.
“It’s the truth,” he says huskily. “I’ve tried not telling you. I know it’s going to make this so much harder. But it’s true, Becca bee. I want you…not just for a night, or a week, or a month. I want you for life.”