A baby.
The idea ignited something in me and it took me a moment to realize I was smiling. Then I started to laugh. Fuck yeah. I was going to be a father.
In a few months, I’d be holding my own flesh and blood in my arms.
And I couldn’t stop fucking grinning about it.
I drew on my cigarette. Was it a boy? A girl? Would he or she look like me, or Honey?
Fuck. A baby.
I laughed even harder and it echoed across the panoramic view of Destiny below.
I dropped my cigarette and crushed it with my boot.
What the fuck was I doing out here when the gorgeous woman carrying my baby was at home wondering what the hell was happening?
I climbed back on my bike and with a smile on my lips, I rode through the pink twilight back to Honey’s apartment. When she opened the door, I lifted her up and twirled her around in my arms. She squealed and laughed, and I started to laugh, too. When I let her down I took her cheeks between my hands and studied the face of the woman carrying my baby.
“Anything you need. Anything at all, I will give it to you.” My thumbs caressed her cheeks. “We’re in this together.”
“I don’t expect—”
I cut her off by kissing her, long and slow, savoring the softness of her mouth against mine.
It was the smell that ended the kiss.
Smoke.
“What’s burning?” I asked pulling away.
Honey’s eyes rounded. “Oh hell, the meatloaf!”
She ran to the kitchen. Smoke poured out of the oven when she opened the door, and the smoke alarm went crazy. After dumping the smoldering meatloaf onto the kitchen counter, she frantically waved the dishtowel in the air to disperse the smoke and to stop the alarm from screaming.
“Damn!” I said looking at the burnt meatloaf.
Honey shook her head and slumped her shoulders. “I told you I suck at cooking.”
I couldn’t help but grin. She was too cute. I slung my arm around her neck. “Come on. Let’s go get dinner. My treat.”
HONEY
He took me to a small, out of the way pizzeria in town with bread sticks on the tables and red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. I wasn’t able to keep anything down during the day, so by the time we got there, I was famished. Caleb ordered two large pizzas smothered in mozzarella and I tore into them.
“So what are we going to do?” I asked.
“We’re going to work together to give Bump the best start in life as possible.”
“Bump?”
He grinned. “Too lame?”
I smiled back at him. “No, I think it’s cute you’ve already come up with a nickname.” I rubbed my belly. Bump was hardly a bump yet, but you could definitely tell I was bigger than usual. With a deep exhale I looked up. “I think this thing between us has to stop.”
“This thing? Do you mean the incredible sex we’ve been having?”
I don’t know why I blushed but I did.
“I just don’t think now is the time to explore anything between us,” I explained, frowning as I focused on breaking apart the piece of pizza on my plate. “If we keep going the way we’re going, it will complicate an already complicated situation, don’t you agree?”
“Or it could bring us closer,” he suggested.
“But what if it doesn’t. What if someone’s feelings grow while the other person’s doesn’t? Inevitably someone will get hurt.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t want to stop having sex with you. I like the way things are between us.”
Lust pooled between my legs at his words.
“But if it turns sour, it could ruin everything. I mean, is now the right time to take that risk?” I shook my head already answering the question in my head. “My childhood was spent with a mother who continually took those risks. Moving from place to place. Hooking up with men who promised her one thing but always delivered something else. Dragging me back and forth, always chasing something but never catching it. She never put me first, and as a result I had a lonely and neglected childhood. I’m not willing to take those risks. I’m putting our baby first because I know what it means if I don’t.”
Caleb watched me intently, his brow slightly furrowed. “It sounds like you had a rough upbringing.”
I frowned. My childhood was a lonely one because my mother indulged in one drama after another. And those dramas always involved men. Men who said one thing and then did another.
“My mom had me three days after her sixteenth birthday. I was born in a house for unwed schoolgirls, if you can believe it.” I hated talking about my childhood because the memories still sent a cold ache through me. “They advised my mom to give me up. There were plenty of couples who couldn’t have children who would raise me right, they told her. But my mom wasn’t going to do anything other than what she wanted to do. So she ran away with me, and so began eighteen years of her reminding me what a mistake she’d made by not listening to them. What she didn’t realize was that I felt exactly the same way. Just like her, I wished she’d listened to them.” I shook my head and held up three fingers. “My mom taught me three things. How not to be a mother. How not to trust men. And how people say one thing but then do the other. I don’t mean to sound like a Debbie downer, but I’ve seen what happens when parents put their own needs before their kids. I’m not talking about adult kids. I’m talking about the little ones. Their parents are their world. Their everything.”