Change of Heart (Fostering Love 2)

She leaned in to kiss me, and I inhaled deeply. She always smelled so good. I’d miss that.

“Let’s get inside,” I said gruffly, grabbing ahold of her ass so I could walk us to the front door. “Keys?”

As soon as we were inside, it was like the floodgates opened.

Ani danced around the house, cleaning up Henry’s mess from that morning and racing around to pick up random dish towels and shoes. She was talking about the baby—some shit about her sister and how soon she’d go into labor—but I swear to God I barely heard a word she said.

She was so happy. I’d never seen her so bubbly and excited, and I hated that I was going to have to stop all that. When I finally couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer, I grabbed her by the hand and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“You really think this is a good idea?” I blurted out, no buildup whatsoever.

“What?” Ani laughed nervously, pulling away from me. “What do you mean?”

“This whole—” I threw my arm out to the side. “—baby thing.”

“Do I think it’s a good idea?” she asked incredulously. “Uh, yeah. Or I wouldn’t be doing it.”

She took a couple steps away from me, and I clenched my hands into fists at my sides.

“You’re just going to take in some baby that you know nothing about? Just like that? No thinking it over or planning ahead?”

“It’ll be a newborn, Bram,” she said slowly. “No one knows anything about it yet.”

“What if your sister’s a cokehead?”

“That’s a shitty thing to say.”

“She got pregnant at what, fourteen years old?”

“You are such a dick!” she hissed. “Sometimes I forget that, and then you open your mouth and I’m reminded all over again.”

“Oh, I’m a dick?”

“How is this even any of your business?” she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I’m your man!” I yelled, so fucking frustrated I wanted to pull my hair out. I’d been listening to baby shit for over two hours, and I was done. “You didn’t say shit to me about this, and then you’re just announcing it at the fucking dinner table?”

“I just found out today!” she yelled back. “And when she asked me, you were still maintaining the illusion that we weren’t in a relationship!”

“What, so now I’m supposed to play daddy to your kid?”

“I didn’t expect you to do anything,” she said quietly, her face twisting into a grimace. “Don’t worry, Bram, Maury says you are not the father.”

“This is so fucking insane,” I ground out, shaking my head. I ran my hands through my beard and then up over my head. “The whole reason we started hooking up was because I could fuck you without having to deal with baby drama.”

I knew the words were shitty the minute they rolled off my tongue, but I had no chance to take them back.

“Get out,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

“That came out—”

“Get out of my house, Abraham,” she said a little louder.

I stared at her for a long moment, wondering what the fuck I could do to make her change her mind. We were good—just the two of us. At least for as long as whatever it was between us lasted. We had fun together. Made each other laugh. Got into fights and made up between the sheets. She was the best lay I’d ever had.

A baby would change all that.

Chapter 10

Anita

Henry came flying in the door less than ten minutes after Bram left my house. I was still standing in the center of the room, my arms wrapped around my chest and my heart racing. But I wasn’t crying. I wouldn’t.

“Honey, I’m home!” Henry called out cheerfully as he saw me. “Where’s Bram, little mama?”

Hen’s face fell when I didn’t immediately answer him.

“Anita Bonita?” he said gently. “Where’s Abraham?”

“He left,” I said with a humorless laugh, shrugging my shoulders. “He’s not ready to play the Mike to my Carol.”

“What?”

“Brady Bunch reference,” I said distractedly, walking toward my hallway. “Obviously.”

“Right,” Henry said slowly. “Not sure how I missed that one.”

The bedrooms in my house were tiny. At one point, there had been four and a bathroom, but sometime in the ’70s, the previous owners had remodeled the front two bedrooms into a master with a connected second bathroom. So I only had two bedrooms to choose from for the baby’s room.

I knew without even looking which bedroom I would choose. It was bright, with two tall windows that I’d have to get child locks for at some point, and was directly across from my bedroom. There was no closet, but I didn’t think that really mattered. If he or she needed one at some point, I knew Trev would help me frame one in. He was good with shit like that.