She sighed.
“Reagan’s already her own person. I can’t screw her up any more than she already is,” she said. “A baby, though, depends on me. If you leave me, I’ll be alone taking care of a child all by myself. And I don’t know that I can do that.”
I gave her a look that clearly said, ‘you’re nuts.’
“I’m raising a kid by myself. If anybody can do it, you can,” I told her. “And that’s not even going to happen, because I’d never let you go. You’re mine now. The only way you’d be able to leave was if I died and could no longer hold onto you.”
She blinked.
“That’s kind of morbid,” she admitted. “And really kind of nice.”
Yawning loudly, I reached over and pulled the chain on the lamp next to the bed, plunging the room into darkness.
“That’s good that you think so, since every bit of what I said was true. I’m yours and your mine. That’s it. No take backs,” I said sleepily.
She moved, burrowing into my body.
Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pulled her into me, her feet finding their way to in between my calves as she liked to do every night.
“Bennett,” she said after a few long minutes.
“Hmm,” I asked, well on the way to dreamland.
“How many kids do you want?” She asked.
I ran my lips over the top of her head. “One. Two. Three. Whatever. I don’t really care. As long as you want to keep having them, I’ll keep planting them inside of you.”
She snorted. “How chivalrous of you. And are these babies going to be legitimate, or just fruits of your loins?”
I smiled, knowing I had her.
“Oh, if I have my way, they’ll be legitimate,” I informed her.
Her lips pressed against my bare chest.
“When do you plan on making them legitimate?” She continued.
I didn’t answer.
Mostly because my eyes were too heavy, and my mind was already shutting down.
Though I did think it.
Soon, Lennox. Very, very soon.Chapter 17I’m not funny. I’m mean and people think I’m joking.
-Lennox’s secret thoughts
Lennox
Legitimate.
He was going to make babies with me. Legitimate babies.
Babies.
Holy shit.
Babies had never been on my agenda before. Not with my hectic schedule.
With Bennett, though, I questioned nearly all of my old agenda.
I’d already taken a significant decrease in hours so I could spend more time with Bennett and Reagan.
While it hadn’t been on purpose, I still liked the outcome, and planned to keep it the way it was.
I liked it.
I got to see the two of them every night, and if anything happened and Bennett had to be called out, then I was there and Reagan never had to be woken up.
It’d been three weeks since the night Corrinne had wrecked me as I’d been driving home from work with Reagan in the car. And two weeks since I’d last seen her.
I’d gone to the police station, per Bennett’s request, to press charges against her for not only vandalizing my house, but also handing my phone number and other personal information to the rest of my neighborhood.
My parents and I had had to change our phone numbers due to the hundreds of calls a week I got.
Apparently, not only had she given my phone number out to the residents in my neighborhood, but she’d also placed an ad for ‘a good time’ on Craigslist and other dating websites with pictures she’d secretly taken of me.
That latest event had taken place about a week after she’d tried to run me off the road, and I was honestly tired of it. It was really putting a toll on my happiness, which I guess was what she’d been trying to accomplish.
Bennett hadn’t been doing well thanks to her, either.
Especially when Corrinne tried to accuse him of raping her nine years ago, then forcing her to give up rights to the baby he’d made with her as a consequence of said rape.
Everybody knew it was bogus, but Bennett was still getting weird looks from the citizens of Kilgore, and even some of his fellow cops who didn’t know him or how Corrinne was a lying, vindictive whore.
“Are you nervous?” I asked Bennett as we walked hand in hand into the courthouse.
He squeezed my hand slightly before shaking his head. “No. There’s no reason for her to get custody of Reagan. In fact, this is all just preliminary. The papers have already been signed, sealed, and dated. The only thing that happened was that it wasn’t filed through the state. It’s a done deal.”
Shockingly, we found out that it wasn’t a done deal less than an hour later when the judge’s gavel rang out like a shotgun blast shooting through the courtroom.
“Court dismissed,” the judge roared.
She had to roar because everyone on Bennett’s side of the courtroom was screaming in outrage.
The only two not screaming were Bennett and Todd.
Bennett looked like someone had knocked him over the back of the head with a crowbar.
Todd, Bennett’s badass lawyer, looked deadly quiet.
In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve said he was plotting murder.
Corrinne, the fucking bitch, was sitting across the aisle from us with a smile the size of Texas on her face, and I wanted nothing more than to slap the stupid bitch across that big mouth of hers.
I was seething mad, and if looks could kill, Corrinne would be a puddle of brain matter, blood, and guts on the floor.
Her husband, Buck, the spineless bastard, sat in his seat looking like he’d just been beaten with the same crowbar that’d taken out Bennett.
He was looking down at his hands that were twisting in his lap, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing with her.
I couldn’t figure it out when I was in college, either. Which was why I’d been accused of cheating with him in the first place. I’d been trying to save him, and look where that’d gotten me!
“I can’t believe she gave her partial custody,” Payton breathed beside me. “She’s going to kill her.”
“She won’t get her,” Max mumbled from her other side. “The boys and I…we’ll make fucking sure of it. She won’t touch another hair on that baby’s head.”