Not My Match (The Game Changers 2)

He’s here. Really here.

My heart throbs, squeezing inside my rib cage. I press my face into his chest and exhale. His hands go to my scalp, massaging the skin, trailing his fingers through my hair. His lips brush my ear, and I tighten my arms around him. How did I fool myself for three days? I’d choose him every single time.

“I’m not pregnant,” I say glumly.

“Hmm, I see.” His voice is too calm, and I can’t meet his eyes as I let him go and slide down his body. He sways with me in a gentle motion.

“I wanted to be,” I choke out, admitting the truth, trying to push the disappointment away. “I was already making a nursery in my head, with a mobile to foster brain development, toys for optimal tactile touch, painting butterflies on the wall.”

“Ah, that sounds nice.” His voice is hoarse.

I look up at him then, seeing details I missed before. He’s wearing his football pants and a white vented practice jersey, and his hair . . . I half smile. It’s a mess, sticking up in a million directions. His gaze is heavy on me, low, speculative, and hesitant. He looks haunted, his face thinner. Is that possible in just three days? My fingers run over his face, outlining the details.

“How freaked out were you?”

A long exhale comes from his chest. “Let’s just say there’s a state trooper who now has season passes.”

“Were you scared?”

His lashes flutter against his cheeks, emotion pulling at him, his throat working. “Not for me. I can handle a baby, but I don’t want anything to hold you back from what you want.”

I gaze up at him, and our eyes cling. Oh, Devon.

Tears clog my throat, and I push them away to say my words. “Dev, you are my dream. You are what I want most in the world. You and me and babies and a house in the country. CERN can’t compare. Maybe it will be in the future—they let people teach classes periodically—but Switzerland will always be here. You are now. You are mine, and I’m yours. That morning in the closet, you described what I want with you. Every detail of that life.” My eyes close as I replay his words. “Me and you and a life that’s worthy and good and precious. I want to be in all your universes.”

Gathering strength, I tell him my Einstein quote, and he watches me, listening carefully, his beautiful green eyes all over my face, drinking me in. “I’d be nothing but a shadow of who I am if I left you,” I whisper.

His hands tighten as he bends his head to mine. He kisses me with all the longing we’ve been denied for the past three days. “Are you sure, Giselle? I . . .” His voice hitches. “These days without you have desolated me, but I’m willing to be yours and let you go, and we can try and see how it works out . . .”

I put my hand to his lips. “From the moment Susan mentioned CERN, I was sick. It just took a pregnancy test for me to figure it out. I love you so much, Devon.”

A long heavy breath comes from him, and his eyes glimmer with hope, a soft shine there. He presses his forehead to mine. “I’m going to make you proud, baby; I’m going to make you happy, and you’re going to get everything you want, I swear.”

He kisses me soft and slow. “So are we going to go out there and tell them you aren’t pregnant?”

“You tell them while I dash to your car.”

He groans. “Your mama knows for sure we’re having sex. I can’t even look at her. You do it.”

“Okay. You tell them I’m not going to CERN, and I’ll tell them I’m not pregnant. They’ll be disappointed about the baby,” I say wistfully.

“There’ll be other babies,” he murmurs after another drugging kiss, his voice soft and wondering, as if he’s amazed at the idea. “I love you, Giselle.”

“I’m yours, Dev.”

That rich red thread of fate wraps around us.

We hold hands and walk to the door, a whole new future waiting for us.

Epilogue

DEVON

A few years later

I wake up and look over, and she isn’t there, causing a brief bite of disappointment, until I laugh up at the skylight above our bed. Knowing her, she’s either hiding to jump out at me, or she’s up and working.

I shower in the bathroom of our house, the one we built out on the farm after we were married. I dunk my head under the water, thinking about that day, her in a white dress, an amethyst ring surrounded by diamonds on her finger, her nana’s pearls around her neck, her hand in mine as we said our vows in her mama’s church. It was a perfect spring day in April when she was halfway through her doctorate, and I was giddy to finally make us official.