I look down for a beat, trying to think how to wrangle my own muddled thoughts and feelings into a response that will satisfy her.
After a few seconds, I tell her, “When we started getting to know one another, it was different from anything I’d ever experienced before. You’re different from anything I’ve ever experienced before. There’s not just one way to love. Different people view love and express it different ways, but you? You do it like no one I’ve ever met before. I didn’t know what to make of it at first—it felt too easy and it made me suspicious. I tried to pick it apart and make sense of it, but only because I hadn’t encountered it before. I won’t claim to entirely understand you yet, but I understand you better now than I did then. Love is a verb for you. When you love someone, you open up and give all of yourself. You’re loyal and supportive and you give. You’re a solid partner. Some people are different. Love is a noun for some people—not something they do, just something they have. There are people who treat love like a game, like a competition, and they always have to have the upper hand. Love is a battle, and sometimes they hurt the other person just to prove they’re the winner.”
“There shouldn’t be winners and losers in love,” she says simply. “You should both be winners. You shouldn’t want the person you love to lose.”
Cracking a smile, I pull her close. “And that’s why I’m gonna marry you.”
Amusement dances in her eyes. “I thought it was because I’m pregnant.”
“That, too. There are a lot of reasons to marry you—I can’t keep ’em all straight. Anyway, you don’t weaponize love. You don’t fight me like I’m the opponent you like beating best, so you don’t have to worry about it. You and I are never going to encounter the same problems I might’ve had with someone else.”
She mulls that over, debating whether or not to let it go, then she peeks up at me and says, “I’m not trying to insult you since obviously you don’t like that opponent type of love, but I do feel the need to point out you weaponized my affection for you just a little bit ago. I’d just spilled the beans and was very reasonably afraid to be alone with you, and you used my feelings for you to bend me to your will.”
I frown at first, but then my brow clears as I realize she’s not entirely wrong. “I might have picked up some not so great habits from being on the other side of that experience before. After you go through the sort of relationship I had with Nicole, it changes something inside you. You want to make it so that can never happen to you again.”
Alyssa nods like she understands then rises up on her tiptoes and wraps her arms around my neck, giving me a warm, supportive hug. “I’m sorry.”
Absently rubbing her back, I tell her, “Nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“Someone made you feel so unsafe in love you’re afraid to give your heart away again,” she states. “How could I not be sorry for that?”
My arms tighten around her and I hug her a little closer, closing my eyes and just breathing her in. “I have a hunch before all is said and done, you’ll end up with custody of my heart.”
I feel a little burst of warm breath against my skin as she chuckles. “I better. If I’m gonna be your wife, I demand full custody.”
“Now, wait a minute,” I start to tease.
“All of it,” she insists. “Every inch.”
I keep one arm locked around her but let the other drop down between us so I can touch her stomach. “I think the baby might at least want a corner of it.”
She pulls back just enough to look up at me, her eyes swimming with too many emotions to name. “How mad are you that I made you a father like that?”
I capture her hand in mine, lifting it closer to my lips so I can kiss her knuckles. “I don’t want to be mad about that now. It’s done, there’s no point.”
“I don’t want you to ever resent the baby because I’m a jerk.”
“You are not a jerk,” I state, rolling my eyes dismissively. “We are going to have to do some damage control though, to get everyone on the same page. How many people know Theo’s the father of your baby? I assume your sister. Your mom? Who else?”
Shaking her head vigorously, Alyssa says, “They don’t know. Only you and Theo know that. I hadn’t figured out how to explain it, so I just… hadn’t, yet.”
My eyebrows rise in pleasant surprise. “No one knows?”