I tried not to beam like a giddy idiot, but I could tell from the way Aly burst into giggles that I’d failed.

“No wonder you’re not worried about that whole ‘I love you’ thing,” Aly mused as she reread the text.

Right. The whole ‘I love you’ thing.

“I don’t know why I said that,” I mumbled, thinking back on that unbelievable night. “I just… felt it in that moment.”

“Which means you meant it, and you had every right to say it,” Aly reasoned gently, with a little shrug. “You’re not like him, Evie. You say what you feel without going through a million walls and filters.”

“I guess,” I murmured, giving down at my hands in my lap. I had meant those three words when I said them, but it was easier for me to pretend they’d just slipped in the heat of the moment, especially since he didn’t say them back.

“I know you hate the idea of needing time, but give Drew a little more of it,” Aly said. “Look at those texts he sends you. You know he feels the same way about you. He just has a shit ton of mental blocks because of… whatever reasons. Reasons I’m sure you know by now.”

I bit my lip and blushed as I looked up at her.

“Yep. You do. He’s told you everything he never even told Emmett, hasn’t he?” Aly laughed, shaking her head.

“Maybe.”

“And you won’t even tell me what his deep dark secrets are because you love him! Oh my God,” Aly exclaimed incredulously as I covered my giggling face with my hands. “Evie. You two are so in love with you it’s ridiculous. You realize what this means right?”

“That your test results are ready and you can stop giving me a hard time now?”

“I was going to say that the four of us are about to have double dates like it’s our jobs, but sure, yes, let’s go see if I’m pregnant.” Aly jumped up to her feet so fast I had to laugh. It was so clear to me that she desperately wanted this baby – she was just trying to find reasons to be nervous about it because that was just the way we were.

When things were too perfect, we questioned it.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“What? What?” I giggled excitedly, running into the bathroom to find Aly standing there holding the pregnancy test on the right – the one I’d taken with her in solidarity.

“Evie...” My heart thumped against my ribs as she turned to me with wide eyes. I shook my head, denying her two words before she could even say them to me. “You’re pregnant.”

34

EVIE

Waiting for Drew to come home to New York was a unique kind of torture. It was like an emotional purgatory in which I constantly told myself that maybe Aly was right, and things could turn out just fine. Actually, the mental limbo was a whole lot like the one I’d been steeped in the first night I met Drew – when I was still trying to figure out where I stood with Mike.

God.

That name was like a foreign language to me at this point. Once upon a time, it represented my world. Now, it couldn’t be more of an afterthought because not only was I in love with Drew Maddox, I was carrying his child.

It was so unreal to me that I kept bursting into tears without warning.

Because the truth was that as completely unexpected as this was, I wanted this child. With Aly, I’d taken several more tests to confirm it, but by the second one, I had already made up my mind on the matter.

I was going to be a mother in about nine months, and nothing anyone said was going to change that. I wanted my own family. I wanted a son or a daughter whom I could shower with all I love I missed from my own mom.

With the Empires game playing in the living room, I stood against the kitchen counter, cradling my belly in my arms and crying again when I imagined the life this child could have with both of his parents.

In my imagination, it was idyllic and perfect. In my mind, I vividly pictured an emerald-eyed little boy playing catch with a father he worshipped and adored. I imagined us sitting with ice cream on the couch, watching Daddy on TV.

I imagined a lot of things that deep in my heart, I didn’t think were going to happen.

Yet at the same time, I held out hope.

It wasn’t purgatory, actually – it was hell. And by the time I heard that elevator humming up to the penthouse, I was at the edge of my sanity. As I waited for Drew, I fought my own negativity with all the mights and maybes that Aly had fed me with.

Tags: Stella Rhys Irresistible Romance
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