"Hey," she said. Her voice was rough with sleep.
"Hey." I looked at her. At the pup tucked under her chin. At the particular way she'd positioned herself on my floor to stay close to the one that needed her most. "How long have you been down here?"
"I don't know." She blinked. "What time is it?"
"Seven, eight maybe?"
She started to sit up and I put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. She went still and looked at me, and I watched her try to read my face.
"Wyatt—"
"I'm not losing you," I said. "That's what I came to say. I'm not—I don't want to lose you, Haven. I don't want to be the man who had everything he wanted and talked himself out of it." My voice came out rough. "I want you. I want the baby. I want you in my kitchen and in my bed and I want to watch you become the best vet in this county, which you will, because you're already better at this than half the people I know." I stopped. Looked at my hands for a second, then back at her. "I was scared. I've been scared since February and I kept dressing it up as doing right by you, but that was—that was about me. Not you."
Haven was very still.
The pup stirred against her chest and she steadied it automatically.
"I lied to you," she said quietly. "About the pill."
"I know."
"I should have told you."
"Yeah," I said. "You should have." I held her eyes. "And I should have told you two months ago that this wasn't an arrangement. That it hadn't been an arrangement since about the third night." I reached out and tucked a piece of hair back from her face, my thumb dragging across her cheek. "We both kept things we shouldn't have. That's where we are."
She looked at me.
"So what do we do now?" she said.
"You get up off my floor," I said. "And we figure it out together."
Her eyes went bright. She blinked it back, because she was Haven, and she didn't cry in front of people if she could help it.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay," I said.
The pup made a small sound between them. Haven looked down at it, then back up at me.
"She made it," she said softly. "I've been watching her. She's gonna be okay."
I looked at the pup. At Haven's hand curved around it.
"Yeah," I said. "She is."
SIXTEEN
Haven
The property was so quiet…so peaceful.
And everything wasright.
I knew we hadn’t figured everything out—not yet, that was going to take time—but we’d at least figured out a little. We were going to keep this baby. We were going to do it together.
We were going to go public with our relationship, because his family already knew anyway, apparently…and if I was being honest with myself, the Holts were my whole world. Had been for a while.
I texted Amber while I sat at the table, Wyatt whipping something up in the kitchen. We’d barely spoken since deciding this was happening; we were letting it sit, letting the silence fill us up and turn into something more like peace.
