“Got it.” They stumbled into the entry and he slammed the door behind them, the glass rattling in the frame. Brooklyn nearly flattened him against the wall. He yanked her closer, needing her in a way he’d forgotten about. She was already untucking his shirt and undoing the buttons, the air soft and cool on his overheated skin. Her lips molded perfectly to his. Like he and Brooklyn were meant to do this.
“I want you so bad, Brooklyn.” He couldn’t disguise the rumble in his voice, the way it came out like a growl. There was too much pent up need inside him.
“I want you, too.” She went right back to kissing him, wrapping her hands around his biceps and pressing her hips into his.
Everything below his waist went tight. He thought his legs might snap at the knees if they weren’t so pleasantly warm right now, the blood coursing through his veins and making him feel alive in a way he hadn’t felt in quite some time.
“Our conversation at the restaurant. It just… it meant a lot to me that you’re so supportive.” Her lips were slack and beckoning, her eyes bright in the dim light. “I was really nervous to go out with you tonight. To talk to you about everything.”
“Don’t be nervous. It’s just me.” He kissed her neck, wishing for a little less talking.
“But it’s not always easy to tell you things. I sometimes worry what you’ll think of me. I’m just so glad that you’re excited about me wanting to become a mom. I was sure you were going to say that I’m off my rocker. Tell me that I work too much.”
Alec found it peculiar that she chose to zero in on that particular point in their conversation. He raised his head and looked her square in the eye. “You mean you’rethinkingabout motherhood. That’s what you said.Thinking.”
She shook her head with so much conviction that it made him freeze. “No. I’m actively pursuing it. I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Don’t have a lot of time? Are you sick?”
“No, not that. It’s just that my doctor said it’s now or never. I’m losing eggs at an alarming rate. I can’t put it off anymore.”
“So, right now. As in immediately?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes. The clock is ticking. I thought that was what you wanted from me. To take things more seriously. Wasn’t that your big complaint when we were together?”
“It was. But that’s not what I’m fixated on right now.” The gears of Alec’s brain were all gummed up with Brooklyn’s words, and that made the rest of his body tense up in a way that was no longer erotic.
“It’s very simple. I want to have a baby. I’m probably going to have to find a sperm bank to make that happen.” She set her sights on the ceiling. “Or maybe I’ll manage to get pregnant the old-fashioned way. If that’s in the cards.”
He was starting to put this together. His apartment. His well-known enthusiasm for sex with her. His neighborhood and her family’s crazy way of naming children. “Is that why you wanted to come to my place? You want to get pregnant and name the baby Chelsea?”
“I hadn’t even thought about that. I guess it was shortsighted of me to get an apartment in Tribeca.” She grimaced. “Do you seriously think I would try to trick you into getting me pregnant?”
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘trick’, but I do think you get carried away. And that you might assume I’m on the same page as you, and I am definitely not. At all. I don’t think fatherhood is for me. Not anymore. I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.”
“Hold on. Mr. Serious doesn’t want to have a family? When did this happen?”
“I thought I did, but everything changed when it didn’t work out with you.”
“Because of our breakup?”
Alec had hoped to put this entire chapter behind him. To never speak of it again. It was the only time in his life he’d completely fallen apart. And it had taken therapy to put himself back together. But part of moving on was owning up to his own shortcomings, and recognizing that we all make mistakes. “I need to tell you something. I was going to propose to you that weekend you were supposed to meet me in Bermuda. I had a ring and a whole romantic weekend planned. And you didn’t show up. And I was crushed. Destroyed.”
“Propose? Alec, we’d only been dating forfourmonths…”
“I realize that. Hold on one sec. Just let me finish.” This was why he hadn’t wanted to talk about this. He hated having to explain himself, especially when it was a rehashing of an instance in which he’d not been thinking straight. “After we talked, and I learned that you hadn’t missed your flight but had actually forgotten completely about when the trip was, I was devastated. But I had a lot of time to think about it in that hotel room over several days, and I came to realize that we weren’t on the same wavelength at all. We never had been. I’d built our relationship into something that it wasn’t, all because it was something that I wanted. I knew then that I really needed to reassess where my life was. I’d made a big mistake in planning it at all.”
“So why didn’t you call me later? Once you’d realized all of this?”
“I just told you. We weren’t on the same page. And we’re clearly not now, either. Life is all about timing, Brooklyn. And you can’t force it. Either you have it right or you don’t.”
“I can’t believe you never told me.”
“Well, I’m telling you now.”
“You broke my heart that night and dinged my entire sense of self.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not like I came out of the whole thing unscathed, either.” His mouth went dry, knowing what he had to say next. “So this probably isn’t a good idea. Not unless we talk about things. A lot of things.”
