Page 103 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I step out of Asher’s arms and cross to him, sliding the empty glass aside so I can sit directly across from him on the edge of the coffee table, my knees nearly touching his. I take both his hands in mine.

“Maddox. Please be honest with me. If you can’t⁠—”

“It’s not that, sweetheart.” He shakes his head fast, like he needs to cut me off before I finish the thought. “I just. I know it’s not mine.”

“What?”

He takes a breath, long enough that I can see it cost him something.

“I had a vasectomy done a few years back. My life wasn’t exactly built for kids back then, and even now, you know how hard it is for me to stay in one place longer than a few weeks before I’m gone again.”

Something in my chest cracks a little at that, quiet and small, and I push the feeling aside because it isn’t mine to sit with right now. He looks at me, and for a man who can talk his way through anything, he looks almost defeated.

“But if you were the mom? I wouldn’t have even considered it.”

I look at him for a long moment, taking in everything he’s just handed me. The decision he made years ago because he genuinely believed his life had no room in it for a kid, and the quiet, unguarded admission underneath it, that the only thing that would have changed his mind was a version of this exact moment with a woman like me sitting across from him. It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever heard him say, and it costs him visibly to say it, his hazel eyes not quite meeting mine until he’s finished.

“Maddox, look at me.”

He does, and I squeeze his hands and scoot closer, my knees brushing his now.

“Hey. You made the decision that felt right for you at the time, okay? Don’t you dare be upset about that.” I let a small laugh slip in. “This baby, whoever they are, regardless of whose sperm won the race.”

That gets a soft huff of a laugh out of him, exactly what I was going for.

“You’ll be their parent too. Biology doesn’t make a parent. It doesn’t make family. Showing up does. Loving someone enough to actually listen when they mess up instead of judging them for it, and guiding them somewhere better instead. You’ve never once deserted Sophia, and we both know she’s made loving her a challenging adventure plenty of times.”

He snorts. “That’s the nicest way anyone’s ever put that.”

I smile through the tears still sitting in my eyes. “She calls you Uncle Mad Max, Maddox. You never gave up on her. Never judged her, never scolded her. You were there when Killian couldn’t be, when Asher couldn’t be, when I couldn’t be. You don’t go from godfather, which is just a title people hand out to friends and relatives that half of them never actually follow through on, to being someone’s uncle in every way that counts, the way that actually matters when it’s two in the morning and someone needs a ride home or a place to fall apart without an audience. Chosen family is formidable. It’s foundational. It’s a kind of love that rivals blood and vows and every legal document anyone’s ever signed.”

I take his face in both hands so he has nowhere else to look.

“So if you want this, Maddox, and I really hope you do, this baby is going to be so lucky to be part of your family.”

His hands come up over mine, his eyes falling shut.

“Our family,” I say again, softer.

He breathes it back. “Our family.”

I grin so wide it feels like my whole body’s lit up from somewhere underneath my skin.

“Our family.”

He smiles, full and unguarded, and before I can brace for it his hands drop to my waist and pull me straight into his lap, a yelp turning into a laugh as his arm bands around my lower back and pins me flush against him. His fingers trace the curve of my neck, slow enough that my skin prickles all the way down, and then they slide up into my hair at the back of my neck, gathering it loosely into his fist, not hard, just enough to tip my face exactly where he wants it.

He kisses me like every version of the two of us meets in it at once. Slow. Deep. Not rushed, not just heat, but layer after layer of everything we’ve been through to get here, the devotion and the promises and the fights and the tears and all the frustration underneath it, until my head goes soft and floaty and there’s nothing left in the room but his mouth on mine, his fingers still tangled in my hair, the warmth of his chest under my palms, the faint trace of whiskey still on his tongue.

When he finally pulls back, he keeps his lips an inch from mine.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and kisses me again before I can say anything back.

38

ASHER

Harper’s still in Maddox’s lap, and the kiss has gone from something sweet into something neither of them seems interested in slowing down, her fingers curled into his shirt, his hand still tangled in her hair, and I should probably look away out of some sense of decorum I clearly don’t possess tonight, because instead I just stand here watching them with my chest doing something I don’t have a clean word for.