Page 23 of Plain Sight

Jameson’s brow creases. “Angel. What?”

Now is not the time to be having this discussion, but if there’s one thing that defines Jameson and I as a couple, it’s how often we collectively break the rules.

“It’s big news.” He’s knocking the breath out of me a little, too. “And I know you thought it—it wasn’t fair. To have kids.”

There’s a hitch in his hips, and then his face is in my neck again. I hold on tight to his shoulders and let him fuck me until he goes over the edge with a muffled grunt that I feel in every inch of me that exists. Jameson thrusts his way through it with deep strokes that hit me in all the spots I need to have another orgasm all over him.

He comes down slowly, his breath hot on my neck, and finally shakes his head like he’s waking up from a dream.

“I’m sorry.” Jameson picks his head up and looks me in the eye. The green swims with shadows. “I’m so sorry, Lily. I want it so much. The baby.” He swallows hard. “With you. Of course I’m not angry. I’m so happy.”

He doesn’t look happy.

“Then there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“There is.”

“Jameson.” I push his hair back from his face, doing my best to fix it with my fingers. “If you’re happy—if we’re both happy, and we are—then you don’t have to be sorry.”

“But,” he says, his eyes welling. “The baby could be like me.”

We can’t disappear indefinitely without people freaking out, so once Jameson catches his breath, he puts me back on my feet and gets his clothes back in order. He helps me fix my lipstick. I help him fix his tie. I think we both do a decent job, even with the post-sex shakiness.

At the door, Jameson takes my hand.

“It would be a good thing.”

He looks down at me, the question in his eyes.

“If the baby was like you.”

“I don’t…” He tries to smile and can’t. “I don’t think it would.”

“I know it would. And I’m the one who’s pregnant, so my opinion counts more.”

Jameson does smile at that.

“You have to promise me something, though.”

“Anything,” he says.

“You have to have a good time at the reception. We both do. If we don’t, then my grandfather wins.”

“I’m not letting some asshole named Beaufort win. Or some asshole named Malcolm.”

“I take it those names are out if the baby is a boy?”

“Those names are out,” Jameson says. “I’m putting my foot down.”

The reception is a blur of champagne and big smiles and photos upon photos. Nate insists on dancing with me in place of my absent father and terrible grandfather. He looks a lot like Mason and Gabriel and Jameson, actually—dark hair and green eyes, although his aren’t such a green-green like Jameson’s. They have a stormy, silvery gray around the outside of his irises. But it’s heartwarming, honestly, how well he fits in with his chosen family. Gabriel has clearly rubbed off on him, because Nate doesn’t dance like an awkward teen. He dances like a proud brother-in-law. I catch Lydia, who’s like a younger Elise, watching Nate from the side of the dance floor, her cheeks pink and her dark eyes shining. Their middle sister, Catherine, who has gorgeous auburn hair that I’m a little jealous of because it’s more sophisticated than mine, leans down to whisper something in Lydia’s ear, and she giggles.

Charlotte dances with Jameson in place of his mom. It’s lovely, and half the guests are wiping their eyes by the end. I catch Jameson blinking away tears, too.

We all dance until I think I might actually pass out on the dance floor from being so tired.

Is that because I’m pregnant? Or just because I got kidnapped and got married, all on the same day?

Eventually, I’m going to have an adult experience in my new life that isn’t affected by a kidnapping.