Page 55 of Kicking Up Dust

It’s a very pointed remark and I don’t appreciate the clarity it brings. I huff anyway.

“It’ll scare her away if she knows how big my feelings for her are already.” She starts typing again. “Dammit. Fine. I’ll tell her when I get home tonight.”

“I’m not rushing you to tell her, Colt,” she says, her tone gentler now. “Tell her on your own time. I’m just advocating the reasons why you should tell her. Not just about your feelings, but about the nights on roofs and your intentions for the future as well.”

“She’ll really be scared then,” I mumble, trying to make it sound like a joke even though it’s anything but. Blair doesn’t need to know she saved me. That’s so much pressure to put on someone. She doesn’t need to know the man I was before her. She just needs to know the man I’m becoming, the one that’s trying to be even a little bit good enough for her.

My phone’s alarm goes off and I sigh, silencing it. “Goodbye until next week?”

“Til next week, Colt,” Melissa says with a gentle smile.

The love of my life is reading on the couch when I get home from work that evening. I put my hand on the back and lean down to kiss her forehead, but she tilts her chin just enough that our lips meet instead.

“Good day?” she asks when I pull back, anxious eyes, like she’s somehow worried I didn’t want her to kiss me, even after yesterday.

“Much better day now,” I tell her with a small smile. “Gonna shower really quick, and then we need to talk.”

She sits up, as quickly as she possibly can with her stomach, using the back of the couch to help pull herself forward.

“What about?” she asks, nerves apparent in her voice.

“Nothing bad. I just need to shower first so I can sit down with you on the couch.”

“We can sit outside,” she replies, just as quickly as she sat up.

I grin. “Baby, the shower’s gonna take me ten minutes, tops.”

“I’ll sit on the toilet lid. We can talk while you’re in the shower.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Colt,” she whines. “You can’t just say we need to talk and then expect me to wait and not be anxious. That’s not how it works.”

I cup her cheeks in my filthy hands against my better judgment and look her straight in her beautiful, nervous eyes.

“It’s nothing bad. I’ll be ten minutes. Why don’t you get the next episode set up for us and order pizza? I bet I’m back down here not long after you’re finished.”

I try to make the shower quick, hating the thought of her worrying, but I’m honestly shitting a brick myself. Pretty Blair with her pretty, green doe eyes and her long black hair and that swollen stomach with my kid inside. She deserves the fucking world and I’m terrified that living on a ranch in Montana, an hour from the closest mall, and nowhere near the beach, will be too much for her. Or too little, maybe.

I pull on a pair of gray sweatpants, because I know she loves them on me and it can’t hurt to have that on my side. It’s the same reason I walk into the living room shirtless, towel-drying my hair as I go.

Blair’s sitting on the sofa with a back so straight you’d think it was strapped to a pole.

“Baby,” I chastise her gently, kissing her head as I round the sofa. “I told you it wasn’t anything bad.”

“Anxiety doesn’t work like that, unfortunately,” she snaps.

“What do you think I’m going to say?” I ask her, taking a seat on the sofa beside her. “I’m sure if you’re anxious, you’ve thought of a million things it could be. What’s got you all nervous like this?”

Blair bites her bottom lip, eyes making their rounds as they trace my face.

“You’re with someone else? Or you want to be?”

I choke out a laugh.

“No, pretty girl,” I tell her after she swats at me for laughing. “You’re the only girl for me. Well… you and baby bear. I promise.”

“Then what?”