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“And you’re still going to live in San Antonio?”
“My business is there.”
“Mine’s here.”
“I know.”
“How would we explain it to everyone?”
“Tell them to mind their own business. How is this any worse than you having a baby on your own?”
“I’d still have the final say in this child’s life,” she said, and Blake’s heart sped up.
She was seriously considering this.
He’d never actually thought she would.
“Agreed.”
“Do you plan to be involved even before the baby’s born?”
He hadn’t allowed himself to think that far, but…“Yes.”
“Doctor’s visits, too?”
“Yes.”
She glanced at him a time or two. “And no sex.”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
He could hardly breathe. But the tightness in his chest was panic-based. He felt a rebirth of hope combined with good old-fashioned excitement.
“Okay, then I’ll marry you.” Annie’s words were every dream he’d had in that hellhole come true.
“But no sex.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ONCE HE HAD HER AGREEMENT to marry, Blake wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. The baby was already coming, and he wanted everything securely tied up before the first doctor’s appointment.
He wanted to attend that visit as the baby’s legal father, as Annie’s next of kin and as the one who would have power of attorney if anything ever happened to her.Annie hoped that, deep inside, in those places Blake didn’t dare access, he just really wanted to marry her again that badly.
And she feared the same. Going in with her eyes open this time meant that she knew there were no guarantees in life. No harbor that was completely safe. Life didn’t work that way.
Losing her little-girl perspective was hard. But liberating, at the same time. The world was a new place, full of possibility, now that the constraints of unrealistic expectation didn’t hold her back.
It was also fraught with the pitfalls that she’d pretended to herself, all these years, she’d been avoiding.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Becky asked her Wednesday evening as they shared a salad at the local restaurant while Becky waited for Shane to finish football practice. She, or her father, were taking him to and from every single activity, including school, for the next several weeks.
She’d nailed his window shut. And had spent the previous evening scrubbing at his door hinge until it had a permanent squeak.
“I’m sure,” Annie told her friend, her mind coming back to Becky’s question. And she was. Scared, but completely sure.
“So what’s changed? Why is it you think he’s not going to break your heart again?”
“He might,” Annie said simply. “But my heart’s not any better off without him than it would be if I’m with him and he breaks it. I hurt either way. I guess I’d rather hurt with him than without him.”
