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Dean rises from the couch and moves closer, looking into my eyes and pressing his hand against my stomach. The feel of his palm is warm and soothing—the kind of touch you want to sink into.
“Between your creativity and my brain and superior athletic skills, our kid is going to be all kinds of outstanding.”
Our kid.
It’s not a phrase I’m used to hearing, but I like the sound of it. And for the first time in ever, I let myself imagine how it could be to not do this alone. To have someone to share it all with.
The thought is really, really nice.
When you get used to carrying a weight around on your shoulders for so long, you don’t realize how heavy it actually is until it’s been lifted off.
I put my hand over Dean’s and smile. “Yeah.”
“Moooom!” Jason’s dragged-out voice cuts through the intimacy of the moment. “What’s for dinner?”
The question of teenage boys around the world.
Dean glances at his watch. “How about you and Jay come to my house for dinner? You can meet Grams. I have to pick her up from movie night at the senior center.”
That fluttery feeling plummets like an inner-tube on a waterslide—straight down.
“Grams?”
“My grandmother. My parents aren’t in the picture, I don’t have brothers or sisters. Grams raised me. She’s the only family I have.”
“Oh.” I tap my fingers on my stomach. “Does she know about the baby?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t you think you should tell her first?”
He seems confused. “That’s what we’d be doing—telling her.”
Apparently, once Dean is on board with something, it’s full steam ahead. It must be the football coach in him—gotta move that ball down the field. Go, team, go.
His eyes search mine. “What’s the problem, Lainey?”
“Is it a good idea to just spring it on her like that? I’m going to show up at her house pregnant and with my teenage son—two children, with two different fathers. Your grandmother is from a whole other generation . . . won’t she think I’m, like . . . a whore?”
Dean throws his head back and laughs, deep and rumbly. And that Adam’s apple is there—taunting me again with its sexiness.
Maybe I am a whore.
Dean’s laughter fades as he looks down at me. “Back in the day, Grams was an attorney. She had my mom later in life and worked a lot when she was growing up—her office was in the city. Her main area of expertise was women’s rights—sexual harassment claims, fighting for equal pay, abortion rights. She’s burned her bra on the steps of the capital and argued before the Supreme Court. Though not on the same day.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Yeah.” Dean nods. “But the moral of the story is you could have seven kids by eight different fathers and she wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. You’re having her first great-grandchild and I’m happy when I’m around you—that’s all that’s going to matter to her.”
His words trip around in my head. “I . . . make you happy?”
Seems a little early to make that call.
But that playboy smile drags across his lips and his voice goes low.
“You make me hard.”
Like a magnet to metal, my eyes make a beeline for Dean’s crotch. And—oh my—he is hard. The long, thick outline of him strains against the zipper of his jeans. My mouth waters, remembering the taste of him and the hot, smooth feel of his flesh against my tongue.
“The happy tends to follow close after the hard, so yeah—I think happy qualifies in this situation.”
Deans leans in and presses a quick kiss to my cheek.
“Don’t be nervous, Lainey. I’ve got you.”
~ ~ ~
Mr. Giles, Lakeside’s local carpenter, has a few scrap pieces he said I could pick up tonight, so I suggest taking my truck to pick up Dean’s Gram and the wood along the way.
Dean stands in the driveway. “Sure. I’m confident enough in my manhood to ride bitch.”
Beside him, Jason strikes a similar stance, nodding.
“Me too. I don’t mind riding bitch.”
And I wonder if Dean knows he’s got a burgeoning mini-me who already idolizes him.
He opens the truck door and shuts it closed behind me after I climb aboard. I don’t get out of the truck when we get to Mr. Giles’s place, but instead watch in the rearview mirror, with a strange swirly tenderness swooping through my belly, as Dean and Jay load the long boards of oak into the bed for me.
Then Dean directs me across town, and we pull up in front of the school-size brick building of the senior center. He hops out and a few minutes later, exits the building with a petite, gray-haired woman—literally half his size—shuffling along beside him.
Dean opens the passenger side door. From behind round, violet glasses that take up more than half her face, his grandmother peers bewilderedly at the distance between the ground and the seat.
