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“It is. There’s no reason we can’t start planning a wedding, but we’re definitely not ready for a baby.”
“Remind me again why not? You graduate in less than six months. If I knock you up now—”
I widened my eyes. “We won’t even be married by then.”
He shrugged, slipping a firm hand inside the blanket and down my ribs. “So maybe your wedding dress is a little snug around the middle.”
“Manning—”
He groaned, walking me back until my ass hit the counter. “You have any idea what that image does to me, you as a pregnant bride?”
Truthfully, it did things to me, too. For years, it’d been our plan to wait until I’d been working a year or two, but that didn’t mean I didn’t think about it all the time. “I’m supposed to start looking for a job soon.”
“There’s always a reason for us not to be together, not to get married, not to have a baby,” he said, gathering up the throw to expose my thigh. “If we’ve done nothing else right in our lives, we have bad timing down to an art, so why fight it?”
Manning’s fiendish need for a baby excited me, and not just because he was growing hard against my stomach. That happened whenever he went into protect, provide, mate mode. But tonight, his impatience made me pause. I needed to know there was no chance Manning needed a baby to fill a hole left by both his family and mine. Manning would never accept an unfilled hole in my soul. I owed him the same. I could give him back a family he’d once had. If I was the only thing keeping him from them, I couldn’t be selfish any longer.
Maybe Manning was right about this. He knew the true meaning of a bad father. I’d kept my dad at arm’s length for so long and for reasons I wasn’t even sure were still important to me. It was hard to hold a grudge when I had the life I’d always wanted. I could’ve grown up in a household like Manning’s. Instead, my parents had done nothing but try to give me every opportunity. As Manning held onto me, his trust in me as solid as ever, I had to admit I’d done wrong by him. I hadn’t thought of how deeply all of this impacted him. Not only did I want Manning to be a father, but I wanted him to have one, too. I hadn’t acted that way, though. I’d given Manning shit on more than one occasion for keeping in touch with my dad. For too long, I’d pretended as if their relationship was a problem, when the reality was, in Manning’s eyes, it was probably a gift.
I sighed heavily, defeat working its way through me. Manning held me close as my body went slack. “What is it?” he asked.
“My mom invited me for Sunday dinner recently.”
“Me too,” he said. “She does every few months. You tell her no. I tell her no.”
What was I thinking? I wasn’t sure. I only knew if I didn’t make a move now, it might be another decade before I worked up the nerve to see them again. And I wasn’t waiting that long to marry the man in front of me. “What if he doesn’t want to make things right?” I muttered. “What if I go there and my own dad can’t even look at me?”
“Then I’ll make him look at you. Show him this has gone on too long. I will do everything in my power to mend what’s missing in your life, and if I can’t, you’ll have to be satisfied knowing it’ll only be you and me—but it’ll always be you and me.”
I smiled a little. “I suppose I can live with that.”
I’d thought many times about contacting my dad; I’d just never considered actually doing it. The thought terrified me, but Manning had given me so much over the years, I wanted to do this for him, and for our relationship. And, if I was honest, for myself. I missed my father, regardless of how he’d treated us, and I’d gone long enough on my own. Maybe that should have strengthened my resolve, knowing I could live without him, but I wanted my family back in my life. Not only my dad, but my sister, too, if she and I could ever move past the man between us.
It was time to go home.
4
Standing before my parents’ front door, Manning and I were faced with a version of the same welcoming holiday wreath my mother had hung every year of my childhood—crisp greenery offset by a red, poufy felt bow. Like always, the cul-de-sac curved with neat lawns, and LED lights trimmed every roof, even weeks after Christmas. An ocean breeze cooled the back of my neck. Not much had changed in the years since I’d moved away, and yet, everything was different.
