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“I’ve never been more turned on.” I sniffled. “I can’t believe you’re hugging me right now. You must have the longest arms in history.”
“Hey.”
I looked up at him. “What?”
He turned me by my shoulders to face the double ovens, our reflection slightly distorted in the chrome and glass doors. “I know you’re joking, but please tell me you know how exceptionally beautiful you are right now. If you don’t, I haven’t done a good enough job showing you.”
My chin trembled. Again. “I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like myself.”
“Like the doctor said, you are perfectly within the size and weight you should be.”
“For carrying a nine-and-a-half-pound baby—you forgot that part.”
He grimaced. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have fallen for a giant.”
Soon enough, I’d hold a Manning-sized baby in my arms.
Manning’s son. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to say that, and now I couldn’t imagine our lives any other way than with a little boy, our third star.
I covered Manning’s hands on my shoulders. “Yeah, poor me.”
He released me with a pat on the butt. “You better get back to the party before everyone makes a break for it. I heard a little bit of my moody bitch in there.”
With a reluctant sigh, I started to leave the kitchen, then paused to look back at him. “You never said who was on the phone.”
He hesitated. “We can talk about it after.”
“After the shower?”
“After the birth.”
I turned around, blinking at him. “All right, Sutter. Out with it.”
“With what?”
“Whatever’s been going on the past couple months that you’re not telling me.”
Vega rolled onto her side and groaned, as if to say “here we go.”
“It’s a sad story,” he said, sniffing as he peeked into a Tupperware of blue sugar cookies on the island. “A problem I don’t know how to fix, and trust me—it’ll only make you cry.”
“I won’t cry, I promise.” I tried to look serious, but the truth was, I routinely felt on the verge of tears. I turned to get a glass from a cupboard so he wouldn’t see me falter, and also because my mouth was minutes away from shriveling into a desert.
“If you insist.” As I opened the freezer, he checked through the doorway to ensure nobody was listening. “It was Cheryl.”
I paused while scooping ice into my glass. “From the adoption agency?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? They know we’re pregnant.”
“She and I have kept in touch the past couple months. She’d called back in March with this case—a boy she thought we could help with, and you wouldn’t believe this kid’s story . . .” He scratched his jaw, leaning on the island. “It hit a little close to home for me, so I asked her to keep me updated.”
“Close to home?” I could tell by the look on his face this was serious. I braced myself with a long drink of water. I would’ve considered pouring the rest over my head if I didn’t need to be presentable a little longer. I set down the glass, took a breath, and steadied myself against the island opposite him. “Okay. Who is he?”
“Nine-year-old boy who’s, as of a few months ago, an orphan.”
“Oh, poor baby,” I said, pressing my palm to my heart. “What happened to his parents?”
“His mom passed after he was born.”
“And his dad?”
“Dead. The boy killed him—”
“What?” I asked so sharply, Vega raised her head.
“Let me finish.” He tapped a finger on the island’s surface. “The kid shot his dad while protecting his eleven-year-old sister from what Cheryl said could’ve been a fatal beating.”
I dropped my jaw. Now I understood why it hit close to home. Manning, too, had intervened with his father to protect his sister. Unfortunately, it hadn’t resulted quite the same way. “I can’t believe that.”
“Apparently, the kid knew where his dad kept his gun and when push came to shove, he just . . . snapped.”
“He didn’t snap. He saved her.” Snapped was a word Manning used in reference to his dad’s temper. I knew that possibility scared him, in himself and in others, but this wasn’t the same. “And now the boy’s alone? What about the sister?”
“Relatives took her in. This is the worst part—they don’t want anything to do with him.”
The hair on my skin prickled. For the first time in recent history, sad news didn’t actually make me want to cry. It made my already warm face heat with a familiar sense of frustration for a boy who’d been wronged. A familiar sense of injustice. For the kid, and for my Manning, an innocent man who’d had enough experience being unfairly defined by his criminal past. “Wow,” I said, my heart racing. “Where is he now?”
“A group home, but Cheryl’s worried there are bad influences there.”
“How worried?” I asked.
He blew out a sigh. “Enough to call on a Sunday to see if I’d found anyone who could . . . help.”
