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Pressing a hand against my belly, I fight the rise of nausea.
I. Know. Him.
“I left, but not because of the baby. Not because I didn’t want her.”
“What?” I whisper, clutching at his forearms like I’m clutching at hope. “You didn’t abandon her?”
“I might as well have. We were supposed to go to school together, but then at the last minute, I changed my mind and went to Juniors. She was so hurt. So mad. We’d had a plan, but I couldn’t stick to it. I saw my shot and had to take it. I should have talked to her about it first, brought her with me, something. But I thought one of us should get to go to school. Maybe it would have been different if I did.”
“She got pregnant?”
“Just before I got picked up in the draft. I found out when I surprised her at school.” He swallows hard. Meets my eyes with a bleakness that devastates me. “She wasn’t going to tell me. I begged her to keep the baby. We were supposed to get married. We’d planned it. I bought her a ring.”
“Rux, why would she tell Waters you abandoned her?”
He looks past me. “She didn’t. She called me a while ago. Let me know he’d been digging around. When she didn’t give him anything, he must have found out about it from someone else.”
“Did she lose the baby?” It’s what the article said. But the way he said he begged her to keep it has me bracing for something else.
“She told me we could talk about it. But when I came back the next night she’d already terminated it. I—fuck, I know it’s her choice, but I was wrecked. I asked her why she wouldn’t wait for me. She was so angry.” His head drops low. “She said I’d let her down too many times already. She’d seen what kind of man I was, only good for a good time. But I was unreliable, and the only thing she could count on was if she’d decided to keep the baby with me, she’d have two children to raise alone.”
“Why would she say those things to you?” I gasp, breaking beneath the pure anguish in his words.
“She was angry. At herself. At me. It took a few years, eventually she sent me a letter. The baby wasn’t mine. She felt like I’d abandoned her at school. Saw the posts on social from me hanging with guys outside of practice. It always looked like a party. And one night she drank too much and made a bad decision. Didn’t know how to own up to it and it just got worse when I found out.” His breath leaks out and he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “If she’d told me, I would have forgiven her. I would have loved them both.”
Oh God. “Rux, I’m so sorry.”
“No.” He turns to me. “Cammy, I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry you had to find out like this. That it scared you. That it hurt you.”
“I wish you’d told me, but only because I hate that you’ve been carrying this alone all this time. I hate that there is any part of you blaming yourself.” I hate that I suddenly understand those times that he joked about never getting married because he didn’t want to have the kind of power to wreck someone’s life like that. That when he leaned in and kissed my cheek telling me he’d rather be my bestie and keep me forever… I should have told him then and there that he would never let me down.
I reach for him, stroke his cheek.
His eyes close and then, because he really is the most perfect man, he pulls me into his lap and holds me against his chest. We stay like that for a long time, just holding each other. When his hand moves over my back, I sit up and—
“What are you wearing?”
Brows buckling, he looks down… and laughs.
I press my hand to his chest, and sigh. “There’s my sunshine.” Because that’s what he is.
He shakes his head, gives me a crooked smile. “I was in kind of a rush this morning. Grabbed the first things I could get my hands on without thinking much about it.”
And apparently the first things were his tuxedo pants and the T-shirt I got him to match the panties he’d gotten for me. It says,I licked him so he’s mine, across the chest.
I run my fingers over those words, wishing they were true. Wishing this man was mine in all the ways a man could be.
I’m going to have to tell him I love him one of these days. I don’t want any more secrets between us, and he can handle it. I know him.
Rux’s big hand closes over mine.
My cheeks start to heat, and I realize what I was doing. That that reverent touch wasn’t exactly on the right side of platonic. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I mean, it’s true. You licked it and it’s yours.”
He doesn’t mean it like I want him to.
He draws that trapped hand to the center of his chest, flattening it over his heart. “But this, pretty surethishas been yours far longer than that.”
