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Elden looked up from my feet. “Know that too, baby.”
“I want you to like her,” I said, biting my lip.
“I do like her.”
I raised a brow.
“Look at me like that all you like,” he murmured. “It’s true.”
My brow did not lower. “Youlikeliving here?” I waved at the room. It was large with enough room for a plush armchair by the bay window where I had a small bookshelf that now housed a bunch of Elden’s books. He read there often. Most of them were baby books those days.
Not that he read them for long. Whenever I walked into the room, saw him holding a book, with his reading glasses on … my pregnancy hormones went wild.
There was a closet that was large enough for both of our clothes, only because his clothes consisted of a handful of tees, Henleys, jeans and motorcycle boots.
My desk was nestled on one wall, cluttered with textbooks, a computer and some bottles of perfume.
It was cozy, it felt nice … wonderful actually. But it was a room in a shared house in a college town. Not permanent or suitable to raise a baby.
Nor was his room at the club, the place we’d been living before we came here. I’d spoken to my professors, who had been pretty fricking understand—so understanding I worried that Elden somehow got to them—about me structuring the finishing of my degree around my pregnancy. There was even a suggestion that I finish my last the semester online. You could do anything online these days. I hadn’t told Elden about that yet because I didn’t know how I felt about it.
As much as I didn’t feel right in the college atmosphere, I loved this house, loved living with my friends. If I completed my degree in Garnett, the decisions I’d been avoiding—like where we were going to live, what exactly we were to each other and what I was going to do with the rest of my life—would become unavoidable.
“I do actually,” Elden answered the question I’d forgotten I’d asked because I was lost in my own head. “I like it because you’re here. I like seeing the way you live your life. Like being a part of it.”
“You’ve always been a part of my life,” I admitted. “Ever since that night on the roof.” I considered that night. The one that seemed to have occurred decades ago.
Elden was staring at me with his forehead wrinkled.
“Where do you want to live?” he asked after staring at me like that for a few moments.
“What do you mean?”
“When you graduate. You have goals for yourself, dreams. Big ones.” He glanced to where I had all my work splayed out on the bed. “And you’re fuckin’ talented. You could be designing museums, winning awards. You shouldn’t be wasting away in some town in the middle of the desert.”
That was then I got it. He was worried. About dragging me down. There I’d been, stuck in my own head, worrying about labels, about admitting what I really wanted when it was in direct conflict with what I thought I wanted, and he was ruminating onthat.
“I know that, after your bachelor’s, you were planning on studying for three more years,” he continued. “Rhode Island chapter would be happy to have me if that were the case. We’ll find somewhere close to campus—”
I sat up, silencing him with my finger on his lips. “You’ve been thinking about all of that?”
“Of course, I have.” He grasped my wrist and kissed my hand.
“And you would move … to a new state, a new club, a new house. For me.” My hand went to my stomach. “For us.”
He gave me a look that I guessed was meant to communicate that he’d do anything for me.
Which he would. He’d move here for me. Move to a new club. Uproot his life.
I digested all of this, looking around the room that had been mine yet was now both of ours. The life that was mine now ours. “I wasn’t planning on meeting you,” I informed him. “And when I did, I wasn’t planning on falling in love with you, even though I hada lotof fantasies about you.”
Elden’s eyes dilated. “We’re gonna be talkin’ about those later.”
His words went straight to my core. “We will,” I promised, already having trouble finding my train of thought.
I found his icy gaze again. “Before you, before I left for France, my life was about plans. Since I was a baby, my life had been planned out for me. The school. The Ivy League college. The further study after. A fancy job. When the time is right, a fancy man. A McMansion, preferably in a Stepford town similar to how I grew up.”
I drew in a deep breath, wishing it would alleviate the chill that raced down my spine at the memories
