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“Luck.”
I went in circles for a few minutes, trying to orient myself. I hadn’t been a journalism student so I wasn’t familiar with this particular building. It was huge and seemed like a damn maze in my current state of mind. But when I didn’t find him inside, I pushed through the door out to the courtyard and found him sitting on the stone wall we’d passed on the way in.
All of a sudden, I was afraid again. What if I made things worse? It was so easy to do. He was understandably traumatized, and I sucked at emotional stuff.
But I made myself go outside. The frosty air slapped at my face though Christian sat immovable like a stone. Impervious to such rudimentary things as cold.
I sat beside him on the wall. “Hi.”
He didn’t answer, just tugged off his gloves and pushed them at me. I’d forgotten mine and he’d finally remembered his because I was always nagging him.
That was what love was. Taking care in the small ways, not just the large. But that didn’t mean you could trip up on the big things. You had to somehow get all of it right more than you fucked up.
“I love you,” I said quietly as he turned to pierce me with those intense steely blue eyes. They were like damn lasers shooting right through me. “I probably loved you even before you loved me, so yeah, whatever. I just didn’t say it.”
“Impossible. I loved you from the first night.”
I pointed at him. “You just wanted to get me naked. Don’t say stuff like that to me just because…well, you know why.” I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “Mav told me about Reagan at lunch and that’s when I got up to toss my cookies. I tried to tell myself it was just the shock. I was just upset. Vee came in to the bathroom at Brewed Awakening to see if I was okay.”
“My sister-in-law knows too. Okay. Great. Everyone but me. Is that who you were texting?”
“No, that was my pain in the ass brother who now calls himself Mr. Mom.” At Christian’s sidelong look, I shook my head. “Don’t ask. I think he’s worried about me.”
“As he should be. Dude who totally inappropriately came onto you now possibly impregnated you.”
“Can you stop beating yourself up? Do you not remember me basically demanding you take me home?”
“I actually don’t remember that.”
“It was heavily implied soon as I called you for a ride. I knew we’d go somewhere private and not to play cards.”
“That’s one thing. You didn’t expect—”
“I didn’t expect to fall in love with you. I definitely didn’t expect getting a bonus daughter too. Even if I don’t quite know how to be a friend-slash-bonus mom to her, I’m willing to try. And you know what? I’ll probably fall in love with her as fast as I fell for you. As for our baby…” I tugged on his gloves just so I could feel some of his warmth.
He still seemed so far away. So remote.
As if I’d ruined all the closeness that we’d built so easily between us. Crumbled by my selfishness.
“As for our baby…” he echoed softly.
“If there is a baby,” I reminded him.
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember how I said I wanted kids of my own rather than a classroom of them? Well, guess that timeline got speeded up.”
His jaw worked and I didn’t know if he was trying to find words or what. I inched closer to him on the stone wall, the cold seeping through my thin dress and into my very bones. At least until he turned toward me and hauled me onto his lap, enveloping me so totally in his embrace that I didn’t know how I’d ever been cold.
Or afraid. Or felt alone. Not with this big, beautiful man beside me.
“You’re mine,” he said fiercely.
“Yes. And you’re mine.”
He nodded so hard I was afraid he’d snap a vertebrae. “Both of you. Mine. Promise me.”
“I promise you.” My teeth started to chatter and it wasn’t from the cold. I just couldn’t broker all the emotions flooding through my overwhelmed system. “I promise,” I repeated, framing his face in my hands.
