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“Do you want a girl?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it while not getting too attached to the idea until I know for sure.”
“That’s smart.”
“It is. But I kind of want a boy.” Honey gazed up at me. “Feels like Reagan should have a brother.”
I buried my face in her hair. “You always say the right thing.”
“I knew it.” She pulled back to give me a triumphant grin. “You think you’re the only one capable of drawing out information, Officer. Ha!”
I laughed and drew her into the center of the kitchen to dance mid-dishwashing just as my parents used to do. Probably still did for all I knew. We didn’t even need music. It took her a minute to give in and move with me, but then she dipped her head to my shoulder and swayed with me as if we’d done this a hundred times before.
“When I’m in your arms, I’m not scared.”
“Good.”
“The rest of the time, my knees are knocking.”
“Join the club.”
She turned her head to peek up at me under the fall of her hair. “You never seem freaked out.”
“Me freaked out? Never.” I tucked her hair behind her ear. “But just so you know, I’m lying. I get scared all the fucking time.”
“Does it help when you’re holding me?”
I traced my finger around her ear. “Holding you helps with everything.” I tightened my hold on her. “You never asked. Well, after the first day, anyway, and that was partly to antagonize me.”
“Asked what?”
“About the flask.”
“Oh. That. I tried to give you space until you were ready to talk about it.”
“I’d just spoken to Reagan and she told me she’d been accepted at SU early decision. And she was going to go.”
Honey leaned back in my embrace to study my face. “But that was a good thing, right? Why did it send you to the bottle?”
“I don’t even know why I even had that flask in my desk. Maybe I just figured one day my wall of lies would come crashing down.”
“Reagan’s mother put you in that position.Notyou.”
Honey always leaped to defend me. No matter what. Somehow I’d done something right to deserve this woman in my life.
I lifted her chin with my thumb. “After Reagan’s phone call, I knew that I’d have to tell my family and hell, the whole town about my colossal screw-up. Not making my girl. That I wasn’t the man who could be accepted as her father without fucking drama.”
“You know that was her mother’s choice. It had nothing to do with you.”
I looked away. Logic and what I felt down deep in the middle of the night were two very different things.
“Christian.” Honey grabbed my face between her hands and made me look at her. “I couldn’t ask for a better baby daddy. Could. Not. Ask. For. A. Better. One.”
“St. John’s Wort apparently sometimes messes with birth control.”
“Huh?”
“The tea. After news about us hit the gossip mill, Luna warned me. When she’d first sold it to me for my mom, she hadn’t figured she needed to tell me since, well, for my mom that ship has sailed. But she wanted to make sure I knew in case I was tempted to give you some. I didn’t think twice about it, because I couldn’t do anything about it at that point. I assumed we were covered since, you know, we used condoms too. But I knew not to give you more.”
