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IwatchedMackenzie’sfaceas different emotions flickered across it.
“I don’t know how you think this is going to work,” she said. She tried very hard to keep her face an expressionless mask. “You can’t just give me a work contract and think that fixes anything.”
“I pulled out of the contract because you deserve to have it,” I said. “Not because I’m trying to buy you over. I was a dick. I hurt you. I’ve always been so serious about winning that I didn’t realize in winning the contract, I was reallylosing. I was losing you.”
Mackenzie shook her head, turned her eyes to the mocktail in front of her.
“I’m pregnant, Troy.”
“I know.”
“You don’t want kids.”
I took a deep breath. “I know.”
“That makes it very simple then, doesn’t it?”
“I want you,” I said again. “And everything that comes with it. It’s not that I don’t want kids. I meant, Idon’twant kids… at least, I didn’t.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
I took a deep breath. “Losing my brother was tough. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do and probably ever will do, and for a long, long time, I held onto that so tightly, it started to define me. Now, I’ve realized that I can’t keep focusing on loss because then that’s all there will be for me. Loss. It’s all I see, and all I expect, and as a result, it’s all I get.”
Mackenzie watched me, her expressionless mask perfected now. I powered on.
“I didn’t want kids because I know what it feels like to lose someone, and I was terrified that having kids would just be more people in my life I could lose. I mean, Jake was just a kid, and the hole was just…” I took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “Somewhere long ago, in my childlike mind, I figured that if I didn’t have kids, I couldn’t lose someone because Jake was a kid, and we lost him, so it was safer that way. The thing is, seeing you with your sister’s kids when we spent time together, and spending time with the kids too, I realized that it’s pretty damn great. Kids are such a breath of fresh air and they’re so full of life and that’s what’s been missing for me.”
Mackenzie blinked at me. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want you and I want the baby and I want a family. I want to have everything I never thought I could.”
“You’re not afraid of losing it all?”
“Always,” I said. “I don’t think that fear will ever fully go away, but I’d rather have you and our baby and give this a real shot than not have any of this at all.”
Mackenzie’s stared at me stoically until her eyes welled with tears and her face crumpled.
I reached over the table and took her hand as she cried.
“I want to be there for you and for the baby. I want to support you and take care of you. I’ll do that even if you decide you don’t want this with me—I’ll be there to help and look after the baby and whatever else you need but, Mackenzie, I’d rather we do this together. I love you.”
“I love you too.” Mackenzie cried, her tears steady streams over her cheeks now. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. I stood up and walked around the table, sliding into the booth next to her. I pulled her against me, and she cried against my chest.
Finally, she looked up at me, her bright eyes still shimmering with tears.
I wiped her tears away, dipped my head, and kissed her.
This was right. This was what was meant to be.
Me, Mackenzie, and the baby.
A family.
34
MACKENZIE
Ihadbeenreadyto do it all alone. It would have been hard as hell, and I’d been terrified of that, but I’d been ready to take on the world the way I’d done with everything else. I wasn’t a stranger to doing it by myself, to have to figure out life because my story was so different from everyone else’s.
