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God, his smile was so gorgeous it made my breath hitch in my throat. I couldn’t deny my attraction to him, couldn’t deny how much I had fallen for him. I couldn’t deny how much I wanted him and how deeply I hoped for a future together, even if the thought of it was crazy.
"I...there’s something I really need to tell you," I confessed, blurting it out before I could stop myself.
My system was stirring with fear as I tried to figure out how I thought he was going to react. I had no idea if he would just storm out the moment I came out with it or hold my hand and tell me he was here for me or—shit, it was driving me crazy trying to wrap my head around it. I just needed to get it out of my system, get it into the real world so I could tell him what was happening.
"Are you okay?" He asked, frowning, his eyes searching mine with concern. "What’s going on, Thea?"
My name on his tongue—God, it lit something in me I couldn’t put out. I wanted to ask him to say it again, and again, and again, so I could listen to the sound of it, listen to the way it made me feel, but I had to be stronger than that. I had to be smarter. I had to focus on what I had come here to do, and it wasn’t to indulge myself in the sweetness of his attention, even if I would have given anything for that right now.
"I’m..." I tried to start but stopped before I could really get anywhere. How the hell was I supposed to tell him this? Really? Where did I even begin in putting it out there? Would he even believe me? Would he think this was some game I had made up for the sake of hurting him, getting to him, fucking with him? I had no idea.
I pressed my lips together, tipped my head back, and stared at the ceiling above me. Blinking, I tried to push back the tears that were threatening to slip. I didn’t want to cry. I was so hormonal right now it was difficult to control myself, and even more so with him right there in front of me, staring at me, waiting for me to say what I needed to say.
"I’m pregnant, Scott."
The words slipped from my mouth before I could stop them, and the whole world seemed to grind to a halt around us as I waited for him to say something. I dropped my gaze back to his, chewing on my lip, staring at him—needing him to react, needing him to come out with it, anything, anything at all. I would have taken any response, as long as it meant the two of us were on the same page with all of this, as long as it meant we could just open up the conversation of what the hell we were going to do next.
"You’re...pregnant?" He repeated, as though he wasn’t sure he was hearing me right.
I nodded. The tears had begun to fall down my face now. I couldn’t stop them even if I wanted to. Everything was crumbling around me, everything I had planned for myself. I had gotten pregnant by the kind of man I should have known better than to go anywhere near, and yet, here I was—here I was, having fallen for him, fallen in love with him, even though I was smarter than that. At least, I thought I had been, right up until the point I had locked eyes with him for the first time, and every bit of good sense I had been hanging on to fell away like it was nothing.
I nodded again, gathering myself.
"I took a few tests and went to the doctor," I explained. "It’s real. It’s as real as they come. Oh, my God, I still can’t believe this is happening..."
I wiped away my tears, angry with myself for letting them fall at all. I didn’t want him to feel like I was trying to manipulate him with my emotion. I just needed to know what he thought of all of this. I needed to know if this was going to be as big a problem as I feared it would be for him. When I looked at Scott, at the life he was involved in, I didn’t see someone who could just take his hands off the wheel of his father’s empire and shift to changing diapers. How could he? He had dedicated his whole life to this—his father had dedicated his life to him, for God’s sake. I couldn’t change who he was. But I knew, at the same time, I couldn’t go through all of this alone.
"So, you’re sure," he murmured, as though he was speaking to himself as much as me. I nodded.
"I’m sure," I replied. "And I’m sorry to drop it on you like this. I know it’s not exactly in your game plan, you know, to have a kid or anything, but I...I want to have this child. I don’t care if you want to be involved or not, I want to have this kid, and nothing is going to sway me from that."
"I want to have it, too."
"What?"
I stared at him momentarily, sure I must have heard him wrong. There was no way...was there? No way he could have actually just said that.
"What did you say?" I asked softly. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the real answer to that question, the real truth of what was happening in his mind right now. Because there was no way in hell he could have just said what he said, no way he could have just come out with that as though it was the most natural thing in the world. I had to have heard it wrong.
"I said, I want to have this baby, too," he replied.
I shook my head. He might have thought he could handle it, but I knew there was no way he could actually take on this enormous responsibility.
"It’s not that simple," I protested. "With your line of work...with everything you’re involved in, it wouldn’t be fair for you to have a kid..."
"I’m not involved with it anymore," he replied. The way he talked, it was like I had missed some fundamental piece of the puzzle, something obvious he had filled in and I hadn’t. I shook my head.
"What are you talking about?" I asked him. Some part of me wanted to believe this. God, some part of me wanted to just buy into anything he said that might serve as the promise I needed to get through this—that might serve as the way out I had been searching for when it came to starting over new with him, in this new life I wanted so badly. But it was going to take more than that to get me to believe him.
"After we spoke," he explained, his eyes lighting up like everything was falling into place before him. "After we spoke, I decided I had to make a change. You’re right, I was just doing what my father had set me up to do for the rest of my life, and I’d never really given any thought to the possibility that it might not be what I wanted, you know? I looked at everything he’d done, everything he’d earned over the years, and I just realized—it was not for me. It never has been. I thought it had to be, because of who I was, who my father was, but the best way I can honor his legacy is by doing what I really want."
He paused for a moment. I wondered if this was the first time he had ever said any of this out loud.
"And the more I think about it, it’s not what I want, this life he set up for me," he continued. "I want my own life. I want to be happy in my own way. It’s going to take a while to fully extricate myself from everything my father set up for me, but I’m working on it slowly but surely. By the end of the year, I’m going to be purely investing in legitimate business. And I’ve given away a lot of my earnings to charities around the city."
My eyes were so wide it felt as though they were going to bug straight out of my head. There was no way I could be hearing this, was there? No way this could actually be happening. But he was confident as he looked into my eyes, meeting my gaze steadily as he waited for me to say something. I parted my lips, trying to find the words, but nothing came to mind. Hell, I didn’t even know where to start. I felt like my head would pop with the sheer enormity of everything he had just dropped.
"You...are you being serious right now?" I asked him. I wanted to believe him. Of course, I did, but I wasn’t going to just take it all at face value. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled-up piece of paper.
