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Hazel rolled her eyes. “Of course. Plus, I saw his hand on your knee the other day when you were here together.”
Phyllis glanced up at her. “It’s complicated. Quinn wants to have a baby. Kenan has said for years he didn’t want kids. He’s going to have to figure out he can do both, and she’s going to have to believe it.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered.
Hazel studied me, her gaze kind. “It’s never simple. Here’s the funny thing. Some people plan to have babies, then have one and break up because it’s not what they expected. Neither one of us had kids because we didn’t want them. Sometimes I wonder about it, but I’m old enough now that I’ve accepted my choice. Kenan is a good man. No matter what you do, life is complicated and messy, and things change all the time. Just tell him how you feel and see what happens.”
“How I feel?”
“Well, you love him, don’t you?”
My heart carried on beating, strong and steady. I glanced between Phyllis and Hazel. I’d known them for as long as I could remember. They’d opened this coffee shop together after college.
“I’m just going to have to think about what to do,” I finally said, even though I knew I loved him.
I just wasn’t ready to say it out loud. When I did say it out loud, I also knew it had to be to Kenan. If I ever scrambled up the nerve.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
KENAN
“Hey, hey,” Blake said as I walked into the kitchen at our mother’s house.
I grinned over at him. “Hey, yourself.” His stepdaughter, Lia, stood on a stool with an apron with a cat on it tied around her waist as she peered into a mixing bowl and stirred with a giant wooden spoon.
I stopped beside her. “What are you making there?” I asked as I slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed lightly.
“Cookies.” She looked up at me. “It’s hard to stir them.” Her brow crinkled with her concentration as she glanced back down.
“I have just the trick.” I turned and walked into my mother’s pantry. A moment later, I carried out her stand mixer, which was tucked in a corner.
Blake looked from the mixer to Lia to me. “Didn’t even know Mom had that.”
“That’s because I pay better attention than you,” I quipped.
Lia smiled at me, asking, “What’s that?”
“A stand mixer. I promise it’ll change your life.”
A few minutes later, after I had it set up and helped her move the dough into the mixer bowl, I showed her how to work it.
She squealed with glee when the cookie dough was thoroughly mixed so quickly. “You’re the best!”
“I thought I was the best,” Blake teased as I helped her scoop spoonfuls of cookie dough onto a baking tray. He met my gaze over the top of her head and winked.
My heart gave a funny beat in my chest as my mind spun to my conversation with Quinn. Ihadsaid I didn’t want kids, but it wasn’t that specifically. Family was incredibly important to me. Yet I had always carried this deep fear that I wouldn’t be enough.
A little while later, our mother helped Lia check the cookies in the oven. Blake and I sat at the kitchen table, the very table where we often had dinners together as kids. Our grandfather had never lived here. Thank fucking God, or it would’ve ruined the good memories I had. This was our sanctuary.
I glanced over at Blake, considering him for a moment. “What?” he prompted as he took a swallow of water.
“Just thinking. Being a father suits you. Did you expect it to be so easy?”
“Fuck no!” he retorted quickly. “You know as well as I do that I didn’t ever plan to settle down. I didn’t think it was for me.” He paused, his gaze shifting to Lia for a long moment. An intense emotion flickered in his eyes when he brought his attention back to me. “It’s both easier and more difficult than I expected. The love and the commitment and, frankly, the day-to-day shit is the easiest part. The hard part is realizing that you carry the weight of just how much they matter. If something happened to Fiona or Lia, I don’t know what I would do. It might break me at this point. Why do you ask?”
Although Adam and I were the closest, Blake and I had our own special bond. That was the funny part about being in a cluster of siblings. You had different connections with each of them. For whatever reason, Blake and I shared the role of kind of being the jokers in the family, the ones to smooth things over and snap through a difficult moment with a joke and a laugh. As a result, we also shared the understanding that not everybody took us seriously.
Rhys carried the mantle of being the oldest sibling and the one expected to step into a leadership role. That had never sat well for Jake. He’d always seemed as if he wanted to shake it off. Rhys accepted the role without hesitation, and it suited him. I knew Blake knew about me and Quinn, at least part of us. I hadn’t admitted to anyone, barely even myself, that I was in love with her. As hurt as I was by the secret she’d kept from me, I knew I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. That was hers.
