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I hesitate for a moment before I nod.
“I knew it. Listen, she has dainty little fingers. You can’t get anything outlandish. Need something delicate. Her coloring is good for silver. And don’t skimp. You want the clarity and size of the diamond to say something.”
Colin guffaws. “You sure seem to know a lot about wedding rings for a guy whose wife is currently getting downward-doggystyled by her yoga instructor.”
I wince. He’s not wrong, but the Irish bastard doesn’t have to say everything so damn bluntly all the time.
“Ex-wife. And she gave back the ring, wiseass.” He turns to me. “I’m just trying to tell you that it’s something worth putting thought into. That’s all.”
I nod, take a sip of my beer, and throw another dart. Truth be told, I’m all talked out. They have a point—as obnoxious as my teammates are, they usually know what they’re saying—but I’m living one day at a time right now. There’s the bleeding edge of the present and there’s this beautiful, golden, glowing future in the distance.
The problem is that I have no damn idea how to get from one to the other.
I spend another hour or so with the guys at the bar before I make my way home. When I walk inside, though, the house is quiet. There’s no TV blaring in the living room, no music playing on the house speakers.
For a moment, I’m just disappointed. I like seeing her face light up when I walk back through the door.
But on the heels of that disappointment comes fear. The fear that’s never too far away these days.What if something happened? What if she ran? What if someone took her? What if Viv or my dad or…
My steps quicken as I make it through the living room with no sign of her. The library is as quiet as is the weight room. She doesn’t answer when I knock on the bathroom door.
“Sloan?” I call out as I race up the stairs. “Sloan!”
But she isn’t in my bedroom or the guest room. That leaves only the studio.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I open the door and see her there. She’s sitting at the drawing table with her head down on the flat surface, a pencil next to her hand as if she fell asleep holding it. When I pluck the earbud from her ear, I hear Lady Gaga sing something about never loving again.
Relief.Like aloe for the soul.
I stand still for a moment and watch her sleep. She’s breathing and living and she’s okay. You never know how much you’re worrying about those kinds of things until you’ve been reassured that they’re all still happening.
Instead of waking her, I lift her into my arms and carry her to my room. Pregnant or not, she’s light as a feather in my arms. I love how she nuzzles her cheek against my chest without truly waking up.
As I lay her in the center of the bed and then cover her with the blankets, it occurs to me that I could do this every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. I want her here, in my house. In my life.
And if I want that, I’m going to have to prove to her that I’m committed to this, to her, to our family.
Dixon was onto something.
So when she’s tucked in and purring in her sleep. I retrieve my laptop and sit beside her on the bed. I have some emails to send—because proving to her that I’m all in starts right now.
24
SLOAN
Beck’s credit card is burning a hole in my purse.
He forced it on me when I was headed out to meet up with the girls for brunch because, and I quote, “No woman carrying my baby is paying for her own food. Neither are her friends when they’re with her.”
I’m grateful, because there’s no way I could have afforded this place on my own. It’s swanky on a whole ‘nother level.
When Monroe walks in, even she’s impressed. She whistles through her teeth when she sits. “Aren’t we a fancy bitch these days?”
“Princess Sloan, at your service,” I tease back nervously.
I toy with the edge of my napkin in my lap. The agenda for today’s assembly of the Lady Knights of Rusty’s Diner has only one item, but it’s a big one:tell them about the baby.
It’s weird that they don’t already know. They know about everything else that’s been going on in my life. They know about the Bloodhound. I’ve had to leave payments with them so that hedidn’t come hunting me down, so there wasn’t much hiding it, but still—open book is my usual policy.
