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“Stop, stop! Please!” I somehow manage between cries.
He hooks one arm around my chest and under both armpits, hoisting me into the air and tickling with his other hand.
“Avery! Please! I’m…dying!” I can’t stop. I can’t breathe.
My heads falls back onto his shoulder, eyes rolling up to his face. His face may be blurry through all the tears, but the tender expression that lives there while he watches me in his arms and at his mercy is confusing, to say the least. Wearing the softest, sweetest smile on his face, this man right here looks like he wants to kiss me. I wish I could stop laughing/crying/shrieking.
“P-p-please!” I sputter, my hand sliding around the back of his neck.
His smile grows into beaming grin and his fingers slow. He squeezes me to his chest, pecks me on the cheek, and drops me back down to my feet. Wheezing, I keel over, gripping my knees as I gulp down air.
“Auntie Claire like when you ticklin’ her, A’wy,” Vivi calls from where she’s cuddled up with Sully on his dog bed, his tongue lapping at her face. “She laughin’.” Climbing to her feet, Vivi thumbs at herself. “But you can’t tickle me!”
Avery’s eyes glisten as he starts creeping toward her. “Is that right?”
“I too fast for you!”
Avery leaps into action, sprinting across the floor with his long legs while Vivi screams and starts running, giggling. He follows her around the couch and catches her in his arms, lifting her into the air. “Gotcha, little Miss Vivi!”
She rolls in his arms, shrieking with laughter, legs kicking, and my ovaries burst. My heart, too. It’s doing this super weird thing. I think it might be growing. At the very least, it’s throbbing.
How much longer am I going to deny my feelings for Avery? Pretend it’s just physical, that there’s nothing more going on?
What I’m most scared of is not being able to tell real from fake. I couldn’t see it with Aaron and we were together for three years. What makes me think I know Avery any better, or even remotely close?
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I can’t trust what I can see with my own eyes, because all they’ve done is deceive me. What if it’s all about the chase for Avery? What if I give in and he…disappears? The thought alone creates an ache deep in my chest. I rub it, trying to make it disappear.
I watch Avery help Vivi with her shoes, and when she climbs to her feet, she slips her hand into his, his massive one swallowing her tiny one right up.
She holds her free hand out, beckoning to me. “Come, Care Bear. We hol’ hands. It’s safety.”
Avery’s eyes flicker at her words and the corner of his mouth tilts up. He just adores her, and so does anyone who meets her. Nobody is immune to her charm.
Of course, at the diner, Vivi insists on sitting beside Avery. Except she winds up crawling into his lap and I can’t force the smile off my face at the way his arms wrap around her body so he can cut up her pancakes. Every single female in the restaurant is giving him what I affectionally call the fuck me eyes, including me.
I snap a sneaky picture of Avery and Vivi and send it to Charlee, letting her know I absolutely have baby fever.
Avery peeks up at me and smiles. “Did you just take my picture?” He grins at the way I fumble over my lack of response. “Too cute to resist, eh?”
I groan and fold over the table. “You two are adorable.” I sweep one arm out, gesturing around the restaurant. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to all these women?”
My phone vibrates in my hand.
Charlee: Oh. Em. Gee. Ovaries = bursting.
I hold my phone up to Avery. “See?” I immediately regret it when his brows quirk while his eyes scan my message. I just told Charlee I had baby fever. It sounds like I want to have Avery Beck’s baby. My cheeks flood with heat and I tuck my phone into the chest pocket of my overalls.
“Can you send it to me?” he asks quietly as Vivi’s sticky, syrup-covered hand grips his.
I blink twice. “Oh. Sure. Yeah.” I send it to him and read Charlee’s newest message.
Charlee: Also…are you guys on a date right now…?
Ignore.
When the waitress brings our bill—one bill, snatched out of her hand by Avery before I can reach for it—she ooh’s and aah’s over how sweet Avery looks with a baby and how good of a dad he is. She touches him seven times—but who’s counting—as if I’m not sitting right across from him.
“She looks like you,” the ebony-haired beauty says, twisting back and forth while she twirls her hair around her finger, smiling at him like a lovesick teen, and I just barely swallow my snort.
