Eventually I looked away and watched too, sucking my soul dry with this ridiculous fucking drama that people found entertaining. I nearly got up to leave from the absurdity of it all when Allie laughed and said something regarding a character, and suddenly I was never more invested in a show than now.

Spending time with a girl and not touching her explicitly was different...

But I was beginning to like different.

Seven

Allie

Ten weeks pregnant and I was talking to my stomach a dozen times a day. Whether it was natural to talk to your unborn baby or not was irrelevant to me. Point was it made me feel better.

“Your father supposedly wants you,” I whispered while resting a hand over my belly. The sun was just starting to come up, lighting up the room through the cracks in the blinds. This was morning number four waking up with that sick, nauseous feeling. I’d paced the hallway quietly for an hour, waiting for last night’s spaghetti to come up. All to no avail.

“If he feels for you the way he does for me, I’m sure he’s going to love you,” I continued, stroking the bottom of my stomach where I could just barely feel a bump. “At least… I hope he will.”

It was hard for me to believe that Ryker had accepted the pregnancy and hadn’t pushed for an abortion. I wasn’t stupid. A big part of me had suspected Heath had made that up to make me feel better. I was surprised that it wouldn’t bother me either way. If he’d told me a white lie then that showed he at least cared about my feelings and wanted me to concentrate on what really mattered. That was this baby and starting my first year at college.

It was hard without Ryker, but every passing day I relived the moment he was arrested. The lies he’d told me – that he was clean and hadn’t broken the law – only to learn otherwise. I was cut deep, and I knew at some point soon I needed to confront him about it and let him know how much he hurt me. I’d never gotten the chance to. From the time he was arrested to his sentencing, it’d been a swift open and shut case.

I needed to decide what was best for the baby, and suddenly all this relationship bullshit of whether I was going to wait for him or not seemed so unimportant. I never expected pregnancy to put so much in perspective. At this point, I never wanted to see him again. His bedroom no longer stirred me on the inside, it just made me sad I had no one to talk to because I used to tell him everything in these four walls. Maybe I’d missed him so much in the beginning because I was lonely. And then it occurred to me…

You never once told him you loved him.

I had always had an issue with the word love. While he’d expressed he’d fallen in love with me last year, I had tried and convinced myself I’d felt the same way. But I could never bring myself to say it. Now I was really glad for it.

Cutting my thoughts short, I heard Heath’s door open and his heavy footsteps down the hallway. It was Saturday and he was still getting up at six in the morning. He never slept in. I heard him clear his throat and rummage around in the kitchen, probably starting up the coffee maker.

I wasn’t usually a morning person. I’d been sleeping in until noon some days because the pregnancy had exhausted me. But this morning in particular I felt pretty good. I jumped out of bed and joined him in the kitchen. I was taken aback at first when I saw him in nothing but his boxers. He was shirtless, his upper body indented with lines from his bed sheets. I admired his body for a moment, taking in the broad shoulders and narrow hips. He worked out at home a lot. I’d noticed some weights stacked to the side of his room once when I was waiting for him to get ready to take me to the shops. Almost every night, even when he came home sore and tired beyond belief, I’d hear him grunting up a storm next door, lifting and counting the reps as he went. He was a machine.

And he looked absolutely divine.

“Morning,” I said with a timid smile.

He turned around, surprised by my company. “What’re you doing up, sleepyhead?”

“I’ve been up for a while.”

“Morning sickness again?”

“Yeah.”

He frowned. “Shit. Nothing we can do about that?”

I’d practically stolen his laptop the last week or so, looking up everything that had to do with pregnancy. I even had an update emailed to me every week to show my peanut’s progression.

“They say crackers help,” I said.

“We don’t have crackers?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you put that on the shopping list?”

“Forgot, I guess?”

He shook his head as if I’d committed an atrocious crime and turned to the fridge. On it he’d stuck a piece of paper and pen up a while back, telling me that it was the shopping list and to write down anything I needed. He took the pen off and wrote down crackers in big bold letters before shooting me another glare, muttering, “I’m going to get you a big fat fucking bag of crackers and you’re going to sit your fat ass down on that couch and eat a pound a day. Got it?”

I laughed at his stern words and pulled out a bowl from the cupboard. “Yes, master, but you can’t be telling me I’m fat.”

“Why?”

Pouring cereal into my bowl, I responded, “Because you just don’t go around telling pregnant people they’re fat! You have to be a gentleman, or endure a well-deserved kick in the balls.”

Living with Heath alone had done well to our friendship. Just two weeks in and we were joking it up. The weird awkward tension from before had lessened, although I did find myself still feeling it at times.

“I think if anyone calls you fat they’re going to need a head examination,” he replied, chuckling.

I scowled at him over my shoulder. “I’ll have you know I’m getting a bump!”

“On the head maybe?”

I gasped and he laughed. “No, I swear I am. I was feeling it in bed earlier.”

“You were feeling yourself earlier? That’s pretty explicit info, Allie. If you’re so comfortable telling me that, maybe invite me in next time?”

I laughed, not realizing for a moment how flirtatious that really was. “That’s not what I meant!”

“Oh, right. You were feeling a non-existent bump. Now I would rather the explicit stuff.”

“It’s there. I’m not delusional.”

He raised a brow and looked down at my stomach. I was wearing another one of Ryker’s large shirts and probably looked like I was swimming in it.

“I don’t see shit,” he said.

“Well, it’s kind of hard to when I have this huge thing on.”

He smiled, those dimples like little craters in his face. I couldn’t handle looking at him when he smiled. It made me flush. So I kept my eyes drawn to the ground and playfully put a hand to my lower belly. “I swear, Heath, I’m getting a bump. It’s really hard and solid.”

When I felt his presence nearing me, I went to step back but realized I was already against the counter.

“Show me,” he said with interest.

Show him? Bloody hell. Why did that feel weird to do? It technically wasn’t, though. I mean, I’d seen pregnant women showing people their bumps all the time. In fact, some people took it upon themselves to touch them without even asking for permission.

This was nothing, I told myself. Absolutely nothing.

Still unable to look up at his tall frame, I lifted my shirt up and showed him my lower stomach. I had to pull down my pyjama bottoms a tad. I waited for him to react. To say something. But he was quiet, and it made me suddenly conscious.

“See it?” I asked, trying to sound playful.

“No,” he answered, disappointed. “I really think that bump is on your head, Al.”

Al.

Ugh. I wanted to set that nickname on fire.

Annoyed, I grabbed his hand – surprised for a second by how ridiculously hot it was – and placed it on my lower stomach. I hadn’t realized what I’d done until his palm was flat against my skin. If I thought the silence before was heavy, I had another thing coming. This one dragged on for an excruciating time. I finally willed myself to peek up at him and met his intense gaze. Now that we were locking eyes, I couldn’t just look away. I felt drawn to him.

“Feel it?” I asked a little breathlessly, but I could hardly hear the sound of my voice when my heartbeats had suddenly spiked and were pounding in my ears.

His eyes travelled about my face, making every inch of it burn as hot as his skin, before he nodded once. “Yeah, wow. I do actually.” His hand roamed the lower part of my belly, cupping the tiny bump that seemed to have emerged overnight, giving me tingles I shouldn’t be feeling in places too taboo to admit. “That’s insane, Allie.”

“I know.”

“Can you feel him yet?”

Him. I laughed lightly. “You think it’s a boy?”

He smirked at me. “The Lawson’s are known for having tons of boys. I’ve got twenty male cousins you know.”

“Hmm, I wouldn’t mind that.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because he’d be another Adonis.”

Now both brows went up.

Ah, great. Did he think I was complimenting him? Well, of course I was in a way, but I wasn’t intending on it to sound flirtatious or anything. I’d just… Well… I was referring to all of them, but he didn’t seem to want to recognize that with the smug look on him.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I told him.

“You just complimented me,” he replied, playfully. “I’m flattered.”

“I wasn’t referring to you.”

“Who were you referring to?”

“All of you, obviously.”

“All of me? Wow, I didn’t think you looked at different parts of my body separately. Which part grabbed you the most? Was it my very big... lips?”

I laughed. “Oh, my God, you didn’t just say that.”

“I did.”

“You know what I meant!”

“Either way, that’s still a compliment to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just because you’re good looking doesn’t mean everything has to immediately be about you.”

He tilted his head to the side and his mouth slowly formed into a wide smile. “You think I’m good looking?”

Oh, God.

My body was seriously enjoying this strange conversation while my brain was screaming expletives.

“Anyways,” I quickly said, steering the conversation far, far away, “back to the question: no, I don’t feel peanut moving around yet. I won’t for a while, either.”

“Will you tell me when you do?”

I shrugged. “Do you want me to tell you when I do?”

He nodded with genuine interest. “Absolutely. I’ve never felt anything like that. I imagine it would be pretty cool. It’s still bizarre to think my nephew is in here.”

Whatever heated feelings I had a moment ago cooled off instantly. Nephew. He has his nephew inside you, Allie.

A few more seconds passed, and he still hadn’t moved his hand away. I watched him lick his bottom lip slowly, noticed the slow movement of his chest rising and falling, and all the while he just gazed at me like it was the last time he ever would.

“Are you waiting for him, Allie?” he abruptly asked in the gentlest voice. “Because you never really answered.”

The question was so random. I blinked at him in surprise, trying to sort my thoughts out. I couldn’t even connect to my brain when he was looking at me the way he was, so closely and interestedly. My first thought was to ask him why he wanted to know.

“Um,” I was completely speechless. I had to look away just to think clearly. Was I waiting for Ryker? I wanted to tell Heath no, because my heart couldn’t take it anymore with his brother – he hurt me too much. But what would Heath think of me? Would he think I was callous? Was it too hasty telling him I wasn’t going to wait? I could possibly pretend to be thinking on it still, but…

“Sorry,” Heath then said with a conflicted look, “shit, it’s none of my business. I’ve just been thinking about him and the way he asked about you when I saw him last. You know, desperate for you and all.”

Desperate for me? Now a lump formed in my throat and I had to clear it away just to breathe right. All this thinking about what Heath would think of me and I hadn’t stopped to consider how devastated Ryker would be. Shit.

“Are you asking me as a way to get me to see him?” I wondered aloud.

“No,” he replied immediately. “Absolutely not, Allie. I just want to know if you’re alright. We’ve been spending a lot of time together and you don’t talk about him.”

“He hurt me,” I whispered. “I feel like he tore my heart out of my chest and stomped on it.”

“Yeah,” he exhaled. “He fucked things up for everyone.”

“How could I ever trust him again?” Now I was seeking the answer in his dark eyes. “It’d be easier to face if he would just admit he did it, but I know how stubborn he is. He won’t do that. He’ll just keep telling me he’s sorry without actually explaining why. How do I know he won’t get out and go right back to it? That’s no example I want to set for my child.”

He nodded in understanding. “I know.”

His thumb circled my belly as he thoughtfully looked back down at it. Christ, he was still touching me there. No pregnant woman had to endure this, I was sure.

“Have I upset you?”

I shook my head. “No.”