If words could inflict physical wounds, I would have been a dead man right then. She had planned on making me love her and then walking away without a backwards glance? I took a stumbling step back, unable to believe that she would have agreed to hurt me like that.

“You…” I shook my head. “You hated me that much?”

“At the time I hated everything and everyone.” She rubbed a hand over her tear-soaked face, smearing her eye makeup. “But it only took a few days before I realized that I didn’t want to follow through with the bet. I barely even thought about it. By the time Marissa backed out, I had almost completely forgotten about the damn thing. I was happy.” She stopped, swallowed hard and then continued. “It felt like we had gotten a fresh start and I wanted to see where we could go before I brought up my pregnancy.”

It was all too much to take in all at once. I felt overwhelmed with confusion at all she’d just thrown at me. I was torn between being pissed off at her for keeping the pregnancy from me and how the knowledge that I was going to be a dad again felt. I was hurt that she had made a bet to give me everything I’d ever wanted and then walk away. That she hadn’t been going to follow through with it didn’t matter at the moment. I was confused and unable to sort through how I really felt about it all.

Hadn’t my bet the year before proven that nothing good could come from making stupid, spur of the moment bets?

“Dev, I’m sorry.” She took a step closer; her hands rose as if she was going to touch me.

I took a step back, putting some distance between us. The pain that twisted her beautiful elfin face was another stab to my gut, but I couldn’t help it. If she touched me I would have yet another emotion to dig through to get to the bottom of how I really felt. My need for her would burn through everything else until I was exhausted and still deep inside of her. I needed to sort out everything else before I touched her or I let her touch me again.

Natalie’s chin trembled and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip to steady it. “D-do you want me to have an ab…” A sob tried to escape her but she swallowed it down. “A-abortion?”

If I’d thought everything she had said up until that point had hurt, it was nothing to the pain that exploded in my chest at that one question. Get rid of our baby? No, no. No! I couldn’t even stand the idea of her not having my baby. All the confusion I’d felt up to that point about her being pregnant vanished.

With that one question—that one fucking word—my brain cleared of all the fog I’d felt up to that point. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t told me about the baby until now. It didn’t matter that she and Marissa had made some stupid bet. All that did matter was that this woman loved me as much as I loved her.

And she was going to have my baby.

Another tear spilled from her eyes and I fell to my knees, unable to keep myself on my feet when I saw just how deep the pain in those tear-flooded eyes went. With a sob of my own, I reached out and wrapped my hands around her waist, pulling her close so I could bury my face in her still flat stomach.

Her entire body was trembling and I held on tighter, scared that she might fall. “Please don’t cry,” I whispered.

“I’m so s-s-sorry.” She sobbed so hard I knew she had to be destroying all her vital organs. It was fucking destroying me.

“Stop.” I pressed a kiss against the center of her abdomen through her shirt. “I’m sorry too. I love you, Natalie. Don’t cry, baby. I’m sorry.” I kissed her stomach again. “It’s okay. Everything is okay. I’m not mad. I love you.”

“I’m no better than she is.” I flinched, having one of my earlier thoughts tossed back into my face like that made me see that this situation in no way compared to what had happened with Tawny over sixteen years ago. I hadn’t loved Tawny, hadn’t even liked that bitch. But I loved Natalie and I definitely wanted the baby that was now growing inside of her. “I should have told you… Or taken that damn pill after all.”

“Don’t say that,” I begged, tightening my hold around her. “You aren’t anything like Tawny. Nothing. Do you hear me, Nat? She was just looking for a free ride through life when she did what she did. And I’m glad you didn’t take that fucking pill.”

Natalie made a disbelieving sound in the back of her throat and I grimaced. “Okay, so at first I wasn’t glad. But it just hit me wrong when you first said that you were pregnant.” Her lips trembled again and I wished I could hit rewind and completely redo the last ten minutes. “I was terrified, Nat. I’m still terrified.”

“O-of what?” she whispered brokenly.

“I’m scared of messing up. You and me, us? We’re still new at this whole relationship thing. I screwed up royally last time, baby. I love you. And I love the little rocker that is in here.” I kissed her stomach again, this time lingering as I imagined pressing a kiss to our child’s forehead. “I don’t want to fuck things up for us or it again.”

Shaking fingers combed through my hair, holding my face against her. “I’m scared, too. I love you, Devlin. So much it freaks me out sometimes. I don’t want to mess us up. I-I don’t want to live without you ever again.”

“Good, so you’ll marry me and we can learn to not fuck us up along the way.” I nodded. “Sounds like a good plan to me.” I felt her go completely still and raised my eyes to meet her gaze. Her blue-gray eyes were wide, her mouth gaping open. When I saw more tears spill from her eyes, I groaned. “You’re not supposed to cry anymore. I’m trying to fix this.”

“You want to marry me?” She breathed dazedly. “But you don’t want to get married. You used to say all the time that you didn’t believe in marriage.”

“I’ve been thinking about marrying you for a few weeks now,” I confessed. “I used to think that marriage was a trap, that it took away your freedom and tied you down. But I see now that it isn’t like that. At least marrying you would never be like that for me. I love you, Nat. I want to spend the rest of my life with you… Will you marry me?”

The tears seemed to be coming faster now. I bit back a curse. I should have waited, done this better. I’m sure that if I’d asked Emmie she could have come up with an awesome way to ask Natalie to marry me. She’d pulled off a fucking miracle for Wroth with that fucking Wizard of Oz theme for Marissa. I didn’t even have a ring for Natalie yet. Girls like that kind of shit. Right?