Chapter 27
Baby Steps
Duke
Tonight’s plan: hang with Ella and Junie for a bit, buy some cute art, and then get the hell out of here so I can take my girl to dinner.
However.
I had not accounted for the approximately seven hundred and eighty-five people I’d run into trying to squeeze out of the preschool. There’s Colt, who has a five-year-old little boy in the junior kindergarten class here. I stop to chat with him and introduce him to Wheeler.
“Great to meet you.” Colt cuts me a look after shaking her hand. “Y’all just about gave me a heart attack with all your bids.”
Wheeler shrugs. “We’re overachievers. We can’t help ourselves.”
“Duke’s been making the rest of us look bad for about as long as I can remember.” Colt grins. “Hope we’ll be seeing more of you around, Wheeler.”
It’s his way of asking if we’re dating. My gut clenches.
But my girl doesn’t miss a beat. “Hard not to fall in love with Hartsville. Tonight’s been—”
“Total chaos?” He chuckles.
“A lot of fun,” she replies with a smile. “The love y’all have for each other is…something I’ve never witnessed before.”
Stay, then.
Wheeler also runs into some new friends she’s made. I meet Paige and her husband, Crosby, who are really cool. So are their kids, who wrap Ella in a series of tight hugs that have her giggling.
I don’t miss the way Ava and Sawyer greet nearly everyone who attends.
They’re both super involved in the preschool—Sawyer’s on the parent council, and Ava helped organize this event—and they seem to have a genuinely good time visiting with other parents, teachers, and the zillion kids who are here.
They’re still in the hall when Wheeler and I manage to slip out the front doors. I feel dizzy as the warm evening air hits me.
Did Wheeler enjoy that as much as me?
Did she start to understand that becoming a parent is an end to some things but the beginning of others, the way I just did?
Mom homeschooled us, bless her. Dad had a ranch to run. We rarely ventured into town.
Really, we didn’t leave our property much at all. Mom and Dad didn’t seem to mind that. I think they were too exhausted to be social or make plans to get out.
The parents I saw tonight, though? They definitely get out, as evidenced by the way everyone seemed to know everyone. I knew Ava and Sawyer did weekly date nights, but I hadn’t realized that they might invite other couples to join them.
What if parenthood doesn’t make your world smaller?
What if being a father leads me to meet new people? Experience new things?
Granted, that’s not always the case. But it could be for me.
For us.
I only realize my hands are shaking when I let go of Wheeler’s to open the passenger side door for her.
Starting the truck, I wonder what the hell to say.
Do I keep it casual? How great was that? I’m glad we won the papier-maché heart. Great running into Colt too.
Or do I tell her the truth? I think we keep the baby. I think we make that official, and I think we make us official too. The thought of you being with anyone else kills me. I don’t want you sleeping in any bed but mine, sweetheart. I want you with me, always.
She’s quiet on the ride to Main Street, rolling down her window and resting her elbow on the ledge of the door.
We’re going to a restaurant that just opened next to the Rattler.
One of Colt’s brothers is a big foodie, and he invested a chunk of change in a farm-to-table spot some fancy chef from Austin wanted to open in the country.
I’m not hungry, though.
I’m not sure I can keep all this inside anymore.
I pull into one of the angled parking spots on Main Street.
It’s Saturday night, and with the new restaurant opening, there’s lots of people downtown.
Couples stroll along the sidewalk hand in hand.
People sit outside the Caffeinated Cowgirl at its little bistro tables, sipping coffee, enjoying dessert.
I can smell something delicious wafting through the restaurant’s open windows a few doors up the street.
Turning off the engine, I reach across the bench and put a hand on Wheeler’s thigh. Funny how a week ago, touching her like this would be weird.
Now, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
She turns her head to look at me. For the hundredth time tonight, I’m struck dumb by how beautiful she is. Pouty lips, tan skin. Bare shoulders and lush breasts.
It’s her expression, though, that has my pulse tripping to a stop. She looks…serious. Earnest.
She looks like she’s bursting with something she wants to say too.
“Duke?”
“Yeah?”
“I…”
Swallowing, I press my thumb into her leg. “Whatever it is you wanna say, I hope you know you can say it. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
She nods. Blinks. Her chin wobbles when she says, “I want to keep the baby.”
I startle at the warm explosion inside my chest. I put my free hand there, just to make sure this woman didn’t just blow a hole through my center with her achingly vulnerable confession.
“Blue,” I sputter.
She’s crying now. “I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear, but I just—I had to tell you, Duke. I know I said that I wasn’t sure. I know this makes things super complicated—”
“I don’t care. I’m so glad, sweetheart.” I reach up and thumb away her tears. “So glad you want that, because it’s what I want too.”
Her brows pop up, her wet eyelashes glistening in the thin, late light. “Wait, are you saying—”
“I want to keep the baby. Yes.”
She lets out a bark of laughter. “Seriously?”
“Of fucking course I wanna have a baby with you, sweetheart.”
Without warning, Wheeler launches herself into my arms. Her hands find my neck. Mine find her belly. She pulls me in for a teary, salty kiss—we’re both crying now, tears leaking out of my eyes left and right—and we hold each other like that for one heartbeat. Then another and another and another.
We’re having a baby.
Holy shit, we’re having a fucking baby!
Because she’s apparently turned me into a fucking animal, I’m hard by the time she breaks the kiss.
“What helped you make up your mind?” She whisks away the tears on my face with the flat of her hand.
“In a nutshell?” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “You.” I tilt my head. “Them. My family. Our friends.”
She nods, rolling her lips between her teeth. “Me too. I didn’t realize—you and me, we’re friends. You’re a good friend. We’re more than that too, but we were friends first, right?”
“I’d like to think we’ll always be friends, Blue.” I run my hand up her side. “I like you too much not to want you around all the time.”
That makes her smile. “I like having you around too.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Point is my parents aren’t friends. They never were. Obviously I don’t know everything about their relationship, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Mom getting pregnant that torpedoed it.”
I meet her eyes. “It was the fact that they didn’t have a connection as friends that explains why it didn’t work out.”
“Right.”
“I see Mollie’s fingerprints all over that lightbulb moment.”
Wheeler’s smile grows. “You know her well too.”
“Well, yeah. She is my sister-in-law.”
“She wants us to be together.” Wheeler’s eyes toggle between mine. “Everyone in your family does.”
“Can you blame them? You walked into my life, and everything’s changed for the better.”
She laughs. “You mean I walked out in the middle of our first game of darts, then dragged you on a twenty-hour road trip to Colorado, and then got pregnant, all while doing my damnedest to push you away?”
“Can we work on the pushing away thing?”
Wheeler nods. “I want to. I’m trying. This—our friendship, our relationship”—she flattens her palm over my chest—“it means a lot to me. I want it to work. So I’ll put in the work I need to do to make that happen.”
My heart feels downright drunk, skipping around my torso without a care in the fucking world.
“If that’s not the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I growl.
Wheeler laughs. “So sexy, me promising to go get therapy and look on the bright side.”
I grab her hand and put it on my crotch. “But seriously.”
“Wow.” Her mouth forms a neat little O. “You…aren’t kidding.”
“I wanna feed you, Blue. But I also wanna fuck you.”
Her eyes go hazy. “Tell me why you wanna be a daddy.”
Because I’m falling in love with you, and I want to follow that feeling to the ends of the earth.
“Because a baby is a big responsibility but also a big adventure. Because freedom can be many things, and I’ve realized that the kind that’s important to me is the kind where I have the freedom to be with my people.
Because this baby is my person. Our person.
Because I’m not sure I’ll ever have life figured out, but I can try to figure it out and be a dad all at once.
Because being a dad is a dream I have. Because…
” I blow out a breath. “I don’t wanna live small anymore.
You made me see what’s possible. You’ll keep chasing your dreams, and I’ll keep chasing mine. The baby won’t change that.”
Her throat works on a swallow. “You promise?”
“You have my word.” I press my hand into her belly. “I’ll always take care of you and this baby. I wanna be with you every step of the way, sweetheart. I’m in. Both feet.”
She’s crying again, fisting my shirt in her hand. “Please don’t fuck me over. Because this all sounds so, so nice, baby. You’re right. It is a dream. But if you take that away from me—”
“My brothers’ll take me out long before you do if I ever fall down on y’all. That’s not part of the game plan, Blue. Trust me.”
She looks at me. I look back.
“I’ll try. To trust you.”
“You need some convincing, that’s not gonna be a problem. Surely you know that.”
“Oh, I know,” she says with a laugh. “You can be relentless.”
“We call that grit around here.”
“Whatever it is, I like it.”
“I’ll make sure our baby has plenty of it.”
She takes a sharp breath through her nose. “We’re doing this. We’re going to have a baby.”
“Yes, sweetheart.” I smooth her dress over her thighs. “We’re having a baby. But first, we’re having dinner. Then I think I’m gonna have you in the shower again.”
Her laughter is a warm gust on my lips as she leans in to kiss me. “This is wild.”
“Exactly why it’s right.” I kiss her back. “Maybe wild is what we’re looking for.”
She pulls back. “What do we tell your brothers? And my parents…”
“Lemme ask you a question.”
“Okay.”
“Introduce me to them as your boyfriend.”
Wheeler chuckles. “That’s not a question.”
“Would you? Call me your boyfriend?”
“Only if you call me your girlfriend.”
My stomach dips. She’s trying, and I appreciate that more than she’ll ever know.
“Deal.” I hold out my hand. “Might lessen the blow if they think your boyfriend got you pregnant instead of some random-ass hookup in Aspen.”
“Gross. Who gets knocked up that way?”
My turn to laugh. “Not you now, seeing as we’re dating and shit.”
“I think I like this dating and shit thing.”
I grin. “I think I do too.”
What I don’t say? That I wanna be more than the boyfriend.
I wanna be the one.
Her man.