Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Callie
It feels surreal—walking next to a man in the grocery store as he pushes our cart is some serious domestic shit I never thought I’d be doing, let alone with Foster Davis.
“I figured you were a takeout kind of guy?” I eye the fruit as we walk through the produce section.
A few people have glanced our way. Foster is a little different than Hayes. While my brother almost always wears his ball cap out, Foster doesn’t seem to care as much. Maybe because of his reputation, people don’t approach him as much or don’t feel as comfortable as they do with Hayes.
“I’ll have you know that I can prepare a few meals.” He winks at me, and my stomach flips.
“Oh, I have to see this.” I stop and put a bag of red grapes in the cart.
“I’ll admit following a recipe annoys the shit out of me, but after a while, I kind of wing it with the measurements, and it still turns out pretty good.” He grabs a bunch of bananas. “Potassium is good for fetal growth.”
I purse my lips to stop from smiling. “Maybe you just want to do the shopping. Then you can make a list of everything I should eat.”
He chuckles, which is such a rare occurrence. I watch him for a second longer than I should. “Don’t tempt me.”
I lean in close, put my head on his shoulder and singsong, “Just so you know, I won’t follow it. I’m not like your usual girls.”
He pulls away and meets my gaze. “That’s why I like you.” I’m not sure the look I give him—one of surprise, probably—but he blinks a few times, seeming a bit flustered. “I mean… that’s why I like spending time with you… shit, you know what I mean.”
“Careful there, Reap, those sound like compliments.” I pat his chest and walk behind the cart to grab some kiwis.
Mostly, I step away because I need a little space.
Him doing research on what I need to eat is endearing.
Yes, maybe it’s a little controlling, but mostly endearing.
It’s not as if he’s tying me down and force-feeding me.
Great, now I’m thinking of being in bed with my wrists pinned to his headboard.
A woman comes along next to me, grabbing a plastic bag. “You’re cute together,” she whispers. She’s probably in her seventies, perfectly curled gray hair with a tint of red.
“Oh, we’re just…” I glance at Foster. He’s picking out a bag of nuts from the bins, and I have no doubt they’re whichever ones are good for pregnant women. “Friends.”
She takes the kiwi I was about to grab and touches my arm with her free hand. “Sweetheart, he doesn’t look at you like a friend.”
The urge to tell her our story washes over me.
To unleash it to someone else so they can help me figure it out.
The fact that I’m carrying his baby. How he’s my brother’s best friend.
How he’s now my roommate. How confused I am about what I want, what he wants—why he’s being so thoughtful and helpful when most people would say he’s the last man I can trust, especially with my heart.
But Foster looks around, still finding me at the kiwis, and wheels over the cart.
I can’t take my eyes off him as he approaches with that stern, thin-lipped look he wears all the damn time except when we’re alone.
“It’s always the ones who look rough who have the kindest hearts, I think.
You should see my husband.” She chuckles.
“They might not show it to everyone, but the ones who see it are pretty damn lucky, if you ask me. Heart of gold, those rough ones.” She pats my hand and looks at Foster before turning to her cart and putting the kiwis inside.
“Making friends?” Foster asks after she’s wheeled her cart to the other side of the produce section. “She warning you about hanging out with a guy covered in tattoos?”
I laugh, feeling a little awkward. I could tell him what she said, but I don’t want any reason for him to pull away and not let me see the real him. If I tell Foster someone else saw that there’s more to him, he might do exactly that, so I keep quiet.
“She was just telling me how to spot a good kiwi from a bad one.” I place the bag into the cart and walk alongside him. “Let’s get back to the subject at hand—you making me dinner.”
He stops at the meat section and grabs five packages of steak.
My eyes widen. “Are you throwing a party?” He gives me a wicked smile, and I shake my head. “Let me guess.”
“Zinc, iron, B12…”
“Do you have a book somewhere?” I didn’t see one around the condo, but he’s clearly been reading up on what I should be eating during the pregnancy.
“Internet. I have a lot of time on the road.”
“And you don’t want to be a normal guy and just watch porn?”
He shrugs. “Not doing it for me anymore.”
He doesn’t elaborate, and I’m afraid to ask because deep down I know what I want the answer to be—that he feels this intensity between us and could only ever be satisfied by me.
The other night when he was on the road playing Milwaukee, I tried my vibrator, imagining it was him hovering over me.
My tongue sliding over his neck tattoos, the growl he’d let out as he came.
He looks like a growler. He didn’t when we were together before, but I feel like he would be if he was on top, and we had more time than we did.
“Bread aisle!” I say a little too loudly.
Foster chuckles. “You look a little flushed there.” He tips his head closer to mine. “You thinking about something dirty?”
God yes, and I’d be cutting this grocery trip short if we had the kind of relationship where I could have him whenever I wanted.
“No.” I shake my head and walk ahead of him toward the bread aisle.
He puts a loaf of wheat bread in the cart and then puts a box of sugary cereal in the cart.
“Okay, so I have to eat steak and bananas, and you get what’s practically a bowl of sugar?”
He drops another box of cereal into the cart. “It’s my vice. No apologies.”
“Foster Davis, heartthrob, bad boy, eats the same cereal as a six-year-old.”
“And proud of it.” He flashes me a smile, showing his full mouth of perfect white teeth—all except for one on the right side that’s a little unaligned but somehow adds to his hotness. As though he’s imperfectly perfect.
“If you get that, then I’m buying cookies, and you can’t complain.”
He holds up his hands from the cart. “You can have whatever you want. I told you your cravings are mine to fulfill.”
“I think I’m too early to have any cravings. There hasn’t been anything I’ve wanted so badly I had to have it.”
Liar.
Well, one thing. But we’re not gonna go there.
I turn the corner and almost run right into a little kid. I stop and draw back. He looks up at me, looks scared, and runs off screaming for his mommy.
“Well, that doesn’t bode well for my future.” I frown.
“Our kid is gonna love you.”
I stop, and he strolls right past me. Two words from his statement hit me with a force I wasn’t ready for—our and love. I hurry to catch up while Foster continues shopping as though that sentence wasn’t earth-shattering.
“Oh, stop being so surprised. You’re a likable person. I told you that already.”
“Just what every girl wants to be called. Likable.”
“If I told you what I really think of you, you’d probably knee me in the nuts, and this whole experiment of living together would end in disaster.”
I want so badly to ask what he thinks of me. Does he lie in bed and think about how I’m only a room away too? Does he think about the things we could be doing to each other? When he sees I’m home, does his stomach feel as though it’s full of helium and might float away like mine does?
They’re all bad signs, but signs that aren’t stopping me from continuing what we’re doing.
When we reach the dairy section, I get distracted in front of the ice cream. So many choices, and I can’t decide which one.
Foster comes over and makes a hmm sound. “Finally a craving?”
I shake my head. “Maybe it’s a myth, like the five-month one.”
“Five-month myth?” His forehead wrinkles.
“Oh, so you know every single vitamin I need, but not what most women experience around five months?”
“I haven’t gone further than how far along you are. But now I’m curious.” He pulls out his phone, but I place my hand over it.
I lean in close to him. “It’s that a pregnant woman’s sex drive gets more intense. Supposedly. But I’m gonna be honest, my nipples are so sensitive I’m not sure I could handle anyone’s hands on them right now.”
Foster groans then glances around. “Fuck, Callie, are you trying to get me arrested?”
“Arrested?” I frown.
“Having a hard-on in public. Jesus. I really hope I have a lot of away games during your fifth month. No offense.”
I laugh because he looks so scared. “Seriously, I can handle it.”
“You hope. But I guess if I have to take one for the team, you can jump into my bed.”
I shake my head, then notice that he’s added my yogurt to the cart. I give him a stern look.
He shrugs. “I saw you only had one left this morning.”
My hand covers my heart. “Foster, you woo me.”
“You’d be the first to be wooed.”
My cheeks heat, and I open the freezer, grab the pistachio ice cream, and add it to the cart.
We finish our shopping while I’m trying to wrap my head around Foster and this flirting that seems to come so naturally for us, as well as how much I really like him and how I know he’ll be a good dad.
I see the scared kid again, but this time his brother is chasing him. The mom is whisper-screaming, following them with her cart, but one of them bumps me. All I see is the display of pies on a table that I’m about to fall into before two hands grab my waist.
I fall back and Foster catches me. We’re in a pose as if he just dipped me. For a moment, I lose myself in his eyes. God, he’s gorgeous.
“I got you.” His breath is warm and minty, and I want to wrap my hand around the back of his neck and pull him down to meet my lips.
“Thanks.” My voice is more breathless than it should be.
“Of course. I’d hate for you to fall stomach first.”
I stiffen.
Right. Of course. The baby.
I straighten up then pull away. The mom apologizes profusely then scolds her boys, who look a little scared of her now.
Foster goes about putting the items on the conveyor belt while I’m still reeling. I need to prepare myself for the fact that this attraction might be one-sided.
What was I thinking?
That I’d be Foster Davis’s game-changer? What on earth would ever make me think that? Definitely not my past pick of partners.
Get your head out of the clouds, Callie.
“Oh yeah, forgot to tell you. I got you your first guest,” he says absentmindedly as he loads items onto the conveyor belt.
“You did?” There I go floating up to the sky again. “You work fast.”
“Keep that to yourself, okay?” He winks.
I laugh, and as we check out, head back to the apartment, and put the groceries away, it almost feels as though we’re a couple.
Earth to Callie.
Houston, we have a problem.