56. Jordan
Chapter Fifty-Six
Jordan
We’d spent the entire week pretending the world didn’t exist. No cameras, no pressure. Just me, her, and the future we’d somehow stumbled into.
Kate was curled up beside me in the corner of the first-class lounge, flip-flops slipped off, legs tucked under her with a hoodie pulled low over her face.
One hand was wrapped around her takeaway coffee cup.
The other rested lazily on my thigh, like she couldn’t bear not to be touching me.
We looked like a pair of newlyweds who weren’t ready to leave behind their blissful honeymoon.
I’d never forget this week. The way she’d looked on that damn lounger in that black bikini. The sound she made when I slipped the ring onto her finger. The way her body had moved against mine, under me, wrapped around me like she was made to live there.
It had been a dream start to finish, because the next few months were set to be chaos. But I didn’t care, because now I had her by my side forever.
My phone buzzed in my hand. I glanced down, expecting something from Chris about training schedules because as soon as the plane touched down I was back into conditioning.
Instead, it was a message from our PR guy, Matt.
Heads up—it’s out. Check this link.
I opened it and swore under my breath.
Kate stirred beside me. “What?”
I turned the screen toward her.
It was a pap shot, blurry but unmistakable. Us, arriving at the airport in Malé a week ago. I had my arm slung around her shoulders. She wore a fitted T-shirt and linen trousers, sunglasses on. But the bump…yeah. It was there. Clear as day.
The headline was already up on a few gossip sites:
Tennis Star Jordan Taylor Expecting First Baby with New Girlfriend?
I felt her body go still. She took the phone from my hand, her expression unreadable for a moment. Then she sighed.
“Shit.”
“We knew it would happen eventually,” I said gently, pulling her closer. “You okay?”
She nodded, then shook her head. “I just…I wanted it to stay ours a little longer. I didn’t want to be someone’s story before I’d even figured mine out.”
I got it. This was the part of my world she hated. The noise, the attention, the strangers thinking they were entitled to her. To judge her. To speculate.
Kate had always held her privacy like a shield. Not to shut people out, just to protect the quiet parts of herself no one else had earned. Every headline felt like an intrusion to her.
“Hey,” I said, tipping her chin so she had to look at me. “Then let’s do it our way.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, screw letting someone else tell our story.”
I opened my photos and found it almost immediately. She didn’t even know I’d taken it. She looked so at ease, like the sea, and the baby, and me were all hers. Like she’d finally stopped holding herself at arm’s length. That was the Kate I wanted the world to see.
She was sitting at breakfast on our last morning there, wearing my white shirt over her swimsuit, hair still damp and tousled from the sea.
Her left hand rested on her small but visible bump.
The ring sparkled in the sun. She was looking out to the sea over the balcony.
She looked spellbinding. It was my new favourite photo of her, and it was everything.
I opened Instagram. God, I barely posted anything personal. But this? This felt right.
I typed the caption: She said yes to it all.
Then I hit post. Kate blinked. “You didn’t.”
I held up my phone. “I bloody did.” Her expression hovered between exasperated and touched.
“That photo’s ridiculous,” she muttered. “I look like I’ve just had sex and a mimosa.”
“Well one of those things is true,” I said, grinning. “You looked perfect. And now the whole world knows you’re mine.”
Her smile was cautious at first, like she was testing out the weight of it. Then she leaned in and kissed me, right there in front of everyone. But it wasn’t just a kiss. It was her saying fine, we’ll do this together.
By the time she pulled away, I was grinning so hard it hurt. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” she whispered.
I nodded, my voice rough with everything I felt. “Yeah, babe. We’re doing all of it.”