Chapter 9
Tachina slowly drifted away. The cozy haze of sleep was a wonderful place to be. Her body felt blissfully heavy, fully used in ways she hadn’t experienced in years. There were muscles she’d forgotten existed. Her limbs were tangled in the sheets that smelled like Vic.
She inhaled deeply and brought more of his scent in. She relished the night they’d had together. She could do nothing but lie there and smile.
Then she heard whispering. Not the quiet kind. Her muscles tensed.
“Dad…Daddy… Why is Mommy in your bed?”
Her eyes flew open at her son’s question.
Oh no!
She had meant to creep out of Vic’s bedroom and go to hers before Kian woke up, but here she was, in a blissful state and still naked.
She turned her head just enough to see Vic sit upright beside her. His hair was mussed, his chest was still bare, and he looked exhausted but slightly panicked, too.
He, too, was still naked.
This was an expression she’d never seen on him until now. He was always cool, calm, and collected and always had an answer for everything.
“Hey, buddy.” Vic cleared his throat. He combed his fingers through his hair and pushed it away from his face. “Mommy…uh…had a bad dream and she was scared.”
Vic, God bless him, was horrible at whispering.
“A bad dream?” Kian gasped. “Like monsters?”
“Uh…yeah. Monsters kept her up.” Vic nodded quickly. His eyes darted to her and met her gaze. His eyes held a silent plea for help.
Tachina wanted to die—or laugh. She wasn’t sure which. Maybe she’d do both.
Kian turned and ran out of the room.
Vic exhaled and released a curse. He scrubbed a hand across his face. Tachina tried her best not to laugh out loud. They’d been caught by their four-year-old.
“We have about ten seconds before he comes back.” Vic glanced over at the open door.
“Okay,” she whispered. She pushed up and looked for something to cover herself up with. “I thought you were going to set an alarm!”
“I did. He’s earlier than I expected.” Vic threw the covers back. “He usually sleeps for another hour or so.”
“Really, he’s always up at the ass crack of dawn for me,” she muttered.
He probably slept late for Vic because he allowed him to stay up past the bedtime she usually set for him when he was at her place.
Vic hopped out of the bed and grabbed his pants from the floor and threw them on fast. He jogged over to his dresser and snagged a dark-gray t-shirt from it.
He tossed it to her. She caught it mid-air and slid it on.
Thankfully, it was long enough to almost reach her knees.
The scent of him surrounded her even more.
Her stomach fluttered as he dove back into the bed. They pulled the covers back over them.
Rapid footsteps thundered through the seating area of Vic’s suite.
“Told you,” Vic muttered.
Kian flew through the door holding Mr. Blankie.
“Mom!” Kian no longer whispered. He shouted. “Mr. Blankie makes monsters go away! You can hold him.”
Her heart practically melted that her baby was trying to comfort her and keep the bad monsters away. It was something she had used as a mechanism when he had nightmares.
Before she could respond, he launched himself onto the bed and crawled over her so he could wedge himself between her and Vic. Kian smiled as he handed her his trusted blanket. It was one he’d had since he was an infant. He never went anywhere without it.
Except school.
“Thanks, baby,” she said gently. She cradled it to her chest and leaned over to kiss him on the forehead. “Mr. Blankie always helps.”
“You can have him anytime you have bad dreams, Mommy,” he said. He leaned into her and gave her a hug.
Vic adjusted the pillows so Kian would have some behind him. Kian settled back against them and got himself comfortable as if it were his bed.
“Can we watch cartoons?” Kian asked.
“Cartoons?” Vic yawned. He rested his arm behind Kian and glanced over at his phone on the nightstand. “It’s super early.”
“But the sun is out,” Kian said, as if that was the only thing that mattered. Of course a four-year-old had no concept of time.
Vic looked over Kian’s head at her, and something warm flicked in his gaze. Something that made her heart stutter and had her breath catching in her throat.
Did he feel what she was feeling at this moment?
The three of them in bed, first thing on a Saturday morning, felt normal.
Felt like they were a real family.
Tachina swallowed hard and turned away. She didn’t want to fall into a fantasy. She and Vic weren’t together. They were two people who’d accidentally got pregnant and made the most of it. Now here they were, trying for number two, but were still not together.
Vic leaned back against the headboard while Kian talked about the show he wanted to watch. She glanced down at Mr. Blankie and sighed.
She did have to admit this moment was perfect.
Here she was, sitting with Vic’s oversized shirt on, still flushed and reeling from last night, still feeling his hands on her, his cock in her…
If she had been right and she was ovulating, then they’d probably conceived.
Would this be them next year?
The four of them?
The thought rose too quickly and hit her hard. She was hopeful yet terrified. She glanced over at Vic again who silently watched her. His expression was unreadable but intense.
She exhaled and offered him a small smile.
“Who’s hungry?” She sat forward and took in her handsome Maxwell men.
“Me!” Kian raised his hand, his smile goofy. “Pancakes!”
“Of course. I’ll make us some breakfast,” she offered.
Kian had a love affair with pancakes, and with a smile like the one on his face, she’d make them every day.
“I have to potty.” Kian scooted to the edge of the bed. He ran from the room.
When his footsteps faded, Vic turned to her, his grin crooked.
“The only excuse I could come up with was a bad dream.” He chuckled.
“That was slick. I sure as hell couldn’t think of anything.” She giggled and held up their son’s blanket. It was plush and smelled like it had recently been washed. “And he wanted to help.”
“He’s a good kid,” Vic murmured.
“He is. We did good,” she whispered. She peeled back the comforter and slid her legs from underneath it.
Vic’s eyes went to her bare legs, then upward toward his shirt. His eyes darkened for a moment.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, but her heart raced. Not from embarrassment, but from the way he looked at her and from the truth she didn’t want to admit.
She wasn’t okay. Not really. Last night had opened a door inside her that she’d tried to keep locked. With Kian climbing in the bed with them, it had given her a glimpse of something she wanted badly.
A family.
A real one.
Not their child going in between two houses. Two schedules. Each of them having ‘a weekend’.
Just…them.
“Tachina.” Vic must have read something in her expression. He reached out and rubbed her knee.
“I’m okay. Really.”
He didn’t push her. He stood and grabbed a shirt from his dresser and pulled it on. She tried not to stare at the stretch and flex of his muscles.
“I’ll take him downstairs and find his show for him to watch while you get dressed,” he said.
She nodded wordlessly and watched him walk toward the door. He paused and glanced back at her. He studied her in that moment, and for a brief second, she would have sworn the man was able to look into her soul.
“Everything is going to be okay.”
She inhaled sharply, and before she could say anything, he stepped into the seating area and left the room. She closed her eyes and laid hand on her chest.
She knew without a doubt that she wasn’t just having baby fever anymore.
She was falling for her son’s father.
Hard.
And she didn’t know how to stop it.
Vic had never been a morning person, but as he leaned in the doorway and watched Tachina move around his kitchen in his t-shirt, he thought maybe he could become one.
The light streaming through the window caught the curve of her cheek, the sway of her hips, and the tiny frown she wore when she was focused on what was cooking on the stove. She wasn’t doing anything special, just making a simple breakfast, but the scene rooted itself somewhere deep inside him.
He should be exhausted. Emotionally wrung out. It wasn’t that long ago that Sydney had stood in his living room demanding answers that he didn’t know how to give her.
“Why aren’t we engaged? Why don’t you talk about having kids with me? Why won’t you plan a life with me?”
His response—silence. That had apparently told her everything she had needed to know. So she had left. Three years of a relationship evaporated in an hour.
Yet here he was, leaning against the doorway while Tachina made pancakes with his son perched on the counter beside her. They giggled about her methods of flipping the pancakes. She was dramatic and silly with her showmanship of pancake making. Kian’s laughter filled the air.
Three years with Sydney had never felt like this.
Hell, three minutes with Tachina felt more real than most of his relationship with Sydney ever had.
“Dad!” Kian called out. He waved a half-eaten strawberry at him. “Mom says breakfast at her house is funner than your house.”
“Kian!” Tachina gasped. Her gaze flicked to his briefly before going to their son. “I did not say that. I said it’s fun to make breakfast at dad’s because his kitchen is much nicer than ours.”
“Why? Because you don’t burn them here?” Kian asked.
Vic smirked at his son’s question.
“One time. I burned one pancake!” She groaned. “One time!”
“I remember that. Kian told me about a day when the smoke alarm went off.” Vic chuckled. He stepped into the kitchen.
“Not helping,” she said in a singsong voice. She turned back to the griddle and took off the pancakes. She plated them and placed them in the warming oven underneath the stovetop. She tossed him a wink.
There she was, being playful and sweet.
Everything Sydney wasn’t.