Chapter 2
Two
Don’t judge me by my grocery cart. You have no idea what kind of emotions I’m trying to eat away.
—Nettie to Eddy
Nettie
Four months later
I walked up the length of his walk, nerves attacking my belly, with an entire plan.
I was going to march in there and tell him that I was pregnant.
I was going to tell him what my plan was for the foreseeable future.
I was going to…
My phone dinged with the sound that I reserved for the urgent emails from the Miami Sunrays, and I wondered if it was another hostile email from my team manager or the team owner.
The door opened and Boone came out in a pair of worn blue jeans, a white t-shirt that fit him like a glove, work boots that had seen better days, and a black ball cap that I’d given to him the day we’d found out that he was going to be a father.
His eyes, dark and hooded, were focused wholly on me.
He and I took one look at each other, and it was as if we couldn’t stop the gravitational pull.
He took two long steps toward me at the same time I took three much smaller ones toward him, and then we were in each other’s arms.
He lifted me up, walked back inside, and slammed the door closed behind himself.
Then he was kissing me like he’d forgotten he needed me in his arms to breathe.
I kissed him back just as fiercely, my fingers doing a deep dive into his hair to hold his head in place so he couldn’t pull away.
He groaned into my mouth as his fingers got to work on my tights.
They were the only thing that fit anymore thanks to my growing midsection.
I didn’t look pregnant yet, but I did look thick around the middle.
However, as I dropped my legs to allow him to yank my leggings off, being pregnant was the last thing on my mind.
There was only him and me.
His mouth on mine.
His scent in my lungs.
My hands in his hair.
His hard cock pressed against my weeping center.
And then he was where I always wanted him to be, deep inside of me, practically touching my soul.
“You feel so good,” his deep, guttural voice crooned against my lips. “Why can’t I breathe without you?”
A question I’d been asking myself since I’d met him.
I didn’t, however, answer him.
Because answering him would do neither one of us any good.
We both knew this would lead to the same place that everything else led.
Heartache was our constant companion.
Love was never our problem.
It was everyone else’s interference.
He pulled out and pushed back inside, filling me deeply with each thrust.
Our breaths intermingled as he stayed close, unable to stand even that small amount of distance when we were in each other’s orbit.
“Faster,” I begged when he kept his slow pace.
He knew what he was doing.
He knew how to play my body like a fiddle.
He knew where to push. When to pull. Knew when to slow down. What touch would drive me insane.
Just like I knew if I moved my mouth to his neck, right under his ear, he would…
“Fuck me,” he growled as he sped up.
I moaned against his neck, biting down hard.
He cursed even louder as his thrusts became uneven, but more forceful.
That was what I needed.
For him to lose control.
To let that iron control go.
When he did, when he gave me everything, that was when I’d detonate.
Sure, he could’ve forced me over the edge on his own, but I wanted him just as out of control as I was.
My shoulders smarted slightly thanks to the way he was pressing me into the wall at my back, but not even that could take away the feeling of my orgasm pulling me under.
I closed my eyes as lights danced in my vision.
My pussy pulsed, and then he was following suit, filling me so full that I could feel the wetness leaking out from where he was shoved deep inside of me.
Our pulses continued to fly, as our breathing remained uneven.
That was what he did to me.
I never had any control when he was near.
I opened my eyes and stared straight into his dark as night ones, then said, “Let me down, please.”
He refused, carrying me to the bathroom off the hall where he sat me down on the vanity and reached for the hand towel next to the sink.
He wet the towel, then pulled out and cleaned me up. Only when I was done did he clean himself up.
He tossed the towel to the ground and then gently set me on my feet.
I slid down the length of his body, and only then noticed that he was fully dressed except for his cock that he’d fished out of the hole in his jeans.
“Do you pull your underwear down and go over the band when you pull out your penis, or go through the little hole in the underwear?”
He didn’t blink at the weird question.
“Over,” he answered. “Is the season over?”
I always came to him at the end of the season.
Without fail, the season would end, and I’d be in his arms half a day later.
“Yeah.” I swallowed hard and said, “I need my pants.”
He backed up and allowed me to walk to them.
I tugged my underwear on first, followed by my leggings, then tugged the borrowed t-shirt down over my waist before heading to his kitchen.
He followed behind me, not saying a word.
I pulled out a small container of Sunny Delight and poured myself a glass.
He always kept it on hand for me.
He knew it was my favorite.
There was never a time when I didn’t walk into his home and find a jug of it waiting for me.
Just like when he flew to Miami, I’d always let him in my home. He’d always be able to find his root beer stocked and ready for him, even though I despised the taste and smell myself.
I took a healthy swig of my Sunny D, then focused wholly on him.
“I’m pregnant.”
Boone, the asshole man who had such a strong hold on me that it was hard to breathe sometimes, stared at me in shock.
“Um, what?”
This felt like a repeat of the first time I’d told him I was pregnant.
Though, this time would go differently.
This baby would make it.
I would make sure of it.
And the awful, no-good, very bad, I’d rather die than let you date my son woman that was to be a grandmother wouldn’t be able to stop it.
She couldn’t pay off a high school girl to kick me so hard that it would send me to the hospital.
And she couldn’t pay off her doctor friends to accidentally give me a drug that would cause me to miscarry.
I didn’t have proof that she’d done it.
I just knew in my heart that she had.
I’d gone to the doctor as a precaution after being kicked in the stomach that hard.
When I’d gotten there, a woman had come in and smiled at me and told me everything would be all right.
I’d seen my baby’s heartbeat on the screen.
I’d gone home that night with medication that was supposed to help me sleep from a nurse who had looked at me like she was dissecting me and finding me lacking.
But it hadn’t helped me sleep.
It’d caused me to miscarry.
I’d miscarried our baby in the bathroom of the apartment with my sister holding onto me while I sobbed.
And when I’d told Boone what I suspected, he hadn’t believed that his mother would do anything like that.
When I’d given him an ultimatum, her or me, he’d hesitated.
And that was all that I’d needed to know.
He’d choose me. I knew he’d choose me. But his mother would forever be a problem. She’d always be at the back of his mind, riding him hard just like she did in real life.
Though I loved Boone Windsor with my whole heart and soul—and would forever—I wouldn’t ever get his mother out of my life if I stayed.
Every time we broke up, I promised that I wouldn’t go back.
And every time I came home, I came back.
Boone was the breath in my lungs. Giving him up was like telling my body to stop breathing. It just wasn’t possible.
As long as I was far enough away that I couldn’t get to him, it was fine. I could deal. But the minute I came within a drivable distance to Boone, there I was, driving.
He always let me in. We always made bad decisions. Though, all of the other times those bad decisions happened, one of us was able to scrounge up enough forethought to use birth control.
That was why we were in the predicament that we were.
It was why I was standing in his kitchen, telling him that I was pregnant, when I wanted to be anywhere else.
“How far along?” he rasped, his face…shocked but pleased.
I worked my tongue over my teeth, knowing this was about to piss him off.
“Four and a half months.”
He blinked.
Then stiffened. “You’ve known for this long that you were pregnant, and you didn’t tell me?”
The heartbreak in his voice was enough to cause my heart to seize.
However, I’d had a reason for not telling him.
“I didn’t want your mother involved in my life.” I shrugged. “Plus, I knew that if I told you, you would tell me to stop playing soccer.”
He blamed the soccer I wouldn’t give up for the loss of our first baby.
He hadn’t been there and seen the life inside of me thrive after the game.
He hadn’t heard the doctor tell me that my baby was perfect and trucking along perfectly.
He only had the vision of me getting kicked in the stomach as hard as could be, then hearing about me losing the baby later that night. He didn’t want to believe that the pill I’d taken to help me sleep had caused the miscarriage.
I didn’t blame him.
I had no proof.
Only a mother’s intuition.
The deep-seated knowledge that his mother had a part in it.
When I’d gotten that soccer scholarship and left, he’d resented the sport ever since.
He blamed soccer for my not being here.
He blamed soccer for the death of our child.
He blamed soccer for the loss of our relationship.
I didn’t blame him.
I mean, it was the reason we were apart so much.
His life was here. His veterinary practice was here. His family. His friends. His club. All of it was here.
My family. My friends. My life. All of it was here, too.
But then there was soccer, always stealing me away.
“Are you…is the baby…” He blew out a breath.
“The baby is okay,” I said. “She’s okay.”
His head jerked up from where he’d let his gaze fall to the floor, and his eyes lit with an inner peace that I hadn’t seen in so long.
“A girl?”
I nodded.
“A girl.”
I pulled out my phone, then hit send on the texts that I’d had waiting in the reply bar for just this very moment.
He pulled out his phone at my urging, then his eyes latched onto the screen and held.
“So much bigger than our Julep.”
Just hearing the name of the baby I’d loved so much squeezed my heart.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “You can see her fingers and toes really well in the last one.”
He quickly swiped to the last photo I’d sent, and once again froze.
“What’s all that squiggly stuff at the top of the toes?”
“The ultrasound tech told me that’s hair. Her feet are up by her head.” I laughed. “I asked if it was normal to be able to see hair at four and a half months, and she said yes.”
“I’m curious how much she’ll have when she’s born,” he replied quietly.
Too quietly.
“Talk to me.”
His eyes came up to meet mine. “What happens next?”
My shoulders slumped. “I don’t know.”