“So what?”
At this point, I don’t give a shit. She’s already going to miss out on so much just because she’s the mother of my child. I’m not going to let her miss out on stuff like this before she’s even had the baby. Romy seems entirely confident that if her inner circle does figure it out, it won’t pose a problem. I want to build trust between us, so maybe I need to trust in that.
“Beau will be upset.”
“Screw Beau. He’ll deal with it.” I take her hand in mine, slowly pulling her up off the couch.
She humors me, and I lead her to the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m going to wait here like a good boy while you go get dressed.” I release her hand.
She steps on the first stair, and I grab her wrist to stop her.
“What?” she asks, turning back around.
“I just want to ask… will you go with me to The Hidden Cave?”
Her eyes narrow. “I thought we already established I was going.”
You’re fucking this up.
“Well, yeah, but I wanted to ask you though. If you’d go with me.”
She laughs and turns all the way around to face me. “I’d assumed we would be, no?”
“Yeah… yeah, of course.”
She studies me for a second, and sweat pebbles along the back of my neck. I’m terrible at putting myself out there. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Did my voice crack? “We’ll leave when you’re ready.”
Her lips tip up. God, I love her smile. Especially when she’s excited. It was the first thing I noticed about her that night I picked her out of the crowd after she showed up on the Jumbotron.
“Okay, I won’t be long. The remote is on the coffee table.” She walks up two stairs and turns around. “There’s no beer, but there’re energy drinks in the fridge. They’re Scarlett’s. I don’t drink them.”
I chuckle and motion her forward. “I’m good, go.”
“Okay.” She jogs up two more stairs and turns back to me again. “Snacks. The chip cabinet?—”
“Romy, go.”
“Okay, okay. Be right back.” She scurries up the stairs.
“And stop going up and down the stairs, you’re giving me a heart attack,” I call.
Her giggle carries down the hall and stairs to me.
I go sit on the couch, tapping my fingers on my jeans.
Faster than I expected, Romy returns. She’s changed into jeans and a sweater, hair out of her ponytail and brushed out. Her makeup is barely there, but she still has what I know now is a pregnancy glow. She grabs her coat from the hook and looks at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Ready?” she asks.
I nod and get up off the couch, relief flooding me. “Let’s go.”
DeSoto waits in the black, tinted SUV. It’s a clear giveaway of who is probably driving off this ranch. We’d be better off driving a beat-up Chevy truck.
I wave off DeSoto and open the SUV’s back door for her. She pauses right before she climbs in.
