“This is going to be impossible to remember.” And, hello, now that I thought about it, drinking was a terrible idea; it’d make memory recall even harder. The problem? I was already buzzed, and buzzed me wasn’t very responsible.
“Then stick to the truth. Pretend I’m not the guy you hate. Do you want kids?”
The question caught me off guard.This suddenly feels way too intimate.Sharing hopes and dreams with Axel Pierce, my sworn enemy? But I had to sell this.
“I want three kids. And it would be amazing if two of them were twins.” I took a nervous gulp.
The way he looked at me then, his gaze lingering on my stomach like he could picture me round with his children, sent heat flooding through my entire body.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with genuine curiosity. “Why twins?”
I considered this, swirling my wine. “I’ve always been fascinated by them. Two little babies, two toddlers running around, looking similar … it’s the cutest thing in the world.”
The way he looked at me then, like this was the most interesting thing he’d ever heard, made my chest warm.
This is getting hard, these lines blurring between fake and real. Even harder are the feelings this conjured up, wishing that moments like these were the real ones.
Dangerous territory, Dakota.
But also … nice territory. When was the last time someone had looked at me like that? Like I was fascinating?
“What about you?” I cleared my throat and took another sip. “Kids?”
“No.” Axel said it so fast, it was like a gunshot to my soul.
“Wow, don’t sugarcoat it or anything. Tell me how you really feel.”
“I just did.”
“What if someone asks why your fiancée wants three kids and you want negative three?”
“Negative three?”
“That’s the vibe you’re giving off. Like you’d return other people’s kids if you could.”
Why did I care that he didn’t want children?I suppose it was because having kids wasn’t something I was willing to sacrifice, and maybe that small part of my brain that wondered if we could ever possibly work out realized now there was no way we ever could.
“Why don’t you want kids?” I pressed.
“Not everyone wants kids.”
“Right, but why? I’m supposed to be your fiancée. If I want three and you want zero, how did we resolve that? What was the compromise?” I drained my glass again.
His shoulders went rigid. “Families are overrated.”
Oh.“I take it, yours was a nightmare?”
“I don’t like talking about it.”
“Bet this get-to-know-you session really sucks for you then,” I quipped.
He sent a fresh glower my way.
“What if someone asks about it and I don’t know? That’ll blow our entire cover.”
He held my stare for a long moment, and I sensed whatever happened to him as a kid was what made him think families were doomed. Was that why he was a playboy whose only real relationship attachments were the men he’d bonded with in college?
And suddenly, I wasn’t just curious for the sake of our fake relationship. I wanted to know what had hurt him so badly.
