Ky
“Don’t look at me like that,” I mutter, my requisite bucket of buttery popcorn in my hands. “Or I’ll be forced to bring up parenthood again.”
He pales as he drops down beside me, scowl deepening.
Then he sighs.
“We talked about it.”
“Who talked about what?”
A fluttering wave of both palms and fingers, a la jazz hands. “Parenthood,” he grits out. “She’s scared too.” A glance in my direction as I open my mouth, determined to make him understand that he and Joey will be amazing parents.
But then he keeps talking…and his words successfully shut me up.
“We’re going to time it so the baby’s born in the off-season.”
I blink.
Then again.
Then I’m setting my popcorn to the side and lurching to my feet.
He hops to his. “Ky?—”
I hug him tightly. “I cannot wait to be an auntie. I’m going to spoil the heck out of your kids.”
His arms come around me. “I just got used to the idea of one kid, now you’re throwing kids, plural, at me?”
“You can’t just have one,” I murmur, even as I’m wondering if I’ll ever get there myself when I can’t even?—
No.
Enough.
I’m not shadowing this happy moment with bullshit from the past.
Not when Colt and I?—
As though he’s plucked the direction of my thoughts out of my mind, he pulls back, hands going to the tops of my arms.
“Kylie,” he begins.
“Don’t,” I murmur. “I…” I exhale. “It’s new and he makes me happy and I already have enough shitty thoughts circling around in this brain of mine.”
His focus stays on me for a long, long moment.
Then he slides one hand up my arm, along my neck, and cups my jaw. “Okay.”
I relax.
“But if he hurts you…”
“Is this where the obligatory I’ll kill him if he hurts you speech comes in?”
“Don’t,” he echoes back to me. “I almost lost you once, kid, and you’re the only family I have left.”
I lean into his touch. “That’s not true.” A beat. “Not anymore.”
