The man breaks the silence. “Sandy…she has your eyes.”
“My baby girl,” the woman whispers, and then the three of them are hugging and laughing and my eyes are hot and Cooper’s staring at me.
I try to flop lower in the bed and blink fast to keep him from noticing.
“I like it when they have a happy ending,” I whisper.
“They don’t always?”
I shake my head.
He doesn’t reply, but I can feel him watching me.
Quiet Cooper is odd. He’s never quiet. He always has something to say.
Always.
But not right now.
Now, he’s watching me like he wants to ask questions, like he knows something’s weird, but even though he’s here because we’re supposed totalk, and we sort of agreed to be friends, he doesn’t want to push.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into this and he’s right, and I should go to sleep.
“I’m a sperm donor baby,” I whisper. “Sometimes I wonder…but it’s not really safe to go find out, you know?”
He stretches out on the bed next to me, our legs and hips and shoulders touching, mine under the covers, his on top, but still touching.
And hestilldoesn’t say anything.
“Swear to god, if you’re thinking about sneaking a DNA test on me—”
He rolls to his side and hooks one leg over mine. “Boundaries. Right and wrong. I wouldn’t do that.”
I believe him.
That’s the thing about Cooper.
He sleeps around. He doesn’t commit. If we’re spotted in public together after the media coverage of him helping me hold a baseball bat for the video that drops next week,dozensof women would come out of the woodwork to tell stories about him and their time with him.
Possibly hundreds.
But in my experience, and from what I’ve heard and seen while watching his career the past several years, he keeps his word, he goes all-in when he cares about something, and his heart’s in the right place.
He has an ego, but he’s also grounded.
The only time he’s ever let me down was the time Aunt Zinnia chased him away.
“You know where you came from,” I say quietly.
He settles his arm across my hips, and I can’t help wondering if he’s intentionally avoiding my belly. Like he knows it’s tender.
“I picked my family,” he says.
I make a face at him. “You picked your parents and your grandparents and your brother and your sister?”
“Not the first time. Not when I was born. But after I left for the Minors, there was this time when I felt totally disconnected. Like I was becoming someone different and they weren’t there all the time, but they were all with each other, and it was like I didn’t fit anymore. Not like I used to. So I picked them again. I decided to get to know them again.”
“Get to know them again? Like, they changed? Not you changed?”
