“Hell yeah I want to feel my nephew kick!”
“You know,” Jessie laughed as they started slowly strolling towards the shop. “Your brother might be right. I might be having a girl.”
“No way. I mean… There are so many little girls in our rag-tag family right now. Addie, Sage, Embrie, and now Cami, too. Heck, even Sloane has Betty!”
Sloane and Gage were parents to the cutest pair of older dogs. “Yeah, but they have Darius. He counts.”
“And the first baby of the group was a boy, too,” Mae whispered.
Jessie nodded, understanding immediately that Mae was talking about Gage’s son, Mikey, who passed away with Gage’s wife in an awful accident before the guys had moved to Silver Springs.
Jessie followed Mae’s lead, sitting down next to her on the bench. There was a light breeze that picked up, helping wash away the overheated feeling rolling through her body. The tree next to the bench was providing a beautiful amount of shade, completely enveloping them in protection from the sun. Her father would be so disappointed that she didn’t remember the species of the tree, and she knew he probably told her a dozen times growing up. Would he teach her son those things too? Even after every horrible thing he’d said about her at dinner, she held out hope that things could be fixed between them.
“Did you have a feeling?” Jessie asked. “About what your baby would be?”
Mae closed her eyes, and her heart sank.
“Oh, I’m sorry if that was insensitive of me. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, Jess. That was… I’m just taken aback at how sweet of a question that was. I don’t really talk about it, ever, but I think I’m starting to get to a place where their memory isn’t so painful.”
Jessie nodded, her hand caressing the tight skin over Bee.
“I thought my baby was a girl,” Mae whispered. “I had a bunch of crazy dreams before my miscarriage. In all of them, I was dancing with this sweet little thing in a tutu. It’s why Stone built me the dance studio in the new house. So, one day, that dream could come true.”
“Mae, that’s beautiful.”
“And that’s why I’ll always believe that mama knows best. I’m more apt to trust your intuition than that of my idiot brother.”
Jessie reached over, taking Mae’s hand and moving it to her belly.
“Hawk hasn’t been able to feel him yet, so no spilling the beans if you feel it first. That’ll just have to stay between us. But usually if I’m sitting still for a bit, he’ll start to kick around.”
“I don’t mind. Although,” Mae laughed as she looked around. “We probably look a little strange sitting here like this.”
“What’s the good of living in a small town if you can’t be the hot gossip every once in a while.” Jessie wiggled her eyebrows. “I’m sure people are having a field day talking about me anyway.”
“What would they have to say? That you have a man who is head-over-heels for you? Friends who are ready to supportand love on you whenever they can? Anyone who wants to say something different can come straight to me. And I won’t hesitate to tell them to eat shit.”
Jessie smiled, but her eyes stung and her throat felt tight.
“Why are you upset?” Mae asked.
“Not upset. Grateful. For you. My family is making this whole thing so dramatic, and I’m just so happy that you and everyone else on Hawk’s side have embraced me so openly.”
“That’s so sweet.”
“I just never… I got to have a sister, for a while. But Colt got divorced, and things just weren’t the same with Violet after that. She’s the best, don’t get me wrong, but she’s in New York. And she hasn’t been back to Texas since the divorce. I love having a sister again. And I can’t think of a better aunt for my baby.”
Mae wrapped her arms around Jessie, surprising her as she tightened her hug.
“God, I’m the lucky one. I thought Hawk was never going to settle down. I was going to be stuck with that lunk as my only sibling for life.For life, Jess. And then you come along and I totally miss the fact that he can’t take his eyes off of you until I accidentally walked in on a very R-rated moment between you two…”
“X-rated, honestly,” she laughed as she sat back from the embrace.
“Ew. Good for you, but also…” Mae brought her free hand up to her ear and covered it. “La-La-La-La-La.”
Jessie started to laugh when a sharp pain cut through her belly. Her arms instinctively wrapped around the baby as her body curled in on itself.
