“You can’t blame her because the romance girlies don’t want to read about your lame-ass baseball players,” Conor says.
“Sure, they’d rather read about a bunch of goons throwing punches on the ice.” I roll my eyes.
“What’s going on over here?” Callie comes over with Eloise, and both have a stack of books in their hands.
Conor and I reach to take the books from them and are met with a scowl and a look that says I am perfectly capable of holding a few books.
Callie looks between the three of us. “Are you guys bothering poor Amanda?”
Eloise looks at Amanda, “Sorry if their egos get out of hand.”
“Look at the wall and tell me what’s wrong with this picture?” I say to Callie, motioning with my hand up and down the wall.
Callie slides between us and inspects it, picking up a hockey romance called Faking it with #41. “Oh, this looks?—”
I swipe it out of her hands and put it back on the shelf.
Conor cracks up laughing.
“I can’t read that one?” Callie arches an eyebrow.
“You should let her, then she can be thinking about a hockey player when?—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” I point at Conor.
He just laughs harder. “You are too easy to rile up.”
“Leave him alone.” Eloise shakes her head at her husband. “If it helps, his ego soared to new heights the first time I took him to a bookstore, and he realized that hockey heroes are a big thing in romance. I’m really the one to blame.”
“I’m going home to email every romance author I can find online and ask them to write a baseball hero.” I frown.
“Oh, here’s one!” Callie picks a book up off the shelf. “The Hotshot. Can I buy this one?”
Conor’s eyebrows rise, and I groan.
“Buy whatever you want,” I grumble.
Callie reads the back of the book and puts it back. “Never mind, it sounds too much like Hayes and Leighton’s story. I’m gonna stick to these Eloise recommended.”
Both women accompany Amanda to the checkout while Conor and I hang back.
“Holding up okay? How far along are you guys?” he asks.
Is this what happens these days? People talk about pregnancy as a we thing?
“Eighteen weeks.”
“Wait until after twenty, that’s when the shit gets real. But it’s great. When you feel the baby move… it’s unreal.”
His face is so bright with happiness that it makes me excited for what’s coming. The only difference is that Eloise is his wife, and Callie isn’t my… anything really. The baby coming brings a finality to what we have. It’s very different from what Conor has.
I look at Callie laughing with Eloise and Amanda, picking up bookmarks and completely enthralled with this store we stumbled upon, and all I can think is that I don’t ever want to let her go.
Sure, she’ll always be the mother of my child, but that’s not the same as what we have now. And though I can’t tell her… I really like what we have.
Chapter
Fifty-One
