He was good at silence. Me? Not so much.
“I don’t want to marry you.” Lies. Why the lies? I just couldn’t figure it out. The silence was killing me, and all I wanted was for it to stop. Like a gun to my head, I did whatever it took to make it stop. “In fact if you asked me to marry you, I’d say no, so… really, just forget about it. I’m pretty sure I was still asleep when Everson knocked on my door.”
Cage turned. God… he was so handsome, my heart struggled to keep up with my lungs or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever it was, he left me so breathless, captivated, and at the complete mercy of his next move, his next word, his next breath.
A faint smile tried to claim his lips as he exhaled what sounded like the hint of a laugh. “I played to impress you today.”
My lips parted as my body stiffened, eyes flitting side to side as if someone else was in the room, because the guy that Flint referred to as the future Super bowl MVP did not just say he played to impressme!?!
“It’s the only way I can do this. I can no longer love the game unless I can convince myself I’m playing it for you. I used to play for my dad, but then I met you and…” he set the plastic bottle on the counter and shrugged, still staring at it like his next words were written on the label “…I kinda like you—a lot. I like our story. I like falling in love with you every day. I like seeing all your emotions in your eyes?—”
“They’re tears.” I rolled said teary eyes toward the ceiling and fought them off with rapid blinks. “I’m so sick of you making me cry.”
He laughed as he shrugged off his suit jacket, folding it then resting it on the back of the barstool before threading hisfingers in my hair. “Just so you know, I heard every word you said. I promise I’ll never ask you to marry me. Okay?”
No. NO. NOOOO!!!
I’d have rather been the boy who got eaten by a wolf than the girl who never got proposed to by the man of her dreams. Lies. Damn the lies!
I cleared my throat, forcing myself to breathe as the horror show played out in front of me. Cage would never ask me to marry him. Fan-flipping-tastic. Why didn’t we just declare abstinence and agree on pen pal status so we wouldn’t even have to make time to see each other?
“Say something. You look like you just saw a ghost.” He smirked.
My eyes moved—up, down, side to side—but the rest of my body remained paralyzed. I could see how I must have looked spooked.
“No. I-I’m happy.”Don’t be contumacious, Lake. Don’t let your stubbornness be the sword that slays your dreams.Too late. “I can’t tell you how… uh…relievedI am to know that I can just enjoy our relationship without the looming fear of you doing something ridiculous like proposing to me and ruining everything.” Fucking idiot. Whoever came up with that term had me in mind. My picture belonged pasted in the dictionary next to it.
Cage brushed his lips against mine. “However…” he whispered “…I want kids someday.”
Gulp.
“Would you consider being my baby mama?”
My head snapped back. “Baby mama?”
He nodded.
My lips moved but no audible words were formed at first. “Y-you want me to have your babies?”
“Absolutely. Not like a dozen or anything, and not right away. Maybe two over the next eight to ten years.”
It was a joke, right? It had to be a joke, a classic calling of my bluff.
Contumacious.
Contumacious.
Contumacious.
I shrugged.What the hell are you doing, Lake!“Sure. Absolutely. Why not start now?” I couldn’t say for sure if it was the adrenaline rush from his game, our weeks spent apart, or Shayna’s near-death experience, but reason—all common sense—vanished from the room. The only thing that would prevent me from possibly being impregnated right there in the kitchen was Cage. Would he call mercy?
His eyes widened a fraction. “Now?”
“Sure. Carpe diem. It’s August. Nine months would give us a baby in May—still off season for you.”
He had to hear my heart. I could control my facial expressions, even my labored breaths were easy to stifle, but my heart surging in my chest felt like it was vibrating the whole house.
“Let’s do it. Carpe diem!”
