Once my leg was secured, I stood, wrapping the towel around myself. “Let’s not be that couple that asks if the other is mad whenclearlythe other is mad. I said it to you earlier and I should not have. So… I’m sorry?—”
“I really wasn’t mad, just confused by your reaction to what Banks said, that’s all. But you…you’rereally mad at me.”
“Yes! Yes, I am.” I marched out to retrieve my clothes from the kitchen, but I didn’t have to because he had them neatly draped over the back of the chair next to his closet door. Hisconsiderateness irritated the hell out of me.
“What the hell? I don’t understand.”
I refused to look at him hovering over me with a black towel tied low on his waist, water rivulets racing down his skin.
“I don’t play that game, you big idiot!” I fastened my jeans and tugged on my shirt, leaving my bra on the chair.
“Lake!”
I made a dash for the back door. “Dammit!” I pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead. “I didn’t drive,” I whispered to myself. So much for my dramatic exit.
When his hands gripped my arms to turn me toward him, I didn’t even fight it. My eyes wandered over his bare chest and running shorts.
Cage sighed then lifted my chin with his finger. Defeat stole my tears, leaving me with a blank stare and the occasional blink.
“You’re not on the pill,” he said in a monotone voice like the answer to two plus two just came to him when he should have known it all along.
“I’m not on the pill,” I whispered.
CAGE
My dad laughedat me from Heaven or Hell, or maybe it was his ghost shadowing me every day. I could hear him calling me young and stupid. The truth? Iwasstill young and stupid.
Lake looked at me and I knew she was waiting for me to lie, but I wasn’t going to lie to her. Yet I knew the hardest part would be convincing her that my words were, in fact, the truth.
“I’m sorry for making a terribly irresponsible assumption.I’m sorry if you’re pregnant and you don’t want to be. But if I’m completely honest with you, I wanted everything that happened in the kitchen. And even if I felt pretty certain you were on birth control, there was… thereisa very visceral part of me that wants to make a life with you. And for that, I cannot feel one ounce of regret.”
She didn’t speak. I needed her to say something. Anything.
“You agreed to be my baby mama, Lake. You let me come in you… twice.”
Her face turned crimson. “I don’t have a car here.”
“Just as well. You’re not going anywhere.” I grabbed her hand. “Come on. I’m starving. My baby probably is too.”
“Not funny,” she grumbled, following me into the kitchen.
“Have a seat. Put your feet up before your ankles start to swell.”
“Still not funny. Actually… it’s a little funny. I only have one foot and ankle.”
“Lake.” Giving her a narrow-eyed look, I grabbed her waist and lifted her onto the counter, where everything had started earlier. She teased her fingers along my cheeks and into my hair. God, I loved her touch.
“What if we’re having a baby?” she whispered.
I turned my head and kissed the inside of her wrist. I craved the feel of her soft skin in that very spot, maybe because it always smelled like flowers, like that was where she dotted her perfume.
“What if we’re having a baby?” My lips, pressed against her skin, curled into the biggest shit-eating grin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE ITCH
LAKE
