“Shh,” I scolded, eyeing the stairs at her back. “Keep it down.”
Pink didnotneed to know about this—not yet at least. Hell, I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea of being a parent without feeling like I might throw up or shit myself—or worse, some combination of the two—at any given second, so the thought of telling my roommate—mybest friend—that I was three months pregnant with his boss’s spawn did not sit well with me.
Also, there were certain things you just didn’t discuss with friends, and one of those was the R-rated play-by-play of how their boss had knocked you up.
Hard pass.
“I can’t believe it.” Nessa’s hands flew up to her mouth. “You’re having a baby with Coach Daddy.”
“Please, never call him that again.”
“Oh, I will one-hundred percent be calling him that again. Between the muscles, full body tats, and slutty little glasses, the man looks like he could be on the cover of a romance novel.” Her eyes lit up. “Or a calendar. Oh, Dani, can youpleaseorganize some kind of Roasters calendar?”
I dropped my head forward. “One crisis at a time, please.”
Nonetheless, I made a mental note to reach out to the head of our community relations department. If the bachelor auction during last fall’s Buns and Roses Festival had proven anything, it was that the girls, gays, and theys all wanted a piece of the Rose City Roasters.
Nessa paced across the tiles, one hand raking through her mussed sex hair, the other waving at the pregnancy tests like they were cursed relics. “How long?”
“Geez, I don’t know. It might take a few months to organize the photo shoot, but we could definitely get the calendars out by Thanksgiving—”
“No.” Nessa leaned on the counter across from me, her teasing expression slipping into something gentler. “How long has it been since you guys started things up again?”
Silence stretched between us. The rain outside ticked against the kitchen windows like a metronome counting down to impact. Nessa and Pink were the only ones who knew about my fling with Brooks—the first time around, that was. Like most of my relationships, ours had been short, hot, and complicated beyond repair. As had our breakup, if you could even call it that.
What had started one hell of a fuck fest had quickly spiraled into the most awkward night of my life, one that had ended with Nessa and Brooks bumping into each other in our upstairs hallway.
Naked.
There’d been no coming back after that—nothing soured a secret relationship faster than the truth.
“It’s not like that,” I said.
Nessa gave me a pointed look. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been secretly hooking up with Coach Daddy this whole time.”
“Not thewholetime,” I replied, holding up my hands in mock surrender. “We had a nice little stretch of mutual avoidance. Very healthy. Very mature.”
She gaped at me. “And then?”
I gave her a slow, knowing smile.
“Then came New Year’s Eve.”
Dani
Three Months Ago
Another year, another vodka lemonade.
We were closing in on midnight, and thank fuck for that because I was freezing my ass off. It was my own fault for choosing a skirt over my go-to pair of high-waisted, acid-wash jeans that looked like they had been pulled straight from a 90s Abercrombie ad. In actuality, I had “forgotten” to return them to my ex after she’d dumped me for her coworker.
That’s what happens when you cheat on me.
She couldn’t keep it in her pants . . . so I’d taken them.
Sure, it was probably too cold for a skirt, but it was also New Year’s Eve. I owed it to my hot ass self to show a little leg. Especially since my latest thigh tattoo—a fine-line tarot card design I had gifted myself for my birthday—had just finished healing.
An empress for an empress.
