Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Um, what?”
This felt like a repeat of the first time I’d told him I was pregnant.
Though, this time would go differently.
This baby would make it.
I would make sure of it.
And the awful, no-good, very bad, I’d rather die than let you date my son woman that was to be a grandmother wouldn’t be able to stop it.
She couldn’t pay off a high school girl to kick me so hard that it would send me to the hospital.
And she couldn’t pay off her doctor friends to accidentally give me a drug that would cause me to miscarry.
I didn’t have proof that she’d done it.
I just knew in my heart that she had.
I’d gone to the doctor as a precaution after being kicked in the stomach that hard.
When I’d gotten there, a woman had come in and smiled at me and told me everything would be all right.
I’d seen my baby’s heartbeat on the screen.
I’d gone home that night with medication that was supposed to help me sleep from a nurse who had looked at me like she was dissecting me and finding me lacking.
But it hadn’t helped me sleep.
It’d caused me to miscarry.
I’d miscarried our baby in the bathroom of the apartment with my sister holding onto me while I sobbed.
And when I’d told Boone what I suspected, he hadn’t believed that his mother would do anything like that.
When I’d given him an ultimatum, her or me, he’d hesitated.
And that was all that I’d needed to know.
He’d choose me. I knew he’d choose me. But his mother would forever be a problem. She’d always be at the back of his mind, riding him hard just like she did in real life.
Though I loved Boone Windsor with my whole heart and soul—and would forever—I wouldn’t ever get his mother out of my life if I stayed.
Every time we broke up, I promised that I wouldn’t go back.
And every time I came home, I came back.
Boone was the breath in my lungs. Giving him up was like telling my body to stop breathing. It just wasn’t possible.
As long as I was far enough away that I couldn’t get to him, it was fine. I could deal. But the minute I came within a drivable distance to Boone, there I was, driving.
He always let me in. We always made bad decisions. Though, all of the other times those bad decisions happened, one of us was able to scrounge up enough forethought to use birth control.
That was why we were in the predicament that we were.
It was why I was standing in his kitchen, telling him that I was pregnant, when I wanted to be anywhere else.
“How far along?” he rasped, his face…shocked but pleased.
I worked my tongue over my teeth, knowing this was about to piss him off.
“Four and a half months.”
He blinked.
Then stiffened. “You’ve known for this long that you were pregnant, and you didn’t tell me?”
The heartbreak in his voice was enough to cause my heart to seize.
However, I’d had a reason for not telling him.
“I didn’t want your mother involved in my life.” I shrugged. “Plus, I knew that if I told you, you would tell me to stop playing soccer.”
He blamed the soccer I wouldn’t give up for the loss of our first baby.
He hadn’t been there and seen the life inside of me thrive after the game.
He hadn’t heard the doctor tell me that my baby was perfect and trucking along perfectly.
He only had the vision of me getting kicked in the stomach as hard as could be, then hearing about me losing the baby later that night. He didn’t want to believe that the pill I’d taken to help me sleep had caused the miscarriage.
I didn’t blame him.
I had no proof.
Only a mother’s intuition.
The deep-seated knowledge that his mother had a part in it.
When I’d gotten that soccer scholarship and left, he’d resented the sport ever since.
He blamed soccer for my not being here.
He blamed soccer for the death of our child.
He blamed soccer for the loss of our relationship.
I didn’t blame him.
I mean, it was the reason we were apart so much.
His life was here. His veterinary practice was here. His family. His friends. His club. All of it was here.
My family. My friends. My life. All of it was here, too.
But then there was soccer, always stealing me away.
“Are you…is the baby…” He blew out a breath.
“The baby is okay,” I said. “She’s okay.”
His head jerked up from where he’d let his gaze fall to the floor, and his eyes lit with an inner peace that I hadn’t seen in so long.
“A girl?”
I nodded.
“A girl.”
I pulled out my phone, then hit send on the texts that I’d had waiting in the reply bar for just this very moment.
He pulled out his phone at my urging, then his eyes latched onto the screen and held.