Lead Player - Alex Grayson Page 0,82
but I give in. Besides, I can’t ask Juliet to fight my battles. I won’t risk her getting hurt or Heidi pressing charges against her.
I look down at my hands on his pecs, a thought occurring to me. “Did you…. Did you believe her?”
“Fuck no,” he barks before lowering his tone. “I may have doubted our relationship for a moment, but I never once thought you would harm an innocent baby. She made that claim out of desperation, a last-ditch effort to sway me to her side. I knew right away she was lying.”
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“For what?”
“For not doubting me on that. I’m not sure I would have been able to get over you believing I would harm our child.”
He sits up to get in my face, cradling the back of my head. “I’ll never doubt you again.”
Pressing his lips against mine, I soak in the fact that Enzo is really here with me.
After a moment, he pulls back and scoots up so he’s leaning against the headboard, taking me with him.
“That’s not why Allison called. Well, it is, but she told me something else. I called Allison on my way over here to tell her what happened. To warn her about Heidi. Evidently, she already knew and had been trying to call me since yesterday. Come to find out, she slashed her own tire that night a few weeks ago. And she purposely drove to that side of town to do it. Knowing I was here and would leave to come to her rescue.”
“I know they’ve been friends for a long time, but I can’t help but hope Allison dissolves her friendship with that bitch.”
“She has. It’s a given she’s upset, but she refuses to have anything to do with someone who would purposely try to hurt me. She’s also furious.”
“She actually cornered me in the bathroom, you know,” I tell him, fiddling with the hairs on his chest. “The day I had lunch with Allison. She finagled her way into dining with us. Allison said it was because Heidi was like a sister to you and wanted to get to know the woman you were involved with. But I’m not stupid. That may have been the reason Heidi gave her, but I knew she wanted to learn more about our relationship. See if there were ways to destroy it.”
“What did she say to you?” he demands, his own anger returning.
I shrug. “Nothing that I didn’t know already. That she was after you. That you’d soon see that you belonged with her.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I had already told you my reservations about her, but you didn’t take them seriously. You also told me if they were true, I had nothing to worry about. I trusted your word. I refused to give her the satisfaction of putting doubt in my head.”
“But you didn’t doubt me,” he observes somberly.
“In the beginning I would have, but by that time, no, I didn’t.”
His expression drops and shame reflects in his eyes again. “Which makes what I did so much worse.”
“Stop.” Leaning down, I put my forehead to his. “We’ve moved past this. We’re not going backward. We’re together and going to have a baby. That’s all that matters.”
Before I know what’s happening, he jack knifes up, wraps his arm around my waist, and has me flipped to my back with him hovering above me.
“I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs against my lips. “But I’m going to keep you anyway.”
I smile. “And I think I’ll keep you too.”
“We’re forever, baby. Nothing and no one can take our forever away from us. Promise me.”
I look deeply into his eyes and give him the words that have never held more truth.
“I promise.”
Epilogue
ENZO
Seven Years Later
“Daddy!” A yell comes from the hallway at the same time I hear little patters of running feet. Looking at the doorway, not even a second later, a blur passes by, followed by a thump.
“What have I told you about running in the house, Ayden Taylor Bishop?” Alaina calls, stopping with her hands on her hips to glare down at our son as he picks himself up off the floor. “One of these days you’re going to slip and crack your head open.”
“But Mom,” he whines. “I don’t want to eat them!” His frantic eyes, the same beautiful blue as his mother’s, turn to me. “Dad, tell her I don’t have to eat them!”
Alaina looks at me, one brow lifted in challenge, as if daring me