always thought I was a logical person. But if I was going to be totally honest with myself, when I had been super pregnant, I would lie in bed and cry over the idea of him being with someone else while I gained weight and my boobs hurt and I couldn’t poop and got irritated by everything even more than usual. I had thought about him spending every night with someone different… even if he had told me before we’d done it that he rarely had sex too. Can’t trust anyone, sweetheart. Hope I don’t bugger this up, he had laughed while he’d taken my clothes off that first time, slowly, letting those big hands linger in all the bare places he came across. And I had laughed and told him I hope you don’t either. And we had both laughed some more after that.
There had been a reason it had been him. Because he had seemed so nice and fresh and honest and good and not at all like the horny assholes I had known who slept with everyone. Or the guys I knew too well to be attracted to. There were good guys out there; of course I knew that. But most of them had girlfriends, and the ones who didn’t were like Jonah—except I felt nothing for them. They knew who they were, they weren’t addicted to sex, and they were particular about who they let into their lives and their beds. And there was nothing there for me.
Some of the most successful men I knew were almost abstinent. Because they knew what it was like for people to want them for all the wrong reasons. You didn’t find real things by looking, usually.
And that’s why I hadn’t second-guessed too much Jonah’s insistence that he was out of practice. He had seemed too real. Too himself. For a while there, he had given me the idea that maybe he could have been mine if we had been together long enough.
That wasn’t how it had worked out, but it’s how I thought it might have. If we’d had time. If he hadn’t been derailed with his injury. If he had liked me more, I guessed.
But that unreasonable part of me that was connected straight to hormones reared its ugly, no-reason-to-be-possessive-but-I-was-going-to-be-a-possessive-psycho-anyway head and made me want to kick the Asshole’s ass all over again for being off living his life, forgetting about me, probably making out with a different woman every week, while I’d been at home, substituting coffee for a hot mushroom drink, missing food I craved out of nowhere that Grandpa wouldn’t let me have either, while my skin stretched and my organs moved with the life I’d been carrying inside of me.
I was a jealous motherfucker, even when I hadn’t had a boyfriend. God knew I had wanted to kill Noah every time I saw him with a different girl while I’d thought I’d been in love with him when I’d been younger. The bitch.
Just thinking about Noah right then made me want to kick his ass too while I was at it, but for a completely different reason.
Keep it together and quit being a psycho.
The fact was, I could be with whomever I wanted to be with. I hadn’t been abstinent because I was pining over the dumbass in the room or because of the one I had thought I liked as a teenager. I’d had more guys flirt with me while pregnant than when I hadn’t been for some reason.
Thinking that eased the tension in my chest a little more. It made the crazy take a step back and see that I’d always had options too. I had done what I wanted to.
But by the time I managed to zone back into the conversation that Jonah and Peter were having, I had missed part of it. I figured I had skulked around long enough while eavesdropping. Fortunately, Peter saw me out of the corner of his eye right as I stepped into his line of view so I didn’t have to speak first.
“Morning,” my second dad greeted me. “General Mo has been keeping me company this morning. We agreed we’d let you sleep in.” He gave the baby a tickle.
“Aren’t you two the best?” I asked as I took a couple steps into the room, finally conscious I was just wearing a long T-shirt in front of Jonah. Whatever.
Mo made a happy squeal and a “Ma!” at the sound of my voice, lighting up