love her. It’s you and me, babe. You know it and so do I.”
Her eyes gloss over and she turns her head to the side. “Are you forgetting you had another woman on your arm an hour ago at Charlotte’s birthday?”
My lips flatten into a hard line. Regret twists in the pit of my stomach over the earlier split decision I stupidly made to invite Sarah along with me just to piss Ali off. I was still reeling after I saw Ali with the biker the other day. Even though realistically, I knew she wouldn’t be with him I couldn’t contain the hurt. Did it make me an asshole? Fuck yes. I have no decent excuse. I just wasn’t thinking straight. Do I regret it? Absolutely. Especially because I hadn’t touched Sarah in any inappropriate way and she hadn’t come onto me either because all I can think about is Ali. Nothing had changed with Sarah, but I had. She still loved another man and my heart now belongs to one woman, and it isn’t her. But Ali doesn’t know that.
“Ali—”
“No. It doesn’t even matter,” she cuts in. “Please, just listen to me. This isn’t just about you and me anymore. We destroy each other, Roamyn. Every. Damn. Time. We can’t fall back into old habits again. We’ve talked about this.”
I bring her hands to my lips and lightly kiss each one. “No, babe. You talked and then you walked out. And I know what you’re saying. But that was before we knew us fucking resulted in you falling pregnant with our kid. However the hell that actually happened.”
She shakes her head and a tear falls down her cheek. But she doesn’t let me go. Our fingers are still linked, just like our lives always will be. Deep down she knows it, just like I do.
“Birth control is never one hundred percent effective. The whole world knows it, Roam. We took a risk and pregnancy happened.”
My fingers caress her soft skin. I can feel her drifting away. “You know no matter how far you push me away I’m just gonna keep coming back, right?”
She looks me straight in the eyes. “I know. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Then don’t be afraid. Let this happen. You can say no today. You can say no to me again tomorrow, or in five years’ time, but it won’t change the inevitable. You’re it for me, Ali. Just like I know I’m it for you. I love you. I think I always have.”
“I love you, too. I’m just scared.” Her voice drops to a whisper, losing all power. “I have a hard enough time taking care of myself let alone caring for a baby. I’m excited and freaked out at the same time. My emotions are all over the place thanks to my raging hormones and I don’t know how to be a mom, Roamyn. What if I’m terrible at it? What if we’re bad parents? What if we can’t make this work between us?”
I pull her into me. “We’ll make it work. And we’ll be awesome parents. You know how I know that?”
She tilts her head back to look at me. “How?”
I dodge the lump rising in my throat thinking of my father. “Because we’re going to give our kid everything we never had. You’re going to be everything your mom wasn’t and I’m going to be the man and the father my dad never was to me. We got this, Ali.”
Her eyes drop and she nods. I open my mouth to speak when my phone interrupts our conversation. It vibrates against my leg and I curse the person on the other end for calling at this moment. I pull it from my pocket and the precinct’s phone number lights up on the screen. I rub the back of my neck with my other hand and contemplate not answering. But I need to, this is the second time they’ve called in the past half hour.
I hold the phone up to Ali. “I gotta take this.”
She nods when she sees who’s calling. “It’s all good. Take it.”
I hesitantly swipe a finger across the screen of the phone and answer the call. “Someone better be dying.”
“They aren’t thank fuck. ‘Bout time you answered,” Mason grumbles in my ear. Yep, he’s happy as ever.
My brows knit in confusion, the call was from the precinct. He must be back at work. “You back at the precinct?”
“Yeah, I am, and your ass would already be here too had you