Page 71 of Cruel Love

She’s panicking.

I look at the tests in my hand, and honestly, I don’t really blame her. If the roles were reversed, I’d be teetering on the edge in that bathroom right now, too.

The door swings open again. Caleb emerges with a fourth test in her hand.

“Are you pregnant?” she asks me.

I blink. “No.”

“Are you sure? I have more tests.”

“Pretty sure.”

“You should get pregnant,” she says. “Fox wants babies. Did you know that?”

I take a step back. “No…”

“He told me. Well, not directly, but he said that it’d be nice if my kids grew up with his kids, which means he wants kids. So, if our kids are gonna grow up together, then you need to get pregnant with me. Did you guys have sex yesterday?”

“Okay…” I breathe out. “I think you should sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” She taps the stick against her palm. “I want this damn thing to hurry up and tell me whether or not I’m about to be a single mom because if that’s the case, then I need to sell my shop. Maybe move back to Oklahoma. Really crash on back to square one.”

Her face wrinkles as she looks down, trying to hold back the tears just beneath the surface.

“Caleb, you’re not going to be a single mom,” I say. “You have Boxcar.”

“Yeah, for now, but he didn’t exactly go on a field trip to the science fair,” she says. “He’s in the air, on his way to fucking Russia right now. Russia. He’s hanging out with killers and mobsters and I’m not there to protect him—”

She bends at the waist, sobbing hard.

“Cal…” I rest my hand on her shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay…”

Caleb wraps her arms around me. I stumble back but I right us quickly, holding her up as she cries into my shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her again. “Boxcar is a smart guy and Fox is with him. They’ll keep each other safe. Okay?”

I take a deep breath, quietly repeating the words back to myself in my head.

It’s going to be okay. They’ll keep each other safe.

Fox is coming home.

The ring he gave me glimmers on my finger. I’ve been so messed up about current events, I didn’t stop to think about what would happen when Fox came back. He asked me to marry him. That means planning a wedding and actually getting married. Somewhere between now and then, we have to decide what our marriage will look like.

I look at the pregnancy tests still clenched in my palm. Three little plus marks.

I pat Caleb’s back. “It’s going to be okay,” I say again, exhaling hard.

Chapter 21

Fox

“No offense, Fox, but you don’t look like a maniacal killer.”

I blink at Lucy. She stares up at me from the airport hallway, her eyes squinting in deep thought.

“No offense taken,” I say.

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