Page 96 of Recklessly, Wildly Yours

“I was thinking of baby names on the flight over,” I say.

“Did you come up with any that you like?” she asks and I hate the tentativeness I can hear in her voice.

“I’m still thinking, but what I realized is that I don’t know your middle name.”

“It’s Wren. That was my mother’s middle name and her mother’s too.”

“So, our kid’s middle name will be Wren.”

“Well, I mean, if we have a girl.”

“I just googled it. It’s gender neutral, but regardless, there are no rules, Miller. We can give our kid whatever name we want.”

“Okay, no,” she says, quite bossy, and there’s my girl. All that tentativeness has disappeared. “I know you’re all fast and loose with your ‘no rules’ thing, but there is no way I’m sending our child out into the world with a weird name. A friend of mine in school had a weird name and she was picked on all the time for it. We are not doing that to our child, Black.”

Fuck, I love her.

“Two things. Firstly, thank you for telling Gage all your thoughts on the fact I don’t have a password on my phone. He gave me a lecture about that last night, and at the time I didn’t realize it came from you, but he used the term ‘fast and loose’, which I thought was fucking odd for him, and now I see it was your term, which makes much more sense.”

“You’re very welcome,” she says so sweetly it makes me grin. “But you didn’t listen to him, did you?”

“Fuck no.”

She sighs like she’s highly frustrated with me and I decide that I want a lifetime of those sighs. “What’s the other thing you wanted to tell me?”

“With this weird name shit, is there a list of weird names? Like, who makes that ruling?”

“I do love you, Ethan Black, but honestly, trust me, some names are weird and I will tell you if you choose one.”

She just told me she loves me like it’s old news to her. It’s not old to me, though, and I’m taking a moment to sit with it, to enjoy how fucking good it feels to know that the woman I love feels the same way.

When I don’t speak, she prods, “Ethan?”

“You just told me that you love me, Miller. I’m taking a moment here.”

The line goes silent for a few moments before she says quietly, “It feels like we’re doing everything the wrong way in this relationship.”

“What’s the right way?”

More silence for a beat. “Well, not meeting the love of your life in the middle of New York traffic while running away from your ex-fiancé for a start.” She releases a breath. “And not making the man you love jump really fucking fast when he doesn’t want to. And I really hate that we’re having this conversation over the phone. It’s not how things should be done.”

“Baby, the way we should do things is however we decide. Would I prefer to be in the same room as you right now having this conversation? Fuck yes. But I’ll take a phone call over no conversation at all. And let’s address the jumping fast thing. That’s not an issue for me and I regret making you think it was.”

“You were pretty adamant about it when we talked about your tattoo.”

“And then I got to know you, and honestly, Miller, it wouldn’t have been jumping too fast for me if you’d moved into my condo rather than buying your own. I should have told you that at the time. I don’t even want you to move into yours next week when it closes.”

The silence is deafening after I say that.

“Maddie, talk to me. Tell me why you showed up with fear in your eyes yesterday when you came to tell me you were pregnant.”

Her voice shakes like tears are close when she says, “I didn’t think you would want the baby. I thought you would leave me.”

“Have I done something or said something to make you think that?”

“I thought you would think it was too soon...but I also know that everything that happened with Tucker and my abortion played into my faulty thinking.” Her voice wobbles again. “I’m sorry I ran away from this rather than talking to you.”

“Well, you didn’t technically run away. You had to leave for work.”

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