Page 150 of Offside Angel

By the time Zane is done putting him to bed, I’m changed into a night shirt and rinsing my puffy face with cold water in the bathroom.

He leans against the doorway, a smug smile on his face. “Sorry to spring that on you. I didn’t think you’d cry so much.”

“The sweetest boy in the world just told me he wanted me to be his mom.” I get choked up even thinking about it. My chin dimples, and I have to stare at the ceiling to keep from crying again. “What else was I supposed to do?”

Zane pads across the bathroom floor and brushes tears from my cheeks. “I can’t believe I used to think you were Wednesday Addams.”

“I thought that was just because of the dark hair.”

He twists the end of my hair around his finger. “No, it was because you never smiled at me and I thought you were a stone-cold bitch.”

“You were right about one of those things.” I grin up at him.

“So true. Everyone knows stone-cold bitches cry over adopting little boys they love… and about baby frogs on nature documentaries that get eaten by bigger frogs?—”

My lower lip trembles. “I just don’t understand how the species survives if they eat their young.”

He smiles at me so adoringly, my stomach flips. No one has ever looked at me the way Zane does. “You really are a softy now.”

“It’s your fault!” I poke him in the chest.

He kisses my neck. “Because I broke down the walls of your heart and made you fall in love with me?”

I bend to give him better access, stroking my hand under the hem of his shirt and over the broad muscles of his back. “Yeah, that, too, I guess. But I was mainly thinking about how you got me pregnant and made me all hormonal.”

Zane stiffens. He releases one startled breath against my neck.

Then he jerks back, holding me at arm’s length while wide, blue eyes search every inch of my face. “How I got you what?”

Tears well in my eyes as I explain everything.

How I thought I missed a period because of the stress, and the pregnancy tests kept coming back negative, but then I missed another period, so I scheduled a doctor’s appointment.

I turn to grab something from the top drawer, but Zane’s hands are fisted so tight in the back of my shirt that I have to pry his fingers loose to pull out the sonogram.

Zane stares down at the black-and-white image for so long I think he’s frozen.

“I’m almost twelve weeks,” I explain softly. “But I’ve been taking prenatals since we decided to start trying, so that’s good. The doctor said the baby looks healthy, and I—I’m sorry, did you want to be at the appointment? I didn’t know they were going to do an ultrasound that day. I didn’t think it was possible I was that far along, but?—”

Zane silences me with a long, passionate kiss that steals every thought from my head except for more and please and right now.

He lifts me onto the counter and takes the sonogram from my hand. I don’t know where he puts it because I’m too focused on the way he hooks his hands around my thighs and drags me to the very edge of the counter, opening me for him.

His thumb brushes over the thin material of my panties, and I whimper against his lips.

“Twelve weeks,” he breathes, stroking me. “That would be?—”

“The night at the hotel. In the pool.”

He inhales sharply, and I know exactly what he’s thinking. It’s the same thoughts I had once I found out.

Dante threw me on the coffee table. He tackled me in the grass. I was in jail.

I thought the endless weeks of nausea were from the stress of talking to detectives and coordinating a defense strategy with Hollis and navigating the trauma of it all. I even had a couple glasses of wine with Taylor one night to celebrate the police dropping all of the charges. I threw it up within the hour, though.

“The baby is healthy.” I press my hand to Zane’s face, pulling his eyes to mine. “Our baby is okay.”

His jaw flexes. “Are you okay?”

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