Page 53 of No Second Chances

Kennedy, who has her eyes almost glued to her plate while she keeps eating. In fact, I’m pretty sure that she has nowhere to put all the food she is stuffing into her face. For a minute, I don’t say anything. I just watch her until the mic on my shoulder goes off with a call.

“I love you,” I tell her quietly.

I don’t miss the look in her eyes as she tears away from her plate and pastes a smile on her face for my benefit. “I love you too.”

Before I walk out, I grab one of the tacos from her plate. “Let me know when you find your phone. I’ll see you tonight?”

“Yep.” Her smile grows, and somewhere along the way, it shifts from a forced grin into a full-fledged smile. “Your place or mine?”

“Mine. Just come over whenever, I’ll be there.”

“No, you won’t,” Remy chimes in, proving that he is the world’s worst eavesdropper. “You’ve got to meet us at the tailor after work. Our appointment is tonight to get fitted for the wedding.”

I pause, spearing him with an unimpressed look. “You haven’t asked me to be in a wedding.”

“Duh,” Parker speaks up before Remy can. “You guys all have to be in the wedding. Consider this us asking you to be in the wedding party. The only person not here is Cain, but he’s all the way in Galloway Bay, so he’s excused.”

“But a tailor?” This time it is Dom who pipes up to complain. “Why do we have to do that?”

“It’s either that or the dress blues.” Parker shrugs nonchalantly, and every single former Marine around the table shuts their goddamn mouth.

“Parker wants suits and not blues,” Remy supplies.

“Send me the name, and I’ll meet you there.” I wave over my shoulder and then walk out to my cruiser, ready to get back to work.

But the entire rest of my shift, all two hours of it, I see Kennedy’s face while everyone talks about Parker’s pregnancy, and I know I fucked up.

I just don’t realize exactly how bad it is until I’m standing with an old man’s hands under my balls that afternoon.

“Turn your head and cough,” the tailor says around a mouthful of pins.

“Excuse me, what?” I fight the urge to jump off the fuckin’ table he has me standing on. The man is practically touching my balls with his hands.

“You have to cough, so he can see which way your dick lays naturally,” Dom says. “Just let it happen. It’s not like you’re naked with your balls out on the track.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dom.” I raise my arm to point at him, but the tailor makes a disapproving sound in the back of his throat so I have to glare at the man instead.

Something about all of us being stuck in a small room together at one time makes men act like children.

“What’s this about his balls being on a track?” Ian walks in from the back, holding a couple pairs of trousers, along with a blazer hung over his shoulder.

“This dumbass.” Dom points at me, and I feel like I’m on display for everyone to laugh at like an animal at the zoo. “Thought it would be a great idea to get on the track in a pair of skates to compete at roller derby against Cain and the women he’s training, without underwear on.”

“It was an oversight,” I explain. “I didn’t think they’d be that good.”

“Cain was training them,” Ian scoffs. “The man has a ton of videos dedicated to him on YouTube, and you thought he’d be training someone who wasn’t an absolute badass. You’re an idiot.” He sets his stuff down and stands next to Dom and Remy.

“Does everyone need to be here for this?” I take a deep breath, trying not to feel like an idiot, unable to keep my calm.

I drift back to the look on Kennedy’s face at Lucy’s, and my heart lurches in my chest. She wants kids. Sure, she let me off the hook by telling me that she wanted me, not them. But the two wants weren’t mutually exclusive. She can want both, and by choosing to be with me, she’ll lose out on her chance to have them.

“Are you ready to be a new dad?” Dom moves on from talking about my balls to focus on Remy and I’m almost able to ignore the fact that my dick is perilously close to having a needle shoved into it by the tailor. “It’s gotta be nerve-racking.”

We may be Marines, may have served overseas and watched our friends die, but there is something about the fear of having a child that makes even the strongest men into whimpering fools.

“Actually, yeah.” Remy looks down at his hands and then back up to me. “I’ve loved her since I didn’t know what love was. You know what I’m saying. Nox is mine, too; don’t get me wrong. From the first minute, the love that I have for her spread to him. But I did that. She’s having another baby, with me. A little girl, who’ll look just like her mother. A little sister for Nox.” He chokes up for a moment. “Did I tell you that she wants to name her Cassie?”

Silence fills the room, heavy and full of the emotions that we’ll hide from the rest of the world. Our families, our community, have been hit hard with loss. Destruction and death don’t seem to stray far from Birch County.

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