Page 33 of Her Football Star Ex

Tyler:What about you? Do you want more kids?

I momentarily had the thought about how weird it was to talk about how many kids we wanted in our futures when we knew next to nothing about the other. But I pushed the thought away because it was important for him to know up front that having more kids most likely wouldn’t be part ofmyfuture.

I only had four weeks to find a date. I might as well find out where Tyler and I would stand when he found out sooner than later.

So I said,I would love to have more kids, but my baby maker is apparently broken.

Now if that wasn’t laying all my cards out there, I didn’t know what was.

When he didn’t respond for a few minutes and the read receipt showed he’d seen it right after I’d sent it, I knew I’d said too much.

Way to go, Emerson. You’re never going to get a guy if you just say stuff like that.

I quickly typed,Sorry. TMI.And then I covered my face with one of the throw pillows and screamed into it.

What kind of girl says stuff like that to a stranger and still hopes to continue to have a conversation?

I’m an idiot!

I shook my head into the pillow, wishing it could somehow erase the humiliating moment. I had only told a handful of people about our infertility issues in real life, and yet, here I was just blabbing about it to Tyler.

I really should have taken some sort of online-dating-for-dummies course. They probably would have warned me about saying things like that.

“Are you scared, Mommy?” Jaxon asked, his voice full of concern.

I pulled the pillow away from my face and looked at him on the cushion next to me. His brown eyes were wide with compassion.

I reached over and patted his leg. “I’m not scared. I was just being weird.”

Really weird.

He gave me a warm smile that showed all of his baby teeth. “It’s okay. I’ll keep you safe.” And when he scooted closer and wrapped his little arms around my torso to give me a hug, my heart completely melted.

Jaxon really was the best.

I leaned over and kissed the top of his head. “Thank you for keeping me safe, Jaxon. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.” And then he pulled his arms away and turned so his back was resting against my side, all cuddled up next to me.

We continued to watch the movie like this for another few minutes when my phone finally vibrated and a message from Tyler showed up on my screen again.

11

Vincent

It tookme a few minutes to convince Cole to let me keep his phone while he went back to his room to read and meditate, but he eventually said I could have it for the next hour, as long as I didn’t do anything with it besides message Emerson.

So once I was back to being alone in my room, I read over the last few messages Emerson and I had sent each other, my heart going back to the same racing beat it had been at ever since I sent her the first message.

And as I read through them, I couldn’t help but wonder if she said all these things to every guy she matched with.

Or if I, aka Tyler, was the only guy she had told about her struggle to get pregnant and maintain it after Jaxon was born.

Ourinability to do that.

At least, when there had been anus.

I assumed she hadn’t tried to get pregnant with anyone else in the past year. Not if what she’d said about her date from last night being her first since the divorce was true, anyway.

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