Page 14 of Inked Devotion

“Do you remember my ex? Laura?”

I frowned and nodded as I took the next exit onto the other highway. “Yes. You were in her wedding to Michelle.”

“Good memory.”

I smirked. “I made the cake.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“It was a good cake. Buttercream frosting, lemon filling, with a cheesecake on the side, and it was so yummy. Nice and airy for one and very rich and dense on the other.”

“The perfect blend of them,” he said.

I smiled again. “I was always sad when you two broke up.”

“I wasn’t,” he said.

That made me snort.

“I meant only that we weren’t right for each other. She and Michelle are. However, they came to me with a request.”

“What is it?” I asked, though an odd feeling spread over me, and I knew he couldn’t be about to say what he was going to say. Right?

It would be too eerie.

“They want a baby. And they want the donor to be someone that they know and trust.”

“They asked you!” I nearly skidded off the highway but kept my calm as a truck hit their horn beside me, and Benjamin put his hands on my knee. He looked down at his hand, let out a breath, and I swallowed. “Sorry.”

“I probably shouldn’t have said that while we were on the highway and you were driving.”

“No. No. When else would you tell me that somebody wants your sperm? I can’t believe I just said sperm. Again.”

“Yes, sperm. It keeps going through my mind over and over again. I had a dream that there was a little sperm having a conversation with me about the pros and cons. It was like the devil and the angel on your shoulder, but instead, they were in my brain, and they were actual sperm. And I have no idea what’s going on, and I have to stop saying the word sperm.”

I snorted, my whole body shaking as I did my best not to drive us right off the highway.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” I risked a glance over at him before I looked back at the road.

“Yeah, I am.”

The astonishment in his voice surprised me. “You’re good people. You don’t need to sound so shocked that you want to make that decision.”

“It’s a big fucking decision. Part of me wanted to do it right away, but I needed time to think about it. I knew if I were around my family, they would keep pestering me until they figured out what was going on, and then they would have opinions.”

“Are you not going to tell them?” I asked, frowning.

“I will. Just after the fact. That way, they can’t talk me out of it.”

“You know, that’s probably a good idea, though I don’t think they would necessarily talk you out of it.”

“Maybe not intentionally, but they would bring around different ideas and opinions even if they were on the side of doing it, it would still twist my thoughts off enough that I just…I want it to be about Laura and Michelle, not about me.”

“You’re a good man,” I whispered.

“I hope so. I hope it works. They’d be great parents and deserve it.”

He talked about them some more, and I leaned my head against the headrest as I kept driving, thinking what he was doing and why he was doing it. I wouldn’t know the father of my child, but I was going to have to pick a donor soon. It wouldn’t be Benjamin, but hell, what were the chances? I was never going to ask him or anybody that I knew, but he was giving another family an opportunity to build a family.

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