Page 143 of Vegas Heat

And guess who is pictured beside me as we stumble out of the club and head back to our car, drunk women from inside following us and hanging on us despite our continued gentle rejections?

You got it…Troy.

CHAPTER 15: GABBY

“What the hell?” I murmur as I zoom in on the photo.

Maybe he’s trying to push her away. It’s fuzzy and far away and hard to tell, but I definitely spot Cooper and my father with a bevy of women hanging around them. They look to be outside a building with a logo emblazoned on top.

I zoom in on that, too.

The Bare Kitty Gentleman’s Club.

I roll my eyes. Real classy, Dad. Extra classy, Cooper.

I blow out a breath.

I haven’t heard from him all damn day, and it looks like it’s because he’s been out looking at boobies while I’ve been engaging in a clinic regarding all the reasons I may never want to have sex again.

Or rather…all the reasons why I may never want children.

Kaylee swore up and down this was just an off night, but those two girls never fell asleep the entire two hours I was there. We tried to chat about SFK, but she ran up and down the stairs so many times thatmylegs started to hurt.

She ate a cold dinner while she explained that both girls are currently teething, and when I confessed I didn’t really know what that meant, I got a long explanation about how teeth erupt from the gums and it’s actually such a painful process that adults wouldn’t be able to handle it.

I left unsure if I was the kind of adult who could handle other sorts of pains associated with babies, too. Like childbirth and emotional trauma from a nine-month-old smacking me in the face.

She has twins, I remind myself. It’s way harder with twins. One starts crying and the other tries to one-up her by being louder and then the first one tries getting even louder and I’m not sure how Kaylee does it.

The odds of me having twins someday are like one in a million. Or…I search that stat. One in two hundred fifty. Still a longshot.

She told me she loves being a mom. She said she gets a ton of help, but tonight was one of those weird nights where Ben was at the practice facility late and her mom was busy with her brother Jack’s kids and she was flying solo.

I asked her what it was like with Ben constantly gone, but as it turns out, football teams only have about ten away games per season, and they’re only gone a few nights when they travel. So Benisn’tconstantly gone—not the way Cooper would be with a baseball schedule.

Could I do that alone?

Sure, she’s had nine months of practice, and she handled it with grace. But I don’t know if I’m built for that sort of thing. Cooper, on the other hand, is ready to be with somebody who wants to start popping out babies immediately, and meanwhile, I’m vying for a position that someone is leaving because she’s pregnant and won’t have the time to dedicate with a newborn.

Am I holding Cooper back?

It’s something that merits discussion, for sure.

I’m not at the age where I feel my biological clock ticking, but he is…and maybe that’s the biggest detriment to our age gap situation.

One of us is going to have to give in on that, and I’m not ready for it to be me.

That’s not to say I’m not open to the discussionsomeday, but after spending a couple hours at Kaylee’s…that discussion feels even further down the road.

The house is quiet—too quiet as I stare at the pictures posted moments ago by some gossip site, and I decide to call Justin, who I haven’t had a chance to hang with in a few days.

He picks up just when I think it’s about to go to voicemail. “Hey baby girl, what’s good?” He’s sort of whispering but also not whispering and it’s weird.

“Hey. Did I catch you at a bad time?” I hear some rustling.

“No, I uh…” he trails off as he seemingly searches for an excuse.

And then I hear it. A decidedly male grunt that doesn’t belong to Justin.

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