Page 24 of SCRUMptious

My eyes bounced from my lap to his face to find him gazing down at me with sympathy. “I’m sorry, that must have beenhard.”

I shrugged noncommittally and dropped my eyes. The truth was, I’d never really thought about being a mom. Being a chef was hard enough, but being a female chef left no time to raise a family and I’d worked too long and too hard to get where I was to give it all up for something I’d always been ambivalent about. Unfortunately, Javier hadn’t been ambivalent about it. He’d stood by my side while I’d recovered but afterward is when our relationship had turned south. In his eyes, my surgery made me less of a woman. My ambition and my success went from being things he’d admired about me, to “masculine traits” he’d tried—and failed—to accept. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d gotten his ex-girlfriend pregnant for the second time, but his betrayal still stung.

“I thought,” he said, clearing his throat. “They look like cigarette burns. I thought someone had hurt you. Or you’d hurt yourself.”

My head shot up. “What?”

“One of my mates’ little sisters does it. Or she usedto.”

He unclasped our hands and pinched the sheet between his thumb and his forefinger, waiting for my permission to draw it away. When I nodded, he pushed the fabric down until it pooled in my lap, exposing my belly—and my scars. With a feather light touch, he circled the pad of his index finger over the larger of the three. The entrance point in my belly button was virtually indistinguishable, but I had two pale round scars—roughly the size of a cigarette cherry—on either side of my stomach. The one he traced now was the most prominent because my skin was still visibly puckered where the doctor had made the incision.

“Did it hurt?” he asked, raising his eyes tomine.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“And this means you can’t have kids, right?” His eyes searched mine as he asked, and the question hung betweenus.

We’d never seriously discussed what was growing between us because we both knew it was temporary. We got along surprisingly well, and in the last few weeks, I’d realized there was more to Donal Casey than he let on. We’d truly become friends, and I cared about him—more than I’d ever expected to. But I was leaving soon, and even if I wasn’t, he was 22 and I was 32. My scars shouldn’t have mattered, and yet as the silence continued, I couldn’t help but feel like they did. Like my answer to his question was the loaded gun that could kill everything good that was betweenus.

“That’s right,” I answered. “But it’s okay; I never wantedthem.”

Which was apparently not the answer he’d expected. A few rapid blinks giving away his surprise, he asked, “You didn’t?”

I let out a sardonic laugh. Why did every man on the planet assume that’s all women wanted from life? I might not be on the path I’d envisioned for myself, but I wasn’t any less fulfilled because I was childless. “No, I didn’t.”

He nodded thoughtfully and looked away again.

“Donal?” I asked, after a few tense moments passed in charged silence.

Eventually, he turned back to me. “Yeah?”

“Does this … are my …” I blew out a frustrated breath and clenched my hands at my sides, digging my fingernails into my skin. I’d barely cried when Javier had told me about Marcella, but sitting here now with my … lover? … I felt tears prickling the back of my eyeballs and my throat grow tight.

“Ah Lauren,” he said, gathering me to his chest and holding me tight. “Didn’t you hear me before when I said you are perfect?”

I nodded into his chest, my tears leaking out and making his skin slick. I had heard him, but I still had a hard time believing my good fortune. What had I done to deserve Donal Casey? How in the world had I traveled halfway across the world to find him? I didn’t want to admit that my feelings toward him had blossomed beyond friendship—that when I’d taken him into my body, I’d felt a spark that warmed my heart and called to a part of me I thought long dead—but Ihad.

Against all reason and logic, I was falling for a man whom I’d once thought was nothing more than an overgrown boy. Twenty-two to my 32, on paper we didn't make sense, but in the quiet dark of my bedroom, nothing had ever been more clear.

We stayed huddled together like that for several moments, just basking in each other’s warmth and nearness. Eventually, Donal's breathing grew steady and melodic in my ear and I thought he might have fallen back asleep. But then he rasped, “I don’t want kids either.”

My heart seized and my belly clenched. Other parts of me had seized up too. I was stiff as stone in his embrace, the drumbeat of my heart echoing loudly in my head. I tried to think of an answer to his assertion, but my brain could only focus on a question: why was he telling methis?

Don’t read too much into it, I scolded myself. But it was too late. My mind had already gone there. If I couldn’t have kids, and he didn’t want them, there was one less reason why we shouldn’t be together.

Don’t get your hopes up, my conscience further cautioned me. He’s young, and he might not know what he wants.

But at 22, I’d known. Hell, I’d known well before then. When I’d been six years old, I’d asked my first grade teacher if I could stay inside and read at recess instead of going outside to play with the other kids. She’d looked at me with sadness and asked if I was being picked on. “Nope,” I’d answered, wandering toward the bookshelf. “I just don’t likekids.”

But Donal wasn’tme.

I eased out of his arms and clutched the sheet to my naked body. “I …” I bit my lip and tried to form a coherent thought, but everything was coming at me in a jumble. While the rational, realistic part of me was telling me to hold my horses, the emotional, excitable part of me was hooting, hollering, and throwing a celebratory party—complete with a happy dance, confetti, and balloons.

Did you hearthat?

He doesn’t wantkids.

He’s even more perfect than we thought.

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