Page 63 of Not Quite Perfect

He shook his head and a wide grin broke out across his face. “Turns out she sawThe Wild Tales of Professor Cockstairsand thought it was real.” His shoulders shook with repressed laughter.

“No way.”

He nodded. “Yup. She assumed I was sleeping with my students.”

“That’s … that’s … ” I let out a surprised huff. “That’s even more ridiculous than her being on this whole ‘he’s your brother’ kick. Why didn’t she just tell me about it?”

His shoulder lifted and fell in a shrug. “She said something about not wanting to hurt you with the truth. She thought she could scare you off with the whole stepbrother thing instead.”

I shook my head and tugged him in for a kiss. Remembering my breath at the last possible second, I halted and pressed my hand over my mouth. “So dumb,” I whispered from between spread fingers.

David laughed. “She’s coming over tonight after dinner. At least I think she is. She was horrified when she realized the blog was fake and that you’ve known about it for months.”

“She should be horrified,” I exclaimed. “She was pretty horrible to me. And the things she said about you …”

“Does it make it any better that she assumed she was protecting your fragile heart?” He smirked. We both knew there was nothing fragile about me.

I let out a long sigh.Didit make things better? Honestly, I couldn’t say right now. I was an adult who didn’t need her mother meddling in her love life. And if shedidinsist on meddling, she should have done it with the truth instead of her stupid, cockamamie story about incest and scandal. If she had been honest with me from the outset, this whole situation could have been avoided.

Instead, David and I had been forced to sneak around like two young teenagers. Thankfully, we’d managed to weather the storm, and our relationship had only grown stronger because of it. Now, however, I wondered what our relationship would have been like if we’d been free to go public with our love much sooner.

It didn’t matter. That was speculation, and our life together was reality.

“I don’t need my mother’s protection,” I answered finally.

David chuckled. “No, you do not.”

With that, we exited the room and made our way back into the kitchen.

“You okay?” Theo asked as he tossed the salad together. I didn’t have the heart to point that he’d put the dressing on a couple of hours early. By the time we were ready to eat, it’d be a soggy, wilted mess.

“Yeah, just a bout of nausea. I think I have food poisoning or something.” I opened the fridge and rooted around for a can of ginger ale I’d bought on a whim the week before.

“That’s good. I was worried there for a second you might actually be pregnant,” Alex said, popping a raw green bean into his mouth.

All at once, the floor fell out from under my feet and the world tilted on its axis. My eyes shot to David’s, whose face had gone white with shock.

My hand coasted to my belly as everything clicked into place.

The exhaustion. The forgetfulness. The nausea.

Oh shit.

I wasn’t sick. I was probably pregnant.

Twenty-Six

David

Pregnant.Pregnant? PREGNANT.

“Holy shit.” Victoria stared at me, her eyes round as the dinner plates we’d be eating off of later. Wordlessly, her hand fell to her stomach.

The room fell silent, and Theo and Alex’s heads bobbed between us like they were watching the championship match at Wimbledon.

“No fucking way.” Alex said, pushing off the counter to stand sentinel next to his sister, his feet spread shoulder-width apart and his big, burly arms crossed over his chest. “You knocked my sister up, asshole?” Even if he hadn’t resorted to name calling, his tone of voice would have been clear enough. He wasnotthrilled with the idea of Victoria being pregnant with my baby.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t had time to process it at all.

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