Page 15 of Claimed By the Cowboys

“Brent. Come on. This could be the way to finally…”

“To finally what, Tate? Make her ours?”

When he says it like that, it makes me feel like I’m being stupid.

Brent rises, pacing over to the window. He peeks out at her, then turns to me.

“This could fuck everything up,” he says darkly.

I shake my head. “Or it could be the best thing that’s ever happened to us. I say we do it.”

“I vote no.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re such a dick, Brent. Why not?”

“Because we could lose her,” he hisses.

I narrow my eyes at him. “She literally said she wants to raise the baby with us.”

Brent’s jaw looks so tight, I’m surprised his teeth are still intact. “No. Like. Things are good, right?”

“All the more reason we should do this. We’d be awesome parents.” I love my parents, and I know they’d be thrilled to be grandparents.

“No, I meant… things are good right now. With no changes,” he says.

Oh. Well. That makes more sense.

“Brent. Man. The only thing constant in life is change,” I breathe.

He looks at the window again. “We’re almost ready. Almost stable again. If she asked us in a year?—”

“She’s not asking in a year, man. She’s asking today.”

“And what if she does fall in love, and some guy marries her and takes her and our kid away from us?”

I roll my eyes. “It would still be our kid, so it’s not like we wouldn’t see them.”

“But we’d loseher,”he murmurs.

My heart aches at that thought. But I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t believe in worrying about the future when life is giving us something perfect right now.

I put a hand on Brent’s shoulder.

“Then this is our chance to show her that we can’t lose her. To show her that she’s meant for us, as more than friends. Hell, we’ve wanted this for… ever,” I say softly. “We’ve only held back because Piper kept us as friends.”

Under my hand, Brent tenses. “But she might fall in love with someone else. If she hasn’t fallen in love with us by now, we’re not it for her.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t shut us down before we’ve even started. Piper wants to have a baby with us. We can’t pass up the chance to show her that she has a family. And it’s us.”

Brent looks at me. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

I grin. “Hell yes I do.”

It’s true. I believe in life giving you both lemons and lemonade. There are good times and bad times, and it’s up to you to handle them. And in this case, a fucking lemon cake just dropped in our lap. We’d be stupid not to eat it.

“I’m in,” I whisper.

Brent looks outside. “Dalton’s the tying vote.”

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