Page 71 of Claimed By the Cowboys

“I know.”

“No, Blaire. Like I really, really want it.” I look over at the jars. “You know why I love Mary Marco so much?”

“Because Grandma didn’t get cable TV, and it’s the only thing that was on when we should have been watching cartoons on a Saturday morning?”

I roll my eyes. “No. Because she never does anything that isn’t perfect. Even when she’s not trying, she’s perfect, Blaire.”

Blaire is very, very quiet.

“I know that you decided to take the hand we were given in life and just… give it the middle finger. You took all the pain, and it made you harder. I didn’t,” I mumble. “I took it, and I made it beautiful.”

“You make me sound like an asshole,” Blaire gripes.

“You’re not. We both dealt with it in our own way. But I don’t want to be in a place where I can’t make something perfect. Where I can’t make it beautiful.”

“Piper,” Blaire says. “Pain isn’t beautiful.”

I shut my eyes.

“You can’t control the world around you so much that you won’t get hurt. And you certainly can’t control it if you have a kid.”

“I know that,” I reply.

“Do you? It’s important to me that you know that when you have a baby, that baby is its own person.”

“You’re lecturing me on kids now?” I snap.

Blaire sighs. “No. But I am saying that even if you do everything perfect—you design the perfect nursery, the perfect playdates—if everything looks good on the outside, it might be totally different on the inside.”

“I know,” I tell her.

“Do you?”

I really do.

Blaire might be brash and outspoken. She might get on my nerves. But something I love about her is how often she’sright.

“I don’t want to screw this up.”

“The baby?”

“All of it,” I murmur.

“Piper. Do you love them?”

I know she can’t see me nodding. But I am.

The silence, apparently, is all that Blaire needs. “Oh, Piper.”

“I know.”

“You need to find out if you’re pregnant.”

“Why?”

“Because then you’ll at least know.”

I hiss out a breath. “But if I don’t know, then I can’t…”

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