Page 53 of Secret Daddies

“I know,” I agreed, resting my hand over Devon’s where it sat on my belly. “I can hardly believe it, either.”

“Do you think it’s going to be a boy or a girl?” Devon wondered aloud.

“A girl,” Taylor cut in, as though it should have been obvious.

“What makes you so sure?” I laughed, and he shrugged.

“I just have a sense for these things.”

The four of us chuckled together, and in the quiet that followed, I finally plucked up the courage to speak again.

“But, I mean…regardless of what gender it is…what about who it belongs to?”

“What do you mean?” Lee asked, lifting his head to look up at me.

I pulled a face. “You know what I mean,” I sighed. “I mean…I mean, it doesn’t bother any of you that it might not be yours? That only one of you can be the actual father?”

“I don’t care about that,” Devon cut in, before anyone else could answer. “I want to be part of their life. Biology isn’t important.”

“Really?” I replied, a little surprised. “You don’t…?”

“That’s how I feel about it too,” Taylor replied. “Fuck, I know that just being blood related to someone doesn’t make you a parent, I learned that from Martha’s mother. I don’t see why I would need to know I was the father to be part of this baby’s life, not if I’m going to be part of yours.”

“Seconded and thirded,” Lee replied with a shrug. “My parents were never great at the whole being-parents thing. If I’d had a few more people around to help out, maybe my childhood wouldn’t have been as hard as it was, you know?”

I gazed down at Lee for a moment. I still felt like there was so much for me to learn about him, so much for me to understand about how he had become the person he was and what had happened to make him this way. But the truth was…I wanted to find out. I wanted to discover those sides of all of them. I wanted to know what had gone down to make them the people they weretoday, the people who were selfless and kind enough to stand by me even in this strange situation and do what they could for me and my baby.

No. Our baby.

“I love you guys,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Maybe it was just the rush of pregnancy hormones, or the closeness I felt to all of them in that moment, but I couldn’t hold it back. I meant it. I loved them. All of them.

Silence fell between all of us for a moment. I thought in that instant that I may have overstepped the line and made some kind of mistake I couldn’t take back—was love too grand a word for what we had…?

But then Devon slipped his hand to my face and guided it toward him. Planting a kiss against my forehead, he brushed his nose against mine.

“I love you too,” he murmured. “I have for a long time, Maya. And I’m so lucky I got a chance to tell you.”

“I love you too,” Taylor added, squeezing my hand, and I turned to look at him. I pressed my forehead to his, breathing in the scent of him for a moment, letting those sacred words hang in the air between us.

“And I might be new to this whole love thing,” Lee added, shifting up toward me on the bed. “But I know I love you as well, Maya. So fucking much.”

With that, they wrapped their arms around me, pulling me into this cocoon of sweetness and softness and adoration. I knew things were going to be complicated, going forward, but rightthen and there, they couldn’t have felt more straightforward, couldn’t have been more obvious.

I loved them, and they loved me. And I couldn’t think of anything else in the world that mattered.

27

DEVON

As I pulledthe car to a halt outside the gates of the school, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. It was the first time I would be picking my son up from class—but I knew it wouldn’t be the last.

In the last few weeks, since the shoot had wrapped up, the studio hadn’t been asking much of me or any of the other guys, which had given us plenty of time and space to settle into this new life that we were all still getting used to. Ever since the night Maya spent with the three of us, everything had changed, and all of it for the better.

She was in the process of moving into a bigger place—paid for by us, of course. She had tried to blow off the idea and insist she could manage in her old place, but eventually, she relented. She knew as well as we did that she wasn’t going to be able to raise two kids in an apartment that small. And besides, for the sake of our new life, we deserved to have a new home to start it all in too.

That was where she was right now, in fact, unpacking a couple of boxes as she got Matty’s room set up. When it came time topick him up from school, she had glanced at her watch—and I’d stepped in at once.

“I could do it, if you want,” I said, keeping my voice as casual as possible. I still felt like all of this might be ripped away from me at any moment, and I couldn’t fight the feeling that I could lose this as soon as I’d got it. But instead of pulling a face, she had grinned and tossed the car keys in my direction.

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