Page 108 of Playboy

And me, though I was never enough.

Our child will never, ever feel the way I did. The way I do.

“When will you be home again?” I don’t even bother to hide the neediness in my tone.

“I’ll be home in time for your birthday,” he reminds me.

Nose scrunched, I grunt. I’ll be thirty-four in a matter of days. I swear it feels like only a year or two ago, I was a twenty-one-year-old college student, depressed and hiding after my divorce. Now I’m in mymid-thirtiesand pregnant.

Dating a twenty-five-year-old.

At least he’ll keep me young.

“I thought maybe we could go to Pottery Barn and check out that baby furniture you like,” I tell him.

Daniel grins. “Oh, you finally checked out my Pinterest board?”

I snort. Seriously. This ridiculously sexy twenty-five-year-old hockey player created a Pinterest board and filled it with nursery decorating ideas. “Yeah, and you forgot to make your other boards private.”

Daniel chuckles. “Baby, there are no secrets with me. You want to see my dream kitchens, the man cave I’m planning for the house I want to build, or the vacations I want to take you on, then be my guest.”

I roll my eyes, my heart flip-flopping. “We all have secrets, Daniel. Just because it’s not hidden on your Pinterest board doesn’t mean there aren’t skeletons in your closet.”

“Password to my phone is 041825. Code to my computer is Iluvhannah. Bank card pin is?—”

Breath catching, I sit up, taking my phone with me. “Daniel.”

He laughs, his dimples peeking out at me. “I’ve got nothing to hide from you. Was I a playboy before we got together? Yes. I couldn’t hide that if I wanted. But since the minute you gave me a chance, on April eighteenth, you’ve owned me.”

“Oh-four-eighteen-twenty-five.” I shake my head, breathing through the shock.

“Yeah, Han.” He leans closer to his phone, his expression open, his eyes dark pools of sincerity. “You’re my world. That day, our first date, the night we made our son, was the best day of my life.”

“Daniel.” Tears flood my vision, and a love so big it can’t be contained fills me.

He makes it impossible to be scared of the future. Impossible to not believe that we have a future. That I can have it all. A family. A career. An epic love that not even I could write on the page.

“I love you,” he says, voice thick.

“I love you too.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

DANIEL

“You’resure you know how to cook?” Balanced on the stool beside me, Oliver gives me a wary look.

I angle in so we’re eye to eye. “It’s pie. How hard could it be?”

I survey the Oreos laid out in front of us.

“Have at it.”

“If you say so.” He raises the hammer over his head and brings it down in one quick swish.

I almost lose a finger as I reach in to stop him before he smashes the granite counter into pieces. “Jesus, kid. You’ve got to be ducking kidding me.”

Frowning, he tilts his head. “Ducking?”

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