Page 52 of Hooked On Them

“Dom...” Her voice was so quiet I almost missed it.

“Yeah?” My own voice came out embarrassingly rough.

“Are we going to talk about...” She gestured vaguely between us, her hand stopping halfway to rest on her stomach.

The gravity of what that simple gesture meant hit me like a blindside check. This woman was carrying my child.My child.

“I don’t know how to do this, but I’m not running again. I need you to know that.”

Her eyes widened, glistening slightly. For a horrifying moment, I thought she might cry, which would officially make me the biggest asshole on the planet because who makes a pregnant woman cry while holding three types of brownie bites?

But then her lips curved into a small smile. “Good start,” she whispered. “Now pass me that ice cream before we have soup instead.”

Chapter18

Tank of Strollers

Nora

Iplucked at a loose thread on my pants while the air fryer hummed in the background, the smell of heating mozzarella sticks filling my apartment. Mozzarella sticks he’d somehow known to bring, like he had access to some pregnancy cravings radar I wasn’t aware existed.

Dominic stood at the kitchen island, transferring brownies from their plastic containers onto a plate that was much too small for the mountain he was creating. His tall frame looked comically out of place in my kitchen, like watching Godzilla try to maneuver through a dollhouse.

“You know we don’t have to eat everything tonight,” I called from my nest on the couch. While he’d been arranging food, I’d changed into my comfiest pajama pants covered in clouds. Not exactly seduction attire, but I was way past trying to be sexy for anyone.

Not that I was trying to be sexy for Dominic.

Dominic glanced over his shoulder. “Challenge accepted.”

The air fryer buzzer went off, and he pulled out the mozzarella sticks with the expertise of a man who’d heated many frozen appetizers in his lifetime. He carried the plates to the coffee table and set them down with the flourish of a five-star chef. “Your feast, madam.”

“You’re ridiculous.” My words came out softer than intended, more like a caress than the exasperated eye roll I’d meant them to be. I blamed the pregnancy hormones. Had to be the hormones because the alternative was admitting that watching Dominic fuss over my comfort sparked feelings.

“I’m thorough.” He settled onto the couch, leaving a foot between us. Not so close as to be in my space and not so far as to be awkward. The sweet spot of couch proximity.

I reached for a brownie, trying not to notice how he watched me. “So...” I bit into chocolate heaven. “This is weird, right?”

“Definitely weird.” He grabbed a mozzarella stick, stretching it until the cheese created an impressive gooey bridge. “Top five weirdest weeks of my life, and that’s saying something considering one time I opened my gear bag and found a live chicken dressed in a tutu.”

I nearly choked. “That’s a story you can’t just drop and walk away from.”

His lips twitched into a half-smile. “I’ll tell you someday.”

Someday. The word hung between us like a promise neither of us was qualified to make. We were about to spend at least the next eighteen years—and let’s be honest, probably more—co-parenting a human being. It was difficult to even imagine how my life was about to change.

I tucked my feet under me, accidentally brushing his thigh with my knee in the process. He didn’t move away, and neither did I. “You’re handling this better than I expected… well, right now you are.”

He popped an entire brownie into his mouth, looking thoughtful as he chewed and swallowed. “I’m still processing. My brain keeps cycling between holy shit, I’m going to be someone’s father, and I should probably learn how to change a diaper.”

The mental picture of this giant of a man getting sprayed while fumbling with a diaper had me fighting back a laugh. “Do you even know how many diapers a baby goes through in a week?” I could already imagine the look of horror that would cross his face when he discovered the answer was somewhere between way too many and how does something so tiny produce so much?

His face scrunched in concentration, and I tried not to find it adorable. I failed miserably. Watching Mr. Tough Guy puzzle through basic baby facts hit me right in my weak spots. I failed miserably at keeping my composure, biting my lower lip to hold back the grin threatening to take over my face.

“Twenty?” He sounded so proud of his guess that I almost felt bad for what I was about to tell him.

I snorted, unable to contain my amusement. “Try sixty to eighty, rookie.”

The look of pure satisfaction on his face melted into something between disbelief and dawning comprehension. I savored the moment, mentally adding it to my collection of what I would call Daddy’s Greatest Hits of Reality Checks.

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