Page 220 of The Single Dads Club
This time, she sat up and met my eyes. “If that’s the way you react to a blow job, you must not have had very many in your life,” she joked, but her hand fluttered to her throat and her eyes gleamed.
A good sign?
“It wasn’t that, although, shit, that was so damned good. It was you. Bren, I love you,” I murmured. “Be my wife, baby.”
She blinked at me, her eyes wide. “You haven’t had time to think this through.”
“I don’t need time. I know that I love you. I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you. I know this is fast, but we’re perfect together.”
She searched my gaze for a long moment, then shook her head and said, “Look, um, I think we’re both a little high off the vacation fumes. I’m not saying no. I’ve never felt this way, to be honest. But I just want to make sure we’re not rushing things. Let’s put a pin in it, okay? Talk when we get home…”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, looking her over as I nodded. Even now, I could feel her edging away from me, and the deep closeness I’d felt between us was crumbling like a wall made of sand.
Sure, marriage was fast and I knew she had her issues with intimacy, but I also knew how she felt about me—I could feel it in the way she kissed me, the way she touched me.
So why pull away?
“Bren,” I said, but she was getting up and dusting herself off.
“I’m going to hit the shower and take a nap, okay?” she said.
I nodded. “You sure, baby? You okay?”
She nodded. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
I watched her march into the little outdoor shower, all the while wondering to myself if I ought to call her back and set the record straight. But there was nothing to fix. I loved her, but she hadn’t said she loved me. And she hadn’t agreed to marry me.
A knot formed deep in the pit of my stomach, the kind you get when you’ve done something rash while overwhelmed with emotion. I grabbed my shorts from the sand, pulling them on quickly before wading out into the low tide.
I’d jumped the gun because it felt right. I’dwantedto. I’d rushed it when I’d known how skittish she was, and now it remained to be seen what would happen from here.
Waves crashed in the distance. I heard the spray of the shower, but I closed my eyes, focusing instead on whether or not I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bren
I sat in the doctor’s office, swinging my legs back and forth as I listened to the ticking of the clock on the wall behind me. In truth, the clock—along with my healthy sense of panic—was the only thing keeping me awake. I was still jet-lagged from the plane ride home yesterday, and though I’d briefly considered canceling the appointment, I knew it had nothing to do with my exhaustion.
No, it had to do with fear. A dark shadow of terror had taken root deep within me, coloring every one of my thoughts, and ever since we’d touched back down in the city, it had grown in strength, threatening to choke me from the inside out. At my age, the window for having children was already getting smaller. I knew that.
But to be having irregular periods at thirty?
It couldn’t be a good sign.
Right?
I glanced again at the steel door handle, willing it to turn and allow the doctor inside. The nurse had already taken my temperature and weight along with my blood pressure and the other tests they did whenever I went into the office. With some luck, she wouldn’t mention to anyone else who exactly the patient in exam room B was, but if she did…
Well, I’d worry about that later.
For now, I just had to put all my energy into willing that door open.
All this stress and worry could be for nothing, after all. I simply couldn’t know for sure until the doctor appeared.
Which, after a few more menacing ticks of the clock, she did.
After glancing down at the tablet in her hand, she grinned at me and clicked the door closed. Carefully she made her way to the rolling stool in front of the little granite countertop in the room and then spun around to face me.
