Page 30 of Fierce- Royce

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m not even thinking one way or another about kids. But in five or six years if I’m still single and my clock is ticking, then I think maybe I will do that. I’d like to have a child someday.”

“You need to make those decisions when you’re ready,” Dane said. “Don’t let someone else talk you into or out of them.”

“Did that happen to you?” she asked.

He shrugged. He didn’t often talk about his marriage, but she knew kids weren’t in the immediate future for him when he was still doing his residency. It was hard for him to focus on both.

“I let my wife down,” he said. “I worried this would happen and it did. I’d worked too hard to not finish what I started with my career.”

“She knew going in the amount of schooling you had to do,” she said.

“She did. But she got stars in her eyes and then when Tiffani was born it was hard on us both. We weren’t sleeping much and I was trying to study. I told her I’d make it up to her, but I couldn’t throw it away either.”

She hated to hear him talk about this. “We were all there helping her,” Chloe argued. “Everyone knew what you were going through to get there. She was the one who wanted Tyler right after. I remember being shocked when she told me she wanted to start trying again.”

Dane let out a sigh. “It’s in the past. I love my kids. I wouldn’t change that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” she said. But she could tell Dane didn’t feel as if he had a say when Melanie was trying to get pregnant with Tyler. Melanie had told her that she’d stopped taking birth control and didn’t want the kids too far apart in age.

It wasn’t her life and she wasn’t going to get in the middle of it.

“Melanie is dating someone,” Dane said.

“Oh,” she said. “Is this the first time she has?”

“As far as I know. We have an agreement to let the other know before the kids meet them.”

She’d give her brother credit because he was putting the kids first. She’d be bitter over the way the marriage ended, but to him he was more focused on co-parenting.

For as angry as she was with Melanie over leaving her brother when he’d fought so hard to keep their marriage together, her ex-sister-in-law did love her kids.

“If she is telling you then she wants the kids to meet him?” she asked. “How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We haven’t gotten that far. I thought the same thing. She just told me two days ago when I picked the kids up as they went to get their stuff.”

“You’d think she’d find a better way to tell you than rush it then,” she said.

“That’s how she is. She has to get it off her chest when she knows there is no time to talk. I’ll touch base with her this week. I won’t bring it up today.”

Because her brother wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s holiday, but his ex obviously didn’t share that sentiment.

“We are almost ready for dinner,” her mother said. “Chloe, if you want to set the table.”

“Sure,” she said. She turned to Dane when her mother left the room. “The sooner we eat the sooner we can get out of here.”

“So, if I ask you if you’re happy again, what would your answer be?” Dane asked, laughing.

“The same...maybe.”

Later that night though, she was sitting in her apartment by herself and flipping through the channels for something to watch.

Overall, it was a decent holiday. Or like they normally were.

She didn’t really think she and Dane were damaged, but sometimes when their parents were critical of her life and decisions it felt that way.

That maybe they were looking at her and Dane and wondering if there were traits in them from their biological parents rather than the way they were raised.

When her phone went off with a text, she reached for it on the table and was stunned to see it was from Royce.

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