PLAYER EPILOGUE
Will
Hanna hung up the phone and then stared at it for a few confused beats. “He was in the car. He seemed super busy.”
“Jensen? Busy?” I asked, lacing my voice with intentionally sarcastic confusion. Jensen always seemed busy.
“No,” she clarified, “I mean, not like work busy, where he’s all business voice and monosyllables—if he even answers. I mean distracted.” Chewing her lip, she added, “He sounded suspiciously easygoing and happy. He said something about loving . . .” She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
Shrugging, she circled the kitchen counter to wrap her arms around me, resting her chin on my shoulder. “I don’t feel like going to work tomorrow.”
“Me either,” I admitted. “I don’t even feel like working tonight.” I lifted my arm behind her back to glance at my watch. “But I’ve got that Biollex call in about an hour.”
“Will?” Her voice was a little thin, the way it got when she was trying to ask me what I wanted for Christmas, or whether I would make her a cherry pie just because it sounded good. For dinner.
I looked down at her and kissed the tip of her nose. “Yeah?”
“Do you really want to wait two years?”
It took me a breath to figure out what she meant.
She was the one who wasn’t ready for kids. At thirty-four, I was ready now, but of course was willing to wait until we were on the same page.
I realized this was Hanna-speak for I think I might be ready. “You mean . . . ?”
Nodding, she said, “It might not work right away. I mean, remember what Chloe and Bennett went through? Maybe it would be good to just . . . see what happens.”
My phone buzzed on the kitchen island, but I ignored it.
“Yeah?” I asked, searching her expression. It had been hard for Chloe to get pregnant. She and Bennett had tried for more than two years. All joking aside, part of me believed that was why she was so blissfully happy. They hadn’t let it take over their lives—the wanting—but there was undeniable relief and victory in their eyes when they told us they were finally pregnant.
Hanna nodded, biting her bottom lip, but the smile lit up her eyes. “I think so.”
“You should probably be sure,” I whispered, and then kissed her again. “It’s not really an ‘I think so’ kind of thing.”
“I’ve kept the African violet in the kitchen window alive for the past seven months,” she said, and then grinned at me. “And I think I’m a pretty good dog mom to Penrose.”
“You’re a great dog mom,” I said, caution holding my excitement at bay. “But you’re also a workaholic.”
She stared up at me, and I realized what she was silently saying: It’s seven fifteen at night and—hello—I’ve been in my pajamas, not in the lab, for the past two hours.
“This is one day,” I said, voice tight. “Most mornings you’re gone by seven, and you’re not home until dark. I know we planned that I’d stay home, but at first, you’ll want to. It’s a big deal, isn’t it?”
“I’m ready, Will.” She stretched, kissing my chin. “I want to have a baby.”
Fuck.
I had a call in—I glanced at my watch again and groaned—forty-five minutes. And I’d wanted to review the due diligence package first, but now there was something I wanted more than that.
Specifically, Hanna’s warm waist beneath my hands, and the tiny gasp she made when I lifted her up onto the kitchen island. I wanted the dig of her nails in my back and the clutch of her around me. It wasn’t the first time we’d had sex in this room—not by a long shot—but it felt different.
“This is like super-married sex,” she said, pulling the thought from my head as she gleefully tugged the hem of my shirt out of the waistband of my jeans. “It’s our first productive—reproductive—sex! Goal-oriented sex! Sex with a mission!” She looked up at my face, beatific. “Missionary!”
I kissed her to shut her up, laughing into her mouth and working her pajama pants down her hips. “Wait, wait.” I pulled back, looking at her. “You’re still on the pill, though . . . right?”
She gave me a guilty shrug.
“What?” I pulled back, gaping at her. “When did you go off?”
Ducking into her shoulders a little, she admitted, “Maybe a week ago.”
“We’ve had sex in the past week.” I blinked, thinking back. “Like, several times.”
“I know, but I don’t think I’m, like, immediately fertile or anything.”
Even in the face of her illogical confidence, warmth rolled through me. I know I should have been a little annoyed that she did this without any discussion, but I wasn’t. The possibility suddenly seemed so fucking real. We were going to have kids someday. Maybe even someday soon.
Holy shit.
Things turned into a blur of laughter and clashing teeth and limbs caught in clothes, but when I had her free enough to step between her knees and press into her, the rest of the world melted into the periphery. It wasn’t really goal-oriented sex after all, it was just . . . being with Hanna. The way I had a thousand times, with a tiny echo of anticipation and excitement that had nothing to do with the way she felt around me or the sounds she made. Her hair brushed over my face when I bent to kiss her neck. Her hands were smooth and sure down my back, gripping my ass. I had watched Hanna go from a glowing, innocent young woman to a confident, assertive powerhouse—and with me she still remained the sweet, wide-open, smiling Plum I fell for more than three years ago.
Hanna collapsed back on the island, staring sex-drunk up at me.
“Well done, William.”
I kissed her breast, mumbled something incoherent.
She reached blindly over her head when my phone buzzed again.
“What the hell is going on with your phone? Did you have the time wrong for the call?” Catching it in her hand, she pulled it over her face to read it, keeping one hand buried in my hair.
I felt her go still beneath me, her breath held in her chest.
“Will.”
I pressed a kiss right over her beating heart. “Mmm?”
“You have a . . . few texts from Bennett, and another from Max.”
I laughed. “Read them to me.”
Hanna made a small sound of refusal and reached down, pressing the phone into my hand. “I think you’ll want to read these yourself.”