Nine years ago

The sound of running water tears me from my slumber. My limbs paralyzed with fatigue, I force my eyelids apart just enough to take in my surroundings. Sunlight streams in through gauzy, translucent curtains. Starched, white sheets. Not my pillow, not my blanket, not my bed. I'm in a hotel room, and someone’s in the shower in the bathroom.

I know who, of course. I can smell him on the sheets. And on the T-shirt I’m wearing, his shirt, that I appropriated the night before I left on this trip and have been wearing to bed all week. If anyone had told me eight months ago, before the holiday season when he started to pursue me, that one day I’d want to wrap myself in Logan McKinley’s scent, I would’ve laughed hysterically.

Ugh, I have a terrible headache. Why? I didn’t even drink last night, when his flight arrived early enough that we had dinner together before going back to my room. Our room, now.

When I found out about this work trip three weeks ago, I suggested that we take a personal day so he could join me for a long weekend in Sin City. I hadn’t seen him since last Friday, which is the longest we’ve been apart since I-don’t-remember-when—an advantage of being romantically involved with a colleague, I suppose.

I missed him, though, and he clearly felt the same. Heat floods me at the memory of all the ways we played catch-up last night. A week’s separation from him seemed to have heightened my senses, intensified every look and every touch. And increased our appetite for the rough games, the pain and the battle of wills. He has the scratches and bite marks to prove it, and I have the soreness and the bruises. Despite my fatigue and the pounding in my head, my cheeks flame, and I clench my thighs against the twinges of arousal between them.

I’m not surprised that I’ve pined for him this past week. What I didn’t expect was how not seeing his golden-haired and suit-clad shape from across the office every day could affect my mood even more than going without my morning cup of coffee. Just the sight of him will brighten my day, put a bounce in my step, and make the most tedious of tasks—even doc review—far more bearable.

Not that we spend much time together at work. But those smiles and few words in passing have become the lighthouse that helps me navigate the almost nonstop grind of my job without wrecking and sinking. And then there’s the occasional lunch date, with the even more occasional quickie at my apartment, which is closer to work. Or in the parking garage, in the back seat of his car, with its darkly tinted windows…

We’ve remained professional, though. We’ve stayed away from the supply closet. So far.

There’s definitely a contingency of women in the office, led by Amber—duh—whose attitudes have cooled toward me. I can’t bring myself to resent them too hard. If Logan were seeing another woman from work, I’d be battling jealousy, too. Obviously.

What is getting old, though, are coworkers eagle-eyeing me for signs that I’m getting special treatment for being the girlfriend of the boss’s favorite. Which is just ridiculous.

Girlfriend.

A part of my mind still balks at that title, thinking it feels like an overstatement of our relationship. Which makes no sense, really. We have mutual friends now—he’s even made a convincing effort to get along with Beth—and they all refer to us as one word, PaigeAndLogan, the way you do with couples you’ve started thinking of as a single entity.

We spend the majority of what little spare time we have together. He even convinced me to go camping with him, and I…tolerated it. Mostly because we could be cast adrift in a rowboat in the middle of the Pacific, and he’d still find a way to light up my world.

So I guess if I’m not his girlfriend, I don’t know what else you’d call me at this point.

A stabbing ache behind my eyes has me burying my head in my pillow and curling up into a ball under the sheet and blanket. While dozing, I’m vaguely aware of the sound of water in the shower stopping. A short while later, there’s the click of the bathroom door, the padding of feet on the carpet, and then the bed sinks behind me under his weight.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.” He presses a kiss on my neck, and my body responds, my spine curling. “It’s nine thirty already.”

Parting my lips, I try to push out a reply, but this exhaustion, it's like a five-hundred-pound boulder crushing me and pinning me to the mattress.

“I’m so tired,” I manage to mumble, forcing my eyes open again.

A large, warm hand skims from my shoulder and down my bare arm. I roll over onto my back, blinking blearily—and find my Golden Boy braced on his elbow above me, wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs and smelling fresh from the shower, his hair damp and disheveled.

Crap. I can’t believe I lay here awake the past ten minutes and didn’t even realize.

“Did you go to the gym without me?”

“Yeah.” He brushes a lock of hair away from my face, sending another shock prickling through me.

Of course, being tired doesn’t make me immune to him. Pretty sure I could be spitting furious at him, and all he’d have to do is touch me—anywhere, everywhere—and I’d be disarmed. My defenses against him are tissue-paper thin.

“Sorry.” I grimace. Because I flaked out on him, not because I’m upset about missing out on the early a.m. visit to the fitness center downstairs. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I tried,” he says with a smile, stuffing a pillow under his head as he lies back on the bed. “But you were just out, so I decided to let you sleep.”

“Sorry,” I repeat as he stretches out his arm, an obvious invitation that I accept, scooting up to him.

“It’s okay, baby,” he says gently.

“I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

As I settle my head on his shoulder, he folds me close, so that the only barrier between us is my sleep shorts and my T-shirt. His T-shirt. My brain fog is clearing up, but only a little.

“Not getting enough sleep lately?” he asks, his fingertips stroking my arm.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the case wearing me out.” That wouldn’t be surprising. I’ve been here in Las Vegas since Monday with the team doing depositions for the Bilder case—a class action suit against a hotel chain on behalf of their workers, claiming they’ve been defrauded of wages—and it’s been a dawn-to-past-dusk workday all week, a grueling schedule that’s left me drained.

Turning onto his side, Logan shifts his touch to my waist, letting it drift down toward my hip. “We can stay in bed all day if you want.”

“Mmm.” My hand finds his firm abs, and then I slide it around to his back, stroking his smooth skin that’s still warm from the shower. “That’d be a waste of a weekend in Vegas.”

“Nah,” he says with a leer, slanting his head. “We’ll order room service”—his teeth graze my earlobe—“watch a movie”—sliding up into my stretchy shorts, his palm cups and squeezes my naked ass—“role play escort and wealthy client.”

Snickering, I bury my nose in the crook of his neck and inhale. Underneath the fresh soap lingers the smell of him. In the eight months since December and the first time I let him close, that scent has become the trigger for so many memories. Good memories, for the most part.

Actually, better than good. Blissful. Ecstatic. Happy.

Because just as I feared I would, I’ve fallen in love with this man. Intensely, overwhelmingly, helplessly in love. And I’m way past having any apprehensions about it. Because he’s nothing like the kind of guy I described to Beth the first time I met him, and I’ve never been so thrilled to be wrong about something.

“Who’d be the escort and who’d be the client?” I murmur, smiling with my lips on his skin.

His shoulders shaking with silent laughter, he pulls back to look at me—just as a razor-sharp pain slices through my forehead.

“Headache?” Logan sounds concerned while I squeeze my eyes shut, a groan escaping me. At my nod, he asks, “You got something you can take for it?”

“In my toiletry bag.”

The bed bounces as he vaults off of it, and when I hear the soft padding of his footsteps toward the bathroom, I flip onto my back and fling my arm over my eyes, shielding myself from the light.

It doesn’t take long before I hear him coming back from the bathroom. The bed dips as he sits down. Squinting at him, I accept the small, brightly colored capsules he hands over.

“Thank you.” I sit up and grab my water bottle off the nightstand.

“Mhmm.” His voice sounds short, almost reserved, which is so unlike him that I almost swallow wrong as I wash down the pills with a big swig of water.

“So, hey…” he says while I lower the bottle with a frown, “wanna tell me about this?”

He picks up a rectangular white package from beside him on the bed and places it between us.

Aw, crap. It’s the pregnancy test. That I totally forgot I’d left in my toiletry bag.

My chest tightening, I look back up and meet his eyes. He’s watching me with his lips in a tight line.

“I’m a little late.” I swallow hard, not sure why there’s an anxious flutter in my stomach. “It’s not that unusual. I just got kind of paranoid about it the other night, so I went to the pharmacy down the street. It was negative.”

A crease appears between his eyebrows. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I shrug. “There wasn’t anything to tell.”

He says nothing, only sits there calmly scrutinizing me, and the pressure inside my head grows. With a sigh, I lie back down and cover my eyes with my arm again. I’m so not in any shape to deal with drama right now.

There’s a popping sound followed by rustling from beside me. He’s opening the package? What the hell? Why is he being so annoying about this? It was a false alarm. Time to move on.

My body grows more tense with each crinkle of the paper, and I’m ready to snap when he finally speaks.

“Says here the test is most accurate in the morning.”

Groaning, I uncover my eyes and glare up at where he’s sitting beside me with the instruction sheet unfolded in his lap. “I’m not pregnant, Logan. I’m on the pill.”

He throws me a dry look. “And I’m sure you know exactly how many women get pregnant on the pill.”

About three percent, but that’s beside the point. Exasperated, I reply, “Only when they use it wrong.”

His gaze serious and penetrating, he’s quiet for a while. Then: “You kept the second test, though. And you said no to wine at dinner last night, which you never do—”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Pushing onto my elbow, I snatch the pamphlet and the box and leap from the bed, starting for the bathroom. I can’t believe I have to take that second test just to get him to let it go.

“Hey, wait,” Logan says, jumping up to his feet as well. “Wait, wait, wait…”

We meet at the foot of the bed, and I stare at him with folded arms and gritted teeth.

He puts up his palms. “Okay, so you’re freaked out—”

“I’m not freaked out,” I snap. “If I was pregnant, I’d be freaked out. But I’m not pregnant. So I’m not freaked out.”

He rubs his forehead. “I know this is not how the sequence of events go on your list, but—”

“No, thank you,” I interrupt, my free hand curling into a fist. “We’re not having that conversation again. I already know you think my list is stupid and unrealistic and…insert other insulting adjective here. But it’s important to me.”

Blowing out a breath, Logan looks like he wants to argue. But when he speaks, his voice is soft, soothing. “See, this is why you should’ve told me. You don’t have to deal with shit like this on your own, Paige. Not anymore.”

My throat closes up. In the deep recesses of my mind, I know that I’m being unfair. He’s never outright said anything that nasty about my life plan list, and a pregnancy scare is a pretty big deal. Honestly, it’d be worse if he was indifferent. A lot worse.

But now that I’ve dug deep enough to admit those truths, I’ve opened the gate on the terrifying monster that’s lurking just around the corner.

It’s time to face it.

“I have to—” I gesture weakly toward the bathroom, icy dread making me unable to finish the sentence.

Wordlessly, Logan steps aside and lets me pass. I know that costs him, but I still keep walking without a backward glance. It’s not that I don’t appreciate his unwavering support. There's just no way I'm letting him hold my hand while I pee on a stick.

After shutting the bathroom door behind me, I don’t bother to read the instructions again before doing my thing, doing it quickly and numbly. Of course I knew that I’d have a greater chance of getting a false negative when I took the first test in the evening. That doesn’t mean it was a false negative, but still. Denial can make you dumb.

Setting the stick down on the white marble counter, I step away from it and sit down on the edge of the bathtub while I wait. T-minus two minutes until what should be a conclusive result, and I can’t stand there and watch it slowly fading in.

So instead I search my brain for a reason my birth control could’ve failed. I take it on time every day, obsessively and religiously. Keep the little case in my purse for times when I stay out late, like when I spend the night at Logan’s. I’m one hundred percent sure I’ve never missed a day, not even when I caught that nasty stomach virus that made the rounds in the office last month. I basically spent two days in the bathroom, couldn’t keep anything down, but I took those damn pills and didn’t throw up for a while after taking them…

With a groan, I close my eyes. More denial. This isn’t me. I don’t do stupid and irresponsible. But I remember it as clearly as a high-definition image, the moment after I recovered from the illness and it crossed my mind that I should probably tell Logan we would need condoms for the next month or so.

And I remember dismissing it. I took the pills, the odds were in my favor, and getting pregnant by accident is something that happens to other people. Not even during any of our what-if conversations—where we’ve agreed that we both want kids someday, that someday being years away, and also being on the same page about keeping it if an accident did ever happen—has it crossed my mind that I could ever find myself in this situation.

There’s a knock on the door. For a moment, I have an overwhelming urge to tell him to go away. I’ve never needed or wanted help cleaning up my own mess, have never understood the appeal of depending on anyone else.

You don’t have to deal with this on your own. Not anymore.

My chest heavy, I say, “Come in.”

He’s put a T-shirt on above his underwear, and even in my state of misery and foreboding, my reaction to the sight of him is visceral, an infusion of pleasure into my veins. My gorgeous, brilliant, and devoted man.

Who might’ve gotten me pregnant.

“Have you looked at it?” he asks cautiously.

I shake my head. “I…can’t.”

He seems almost nonchalant as he steps over to the sink and picks up the white plastic stick.

And then his expression freezes, his eyes widening slightly.

My stomach turns, my heart jumping into my throat.

“Oh, my God,” I whimper, doubling over. I feel hot. I feel cold. The room starts spinning, and I let myself slide off the tub onto the floor, where I hug my legs and rest my forehead on my knees.

I can sense him approaching, can hear him crouching down, and then his hand is on my back, stroking. “It’s not the end of the world, baby.”

“No,” I say, my whole body trembling, “not the world. Just my life.”

He grinds out an impatient noise. “That’s a little overly dramatic—”

“Oh, give me a fucking break!” The words burst out of me on heels of an explosion of rage in my chest, and I whip my head up to glare at him. My throat swells, and he turns blurry as my eyes burn and fill with tears.

Gasping for breath, I continue in a near-shouting voice, “It’s easy for you to be fucking calm! You could walk away from this. Right now. I’m the one who’s trapped.”

Angrily swiping at the tears on my cheeks, I watch as his countenance clouds over. The dark flash in his eyes, the way his skin tightens over his flexing jaw… I’ve never actually seen him enraged before, have I? Not until now.

Without a word, he stands up and stalks out of the room. Leaving me there on the floor, shaking with grief and fury—at the world, at his dismissal of my devastation, but mostly, at myself. How the hell did I let this happen? I’m twenty-five. I’ve barely started my career. I’m not supposed to be a mom yet. This is all wrong. So staggeringly, mind-bogglingly wrong.

I look up as Logan strides back into the room. He’s carrying a small, square black box, and for a few seconds, he just looms above me, appearing thunderous. Then he flings the box at me, and I catch it, reflexively.

“You think I want to walk away?” he says, a low and accusing snarl.

My heart hammering painfully in my chest and echoing in my ears, I stare at him for a while. Hesitantly and with unsteady hands, I thumb open the velvet-covered box. I know what’s inside. Of course I do.

The ring is stunning: one large diamond flanked by two smaller ones, with even more tiny stones covering the rest of the band, which looks to be platinum. It’s sparkly, dazzling, way over the top—and I love it. My pulse starts racing.

“Is this for real?” is all I can think to say. The idea that Logan was going to propose this weekend doesn't feel possible. It's unexpected, crazy, and way too soon. Right?

“I was going to drag you out of bed before sunrise tomorrow.” He stands above me with his hands on his hips, his voice flat and bitter. “We were going on a hot air balloon ride. It seemed like the perfect metaphor for us.”

Still clutching the box, my hands fall into my lap, and I close my eyes and let out a moan-sigh as pain and regret slices through me. “Which part?” I ask, dejected. “How one little thing going wrong could have us plunging to our deaths?”

With a disgusted grunt, he lowers himself to sit next to me. “No, Paige,” he says, only a hint of irritation left in his tone. He waits until I open my eyes and turn to look at him before he reaches over and cups my cheek. “It’s how every time I look at you, I’m stunned by how beautiful you are. It’s how just the tiniest smile from you can make me feel like I’m floating. It’s how you…you lift me higher, by making me want to do better, to be better.”

I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until it wheezes out of me, leaving me light-headed. My skin prickles with joy at his words—and with the shame of mine.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him in barely more than a whisper, tears pressing behind my eyes again. “I’m so sorry. I know you don’t want to walk away. That you never would.”

In response, he just opens his arms. Something in me breaks. Tears running hot and fast down my cheeks, I reach for him, climbing into his lap and curling up in his embrace. He holds me tightly, holds me like he’s not ever going to let me go, and enveloped by all of his unyielding strength, I’m conscious of nothing more than what a relief it is to sink bonelessly against his chest and let him tuck my head under his chin. It feels liberating, almost decadent, to allow myself to shatter, knowing he’s keeping all the pieces of me together.

Slowly, my tears abate, and after a long and dazed silence, I suck in a shuddering breath and say, “This has all happened so quickly.”

He squeezes me closer. “Life is like the weather. You don’t control it. You adapt yourself.”

I’m ambushed by an absurd urge to laugh, though it stops with a tightening in my chest. Logan knows very well that going with the flow is almost impossible for me.

“I would’ve liked a hot air balloon proposal,” I say with a sniffle.

He threads his fingers into my hair, presses his mouth against the top of my head. “We can still make that happen.”

“No,” I respond automatically, and then I have to take a moment to pause and figure out what the sudden and resolute revolt within me means. Possible future events flash before me—a proposal like he’d intended except no longer a surprise, an engagement, and wedding planning with all the usual rituals.

And me pretending this is exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it.

To hell with that.

“I don’t want to wait,” I tell him, pulling back and meeting his pale, piercing gaze. “We’re in Las Vegas. Let's get married today.”

Frowning and shaking his head, he says, “Paige…”

“I’m serious.” Palming his cheek, I run my thumb down the line of his jaw. “I would’ve said yes tomorrow, no matter what. None of this—you, a baby—” God! I choke on the word, as if saying it out loud makes it suddenly and startlingly real.

I’m going to be a mom. Logan is going to be a dad. It’s insane. It’s terrifying.

I don’t know how to be a mom. How do you even take care of a child? Oh, my God. I hate feeling clueless. Hate it.

“No doubts.” Pushing away the panic, I brush my fingers around to the back of his neck, leaning in and finding his lips with mine in a tender and lingering kiss, goose bumps skittering across my skin as he tightens his hold on me and kisses me back. Backing off again, I firmly pronounce, “No waiting.”

He regards me solemnly, his hand stroking me everywhere he can reach—down my back, my waist, my hip—as if he’s committing my shape to memory. “I just don’t want you to regret not having a big wedding, with your family and friends there.”

“I probably will, a little bit,” I admit, shrugging. “But if we wait, I'll find something else to regret. Like the fact that I'd be wearing a maternity wedding dress.”

The last statement has me making a face, shuddering as if I have bugs crawling all over me.

Exasperation in his countenance, Logan shakes his head. Then, with a sound that’s half sigh, half laugh, he says, “All right, then. Let's do this.”