Chapter 29

Someone asked me where I saw myself in ten years. I told them I didn’t even know what I wanted to make for dinner.

-Text from Kennedy to Evander

Kennedy

Three weeks later

Everything was back to normal—or at least as normal as you could get.

Hostel was a small town.

It hadn’t taken long for the town to learn that Evander had been innocent of all charges.

It’d taken even less time for them to hear that Evander had beaten someone to death with a baseball bat—though beaten was a strong word. Really, he’d just hit him, but it’d been enough to kill him in one blow. It didn’t matter to the town that Balthazar was a drug-dealing pimp, and had been in his house uninvited and had just shot his dog when Evander had done the deed.

They still saw him as the enemy.

And I was fucking tired of it.

Evander may be going through the motions—working and participating in life—but he wasn’t back to normal yet.

And that was in evidence now.

There I was, standing in the middle of the supermarket aisle where the pregnancy tests were located, and I was listening to some woman whisper about Evander.

Evander was at the end of the aisle looking at something, unaware that I was looking at pregnancy tests and wondering if I could sneak it into the cart without him noticing it.

He was only a few feet away from the two women—both baseball moms who obviously couldn’t help themselves—as they talked about him as if he wasn’t standing right there.

And I finally lost it.

Marching down the aisle—four pregnancy tests still in my hands—I started yelling.

“Don’t you fucking see?” I screeched, throwing the tests at the two women. “This man is so fucking perfect. He has the patience of a saint and all y’all can fuckin’ do is talk about him like he’s a fucking criminal. Well, guess what, bitches? He fucking isn’t! He’s a good, honest, hard-working man who was targeted by a dirty police force. He hasn’t done a damn thing to deserve the asshole attitude y’all are dishing out to him,” I huffed out a humorless laugh. “Fuck y’all. Fuck you and fuck you.” I threw my last pregnancy test at them and hit the blonde in the side of her shocked face. “Just go fuck yourselves.”

Okay.

I could tell that I wasn’t as eloquent in my wording as I probably could have been, but I was so tired of it that I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

The two women just stared at me in shock.

Evander, the loving, gentle giant that he was, just bent over and picked up the box that had bounced close to his feet after hitting the other chick on the neck.

He read the box and then turned those beautiful eyes up to me.

“You have something to tell me?”

I gritted my teeth.

And then I started to cry.

“I have a lot to tell you.”

Then buried my face in my hands and let all of the emotion of the last few weeks rush out. All the grief, the sadness, my worry for him.

All of it came tumbling out.

“I’m sorry.”

Two words.

But they were apparently exactly what I needed to hear.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he countered. “And for what it’s worth, I’m thankful that you gave me this time, but I’m sorry that doing it hurt you.”

His repeated words had me bringing up my head.

“I know.”

He dropped his mouth to mine, and then wrapped his arms carefully around me.

“You’re pregnant?”

I shrugged, leaning my head back to stare into his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

He threw the box into the cart and then let go of me, but only long enough to pull me with him back to the other end of the aisle.

He stopped long enough to grab four more boxes, and then he calmly walked with me to the front of the store.

There, he unloaded our purchases, paid for them and then walked me out.

All without saying a word.

In fact, the silence continued until we got home, where he opened the boxes and then held one out to me as he guided me into the bathroom. “All right, time to pee.”

I balked.

“I can’t pee with you standing right here.”

He held out the stick, jiggling it in my face.

“Pee.”

I sighed, took the wand from him, and then did the deed.

All while blushing profusely as he stood over me and calmly waited for me to finish.

I set the test on the counter, finished up, washed my hands, and then shifted nervously from foot-to-foot.

He wrapped his arms around me from behind, as we both watched the pink plus sign rapidly appearing in the tiny window.

The big man at my back buried his face into my neck and started to laugh.

“We’re going to have a baby.”

I nodded, staring at him like he’d lost his marbles—which I was sure that he had.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked when he wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes.

He was laughing so hard he was crying.

Holy shit, something was wrong.

The man had literally gone crazy.

“What are you laughing about?” I repeated, worried now.

He grinned, then pulled me into his arms again and touched the test almost reverently.

“I’m…happy.”

I frowned.

“A lot of shit has happened,” he said. “I’ve lost a brother. My dog. My sister fucking hates me now…but I’m so fucking happy.”

I stayed silent.

“Don’t worry about me anymore, K.”

I snorted.

“No,” he repeated, curling his hand around my jaw. “I’ll get there, but in the meantime, I need you to keep being you.”

I could do that.

“Okay?”

I did the only thing I could do. I nodded.

“As long as you love me,” he continued. “As long as you’re there when I wake up in the morning. As long as you’re here when I get home at night.” He pressed a kiss to my lips. “As long as you’re in my life, then I can do just about anything.”

With that, he walked out of the room, and I was left standing in the middle of the bathroom, my heart overflowing with joy.

“As long as you love me, I’ll do the same for you.”

What he said in a shout from the other room, however, had me nearly squealing with happiness.

“And you’ll be marrying me in two months, too! No lip!”