I had been trying to forget about the conversation I had with Lee last week or at least put it to the back of my mind, but it was impossible to do.

Every time I looked at Hope, I was reminded of her betrayal. Trust didn’t come easily for me. I had closed myself off many years ago for good reasons.

Knowing she had broken that trust I had put in her changed something inside of me. I felt myself retracting back into my shell and I was powerless to stop it. It was, after all, a survival instinct rooted deep inside me and had kept me alive all these years.

I had decided to put my talk with Lee to the back of my mind and not tell my wife that I knew about her betrayal, but then Hope had hit me with the baby card. And everything between us since that night had gone to hell.

I still felt like a piece of crap for shutting her down the way I had. For being so unwilling to talk to her about something she obviously wanted. But I drew a line on having a family. In fact, I'd drawn a line under that particular questions many years ago.

I wasn’t doing it.

I wasn’t breeding any child that may bear a resemblance to either myself or my parents. I wouldn’t wish this life on my worst enemy, and certainly not any kid of mine.

Things were strained between us now and I found myself avoiding being alone with her. We had barely spoke to each other all week. She was hurt and I was too.

Like now, for example, Hope was in the living room with Teagan, and I couldn’t put enough space between me and them. I loved Hope Carter more than I knew what to do with it, but I was struggling to cope with the changes having her back in my life brought me. I could hear her and Teagan laughing and joking in my living room and all I wanted to do was run. A normal man would go in there and converse with his wife's best friend, make and effort and try and blend into her world.

I just couldn’t do it.

So instead, I drained the remnants from my coffee mug before placing it in the sink and leaving. Work was my one solace in life and I had every intention of throwing myself into it today.

* * *

Hope

"What's his problem?" Teagan asked when the front door slammed and Jordan's tall frame passed by the living room window as he walked towards his bike.

My shoulders slumped at the sight of him pulling out of the driveway. He hadn't even come to say goodbye before leaving. It felt like Jordan and I were living separate lives, not reconciling our marriage. "We had a disagreement last week," I stated, thinking back to that catastrophic night.

"I love you, Hope – more than life – but I'm not going to change my mind on this. I'm never going to want children..."

Everyone was having babies around me and I felt stuck.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t that I wanted a child right this very minute, but I wanted to know that kids were a part of my future. According to Jordan, he was not budging on the matter and it hurt so badly I could hardly look at him lately.

You know that feeling when someone tells you that you can't have something, you become absolutely obsessed with it? That was how I felt right now. I had baby fever and it was made a bazillion times worse by the swarm of pregnant women in my life.

Teagan was pregnant with her second child, Cam and Tillie were on the cusp of parenthood, and an email from my old high-school friend, Ashlynn Brookes, last week had informed me that, not only were she and her husband expecting their third child, but her brother Layton's wife had recently given birth to a daughter.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to tempt my husband to share a bed with me.

I wanted a child of my own. I had never realized how badly I wanted to be a mother until the choice had been taken away from me.

"Hello?" Teagan called out, snapping her fingers in front of my face. "Earth to Hope."

"Sorry," I mumbled. Shaking my head to clear my depressing thoughts, I forced a smile and said, "I'm spacing out a lot lately."

Teagan looked around the small living room from her perch on the couch and grimaced, "Don’t blame you, babe. I'd space out, too, if I had to live with Mr. Fun."

"Teagan," I warned.

"What?" she shot back, batting her big brown eyes innocently when we both knew she was anything but innocent. "I'm just saying, Jordan isn’t exactly the life and soul of the party." She shrugged her shoulders and took another bite from the candy bar in her hand before adding, "He's more suited to a wake."

"Teagan!" I snapped, voice firmer now. "Don’t talk about him like that."

"Don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe you jumped into this without thinking it through first."

"Are you seriously lecturing me on impulsiveness, Teagan Messina?" I demanded. She was one to talk about jumping into things.

Rolling her eyes, she waved a hand in the air and chimed, "Yeah, okay. Whatever." She polished off the last of her candy bar before pointing down at where I was sitting on the floor with my laptop open. "So, are you going to be finished soon?" Gleaming with devilishness, she added, "Because I came over here to play, not do homework."

"Play?" I cocked a brow. "What are we, Teegs, nine?"

"Come on," she whined as she drummed her fingers against her bump. "I'm bored out of my mind here, Hope. Let's go do something fun."

"Where's Noah?" I asked. "Why don’t you go and do something fun with him?"

"He's training." She grimaced at the word. "Which is completely pointless because I told him there's no way in hell I'm allowing him back in that cage again."

Noah had recently retired from the MFA because of an injury he received from a shooting last year, and though it was supposed to be a permanent thing, I had a feeling the world of mixed martial arts and street fighting hadn't seen the last of my uncle. He was only twenty-six years old. I didn’t see him hanging up his gloves just yet. He had a score to settle with his nemesis, Anthony Cole.

Of course, I didn’t dare breathe a word of my thoughts to Teagan. She suffered greatly every time her husband stepped into the cage. If she so much as got a sniff of Noah and the MFA, she would go batshit crazy.

"Well, I can't play until I get my quota of five thousand words done for the day," I told her, drawing myself back to the here and now.

"Are you close to 5k?" Teagan asked with a hopeful expression etched on her face.

I looked at the screen and bit back the urge to pick it up and throw it out the nearest window. "No," I wailed. "Not even close." I had a grand total of three hundred and thirty-eight words to show for seven hours work. "I suck, Teegs," I moaned. "Like, so bad it's not even funny."

"You do not," she scoffed with a roll of her eyes. "You're just distracted. You've had a lot happen in a small space of time. Anyone in your shoes would be struggling to get their creative juices flowing."

"My creative juices are about as dry as the Sahara Desert right now," I shot back with a sigh.

"At least they match your vagina."

"How have I been friends so long with such a bitch?"

Teagan grinned. "Because you love me."

"Yeah, yeah." Turning my attention back to my laptop screen, I quickly read over what I had been working on before saying, "Maybe I should make her end up alone?" The story I was currently writing was of a taboo nature and was based on a beloved secondary female character, Harley Jacobson, from a continual series of books I had been writing. This was book nine in the 'Unexpected Series' and the first with Harley as the main heroine. In the story, Harley was torn between two brothers – Rhett and Peter.

"At least it would surprise my readers," I added lamely, knowing Teagan would never go for it. She was almost as invested in these characters as I was. She'd been by my side while I wrote the previous books. "This one doesn’t have to have a happy ever after."

"Are you for real?" Teagan demanded. "It's bold enough that you're touching the cheating trope, and now you're planning on not doing a HEA?" She pretended to shoot herself in the head with her finger before adding, "You're a brave woman, Hope Carter. Career suicidal, but brave."

"Not every story has to have happy ending, Teagan," I snapped haughtily.

"You write romance," she countered unsympathetically. "Romance is supposed to have a HEA."

I shrugged defensively. "No, it doesn’t."

"Yes, it does," she urged. "The romance genre always has a happy ever after."

"Then the romance genre is a lying bitch," I shot back with a huff. "That's not real life."

"It's not supposed to be real life," she argued. "It's fiction. It's an escape for us readers. Why on earth would we invest months of our precious reading time into a series of books if they don’t end up together?"

"Because it's my story."

"No, it's not," Teagan countered. "It's your readers story– and mine!"

"Nope." I shook my head and pouted like a child. "It's mine."

"Hope, come on. Harley and Peter have to end up together in the end. He's loved her since childhood. You can't not have them as endgame!"

"Why?" I was being defensive. Why should Harley get her happy ever after when I didn’t get one with my real-life version of Peter?

"Because!" Teagan flailed her arms widely. "Because, I said so, now do it. Give that girl her HEA, Hope Carter."

"I'm being totally honest here, you're making me feel a little finger-stabby here." Grinning, I added, "I think I'll kill them all off."

"Ugh," she squealed like I had physically slapped her. "Don’t you dare!"

With my hands hovering over the keyboard of my laptop, I began to type furiously. "Uh-uh, they're all dying." I looked up at Teagan's horrified expression and bit back a laugh as I continued to type without mercy. "Still dying…uh…uh…and now they're dead. The end."

"Okay, now you're just being a brat."

"For that snide comment, you can forget an epilogue," I taunted. "Maybe I'll throw in a cliffhanger ending, too."

"Ugh," Teagan groaned, flopping back on the couch. "You have too much power over my happiness."

That comment made me smile. I loved hearing how invested she was in my characters. It gave me hope that I wasn’t doing such a terrible job.

"You know what? I'm just going to close this down," I announced after ten more minutes of blank staring. "The words are just not coming and I'm done forcing it," I added as I saved my file and closed the lid of my laptop.

"Praise Jesus," Teagan cheered sarcastically. "Actually – I think I know what will help you with your writer's block."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," she confirmed with a grin. "Cookies."

I shook my head in resignation before getting to my feet. "You're a cow. It's completely unfair that you manage to stay as tiny as you are." I shot her a glare before adding, "You eat your weight in candy daily and still look like a supermodel, while I only have to look at the batter and it goes straight to my ass."

I opened the cupboard with the baking goods and took out what ingredients I needed before setting them on the countertop. "I'll make a batch for you if you promise to slap me if you see me eating any."

"You're such a weirdo, Hope Carter," Teagan snorted as she followed me into the tiny kitchen and took a seat at the table. "I would kill to have curves like yours."

"Sure you would," I huffed out sarcastically.

Teagan stared across the narrow kitchen at me with a frown etched on her face. "You have really low self-esteem." Her voice was gentle and laced with concern. "I never noticed it before."

Now it was my turn to snort. "Well, if you had to grow up alongside the infamous Carter triplets and have Kyle Carter for a father, your self-esteem wouldn’t exactly be off the charts, either." I measured some flour and sieved it into a baking bowl before adding, "You have no idea how many times I wished to be small and petite like my mother when I was growing up." When I was done with the flour, I cracked an egg into the bowl and grabbed some butter. "Alas, I inherited the giant gene – not exactly a feminine look now, is it?"

"Hope, you're like 5" 9'," Teagan shot back. "Come on, that hardly makes you a giant."

I didn’t respond to that. Instead, I focused on preparing her cookies.

"You've got huge boobs and one hell of an ass," Teagan added enthusiastically. "And killer legs."

"Thanks, Teegs," I muttered, concentrating on the task at hand. "But you don’t need to pump me up with compliments. I'm fine with me."

"I'm being serious here, Hope," she urged, brown eyes locked on mine. "You have no idea how incredibly wonderful you are, do you?"

"Oh, I'm simply amazing," I crooned, my tone once again dripping with sarcasm.

"You are," she countered seriously. "You're beautiful and smart and independent." She shook her head and held her hands up, as if she was pointing out the most obvious thing in the world. "You have an honors degree from one of the best universities in Europe. And you've built this amazing career all by yourself – without anybody's help. You're financially secure because of said career. You own your own car, and home–"

"In Ireland," I replied, dismissively. "Which isn’t much good to me here…"

"But you still own it," Teagan corrected. "Which is a hell of a lot more than most twenty-six year olds can say."

"I guess," I muttered, feeling embarrassed.

"It's true," Teagan urged. "You've accomplished so damn much all on your own merit, without a man standing behind you to break the fall. You're a fucking rock star, Hope Carter."

"Yeah," I whispered, not bothering to tell her that I'd give it all up in a heartbeat to have what she had with Noah.

"Is that it?" Teagan whispered after a long pause. "Is your low self-esteem the reason why you've never pushed yourself out of your comfort box?"

My brows furrowed in confusion and I gave my friend my full attention. "I'm not following you."

"You've been my best friend since we were seventeen," she explained. "And never once in ten years have I seen you put yourself out there with any guy other than Jordan."

"Maybe that's because I've been with him since we met," I filled in, clearly only able to answer in sarcasm at this point.

"Or maybe it's because he's your safety net," she countered.

"What are you trying to say here, Teagan?"

"You jumped back in with him so fast," she explained, brows still set in a deep frown. "And I've been busting my balls for months trying to figure out why you took him back so quickly or how you even could… but it's all starting to make sense now." She looked up at me like it was the first time she had ever seen my face and said, "You lack confidence and have no faith in yourself. You don’t see what the rest of the world sees. In fact, I'd bet good money that you have the self-esteem of a mouse."

"A mouse?"

"A mouse," she confirmed. "A nervous, unsure, scared little mouse that has already been trodden into the ground by that big asshole you call your husband."

"Okay!" I held my hands up, warning her off. "You need to change the subject."

"I’m right, aren’t I?" she pressed. "You're with him because he doesn’t push you. The things he can't give you are the very things you are terrified of experiencing!"

"Teagan, you need to stop –"

"You put all your eggs in Jordan Porter's basket because he's a safe bet," she continued to say, ignoring my plea. "Because he'll never push you for more. As long as you're with him, you'll never have to dig deep inside that head of yours. You'll never have to push your boundaries."

"Teagan!" I snapped. "Stop." Maybe I had thrown all my eggs in his basket because it was safer than facing reality. I never realized how poor my self-image was until I was forced to face it. Jordan had been with me since childhood and I never felt self-conscious around him. Other men, however, made me nervous. I felt inferior and ugly. It was hard growing up and listening to how handsome your father and brothers were. Deep down I had always felt like the ugly duckling of the family. "I’m not talking about this anymore," I warned her. "Seriously, Teegs. Don’t push me on this."

"Fair enough," Teagan conceded. "But let me just say this one thing and I swear I'll drop it."

Sighing, I nodded for her to continue. There was no point in arguing with her anyway. She always won.

"Boundaries are there to be pushed, Hope," she urged. "Otherwise, what's the point in living?" Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on the table and stared meaningfully up at me. "The best part of being in love is pushing those terrifying limits and coming out the other side with a whole new perspective… or as a whole new person."

"Why are you telling me all of this?" I whispered.

"Because I want you to stop existing and start living, Hope," she shot back heatedly. "I see you and it makes me sad, because you don’t get it. You don’t see how unbelievably brilliant you truly are. I want you to realize what an amazingly talented and beautiful person you are, inside and out, and I want you to take your life by the balls! You only get one shot at this – one ride on the crazy train called life – and I want you to make it a ride you'll never forget."