Chapter 31

Kin

All the way to Lucy’s house in Malibu, I wanted to talk to her about what happened at the doctor’s the day before, but by the time I actually got there, I couldn’t do it.

It didn’t seem right to discuss my pregnancy with her when I hadn’t even told Jace about it. He deserved to be the first person to know about our baby.

Instead, I cuddled with Hayat and let her sweet innocence soak into me and soothe all the chaos trying to run riot in my head. I held her and made her giggle and found myself almost crying a few times, but thankfully I stopped myself before Lucy could see the tears and demand to know what was going on.

I only stayed an hour before driving back to my apartment.

I needed to tell Jace, and I needed to do it now. Before I chickened out. Before I fucked up and started going down the same road he’d gone down with keeping Eden a secret from me. This was bigger than what happened with Eden. This was bigger than anything else I’d ever had to face in my life, and I needed him.

But I was terrified. This was huge, life-changing. It wasn’t just us talking about moving in or him randomly proposing. We were going to be parents. If he fucked this up, it was going to destroy us completely this time.

As I walked through the apartment toward my bedroom where he’d texted me he still was just a half hour before, I pulled out the stuff the doctor gave me the day before. On my way to Lucy’s, I’d filled my prescription, and the vitamins were lying on top of the ultrasound pictures in my purse.

Opening my bedroom door, I pulled them out and walked in.

Jace was lying on his stomach in the middle of my bed, swiping through his phone. When he saw me, his face lit up. “I didn’t think you would be back so soon.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and put the pictures and the pills on the comforter beside him. His eyes narrowed on them as he picked up the bottle of prenatal vitamins. “Are these Kassa’s? Why do you have them?”

I twisted my hands in my lap, but I forced myself to watch his face as I told him, “They aren’t hers. They’re… The doctor prescribed them to me yesterday.”

“These are for pregnant women, though. Right?” His blue gaze met mine, and I watched as all the color began to drain from his face. “Are you telling me you’re pregnant, Kin?”

Swallowing hard, I slowly nodded.

He jumped up out of bed. “But…you have that implant thing. It’s supposed to keep you from getting pregnant.”

My chin started to tremble, but I clenched my jaw until I had myself under control. “Dr. Baric said sometimes they fail. Or stop early. She sent it off to the lab to be examined after she took it out yesterday. When she did my pap smear, she saw that my cervix was soft, and with the way I’ve been feeling lately, she did a pregnancy test and it came back positive.”

“Fuck,” he groaned, rubbing his hands over his face.

I sat there, my head bowed, waiting for him to get his freak-out over with, inwardly cringing as I anticipated the moment he would start exploding and yelling.

This wasn’t part of our plan.

Fuck, we didn’t even have a plan anymore. But this wasn’t part of the immediate future I foresaw for us. Babies were for the distant future, when I had my life straightened out perfectly, when Jace and I had figured us out. We still had so much we wanted to do. Our careers were just starting to take off; we didn’t have time for a baby.

Yet, as I waited, none of those things came out of his mouth.

Instead, he was quiet, and I chanced a glance at him, only to find him standing there with tears in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he choked out.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. My head is a jumbled mess right now.”

He dropped to his knees in front of me, clasping my hands in his as he tried to blink back his tears. “I mean, physically. Are you sick? Is the baby okay? How far along are you? Did you hear the baby’s heartbeat yesterday?”

The bombardment of questions stunned me for a moment, and I had to rush to keep up with them. “I still feel nauseous, but other than that, I’m okay. The doctor said the baby is doing great, and I’m only just now six weeks along. I heard the heartbeat, and it was really strong.” I lifted my chin toward the bed where the pictures still were. “She did an ultrasound to determine how far along I am, and I got to keep all the pictures the tech took.”

Holding both my hands in one of his, he picked up the pictures with the other. His eyes scanned the paper, trying to make sense of it. For the first time since my appointment the day before, I found myself laughing at the look of concentration on his face. Leaning forward, I pulled one hand free and pointed out what was our baby.

“Our blob is the size of a sweet pea,” I told him as I ran my nail over the tiny spot. “Or at least, that was what the tech told me yesterday. But it will double in size by next week.”

“That’s… Fuck, that’s amazing,” he whispered in complete awe.

“Jace…” I clutched his hand tightly, all my fears crashing back down on me. “What are we going to do?”

“Have a baby. Love him or her. Hope we don’t fuck it up.” He sounded so confident. Still in awe, but so sure of himself.

A helpless sob left me. “But what about us?”

Dropping the pictures to the floor, he cupped my face in both his hands. “Why would you ask something like that?”

“I don’t know. Because I’m scared? We’ve broken up twice. What if we break up again? What if we hurt this baby the way my dad hurt me when I was growing up?” His brows pinched together, but I couldn’t stop the words now that they were free. “I know he didn’t mean to. I really do. But when I was growing up, I didn’t understand it. And it hurt, Jace. If we break up again and the baby is put in the middle… I don’t want our baby to hurt like I did.”

“We aren’t ever going to break up again,” he growled. “Nothing—do you hear me, Kin?—nothing is ever going to come between us ever again. I can’t live without you. I won’t. This is it for us. We’re not going to spend another day apart. You are my best friend, the love of my life, and I love you more and more every day. Baby, you are the other half of my soul.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” He kissed me, hard. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark with determination. “We will always be together. Always.”

“Jace—”

“Do you love me?” he demanded, his voice thick with emotion.

I nodded, blinking back my tears. “Yes. More than anything.”

“Then stop second-guessing us. Everything will fall into place, I promise you. Don’t worry about the what-ifs. They don’t matter. You and I are forever, Kin Montez.”

“How can you be so sure?” I whispered, but I was starting to calm down, starting to realize he was right. My heart wasn’t going crazy, and the weight that had pressed down on me for the past twenty-four hours was starting to fade.

“Because I was forced to live without you, and it nearly killed me. That shit isn’t happening again, Kin. I’ll weld our shadows together if I have to, but I’m not ever letting you go again.” He brushed my hair back from my face, his thumb wiping away my tears. “I love you so fucking much it hurts. And I swear to you, I’ll always take care of you and our baby. You two will always come first with me. But if I ever make you feel like you aren’t, you better set me right, and quick.”

A smile teased at my lips even as my tears continued to spill down my cheeks. “I promise to kick you in the balls anytime you do something stupid like that, babe.”

“Does this mean you’ll marry me now?” he asked hopefully.

But I shook my head, and his face fell. “I’m not marrying you just because you knocked me up.”

“You’re killing me, woman,” he groaned, his hands going to my stomach and rubbing so tenderly, I had to swallow another sob. “Do you hear that, little sweet pea? Your mommy still doesn’t want to marry me. What the hell am I going to do to convince her to say yes?”

“Get the proposal right, would be my guess,” I teased.

He blew out a frustrated sigh. “I’ll make sure to work on that.”

Tapping my leg, he urged me to scoot back on the bed. I kicked off my shoes and moved so I was lying down. He climbed in beside me, but instead of spooning me, he lay so his head was pillowed on my stomach, his ear against my lower abdomen.

“What are you doing?” I asked when he pressed his head firmer against me.

“Trying to hear our sweet pea,” he muttered, his face adorable the way it was scrunched in concentration.

“You need a doppler for that,” I advised.

“Crap. Give me your phone.”

“It’s in my purse.”

He sat up, grabbed his own phone off the end of the bed, and pressed his head back into my stomach. I stroked my fingers through his hair as he flipped through his phone for a few minutes.

“I don’t think there is an app for what you want,” I warned when he kept grumbling.

“Funny. I’m not looking for an app. I’m trying to find the best home doppler so we can hear the baby whenever we want. But all the ones I’m finding won’t let us hear it until nine weeks.” He muttered a curse then clamped his lips shut. “Sorry, little sweet pea. Daddy didn’t mean it.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at how he was talking to the baby. A soft giggle escaped me as two tears slipped over my lashes, and I hurriedly wiped them away before he could see them.

“I can get this one here tomorrow, and we can save it for when you’re nine weeks,” he said as he used his thumb to flip through his phone. “That way we have it on the tour with us.”

“Whatever you want, babe.”

He finished checking out then jumped to his knees. Tossing his phone aside, he leaned over me, kissing me softly. “I’m really happy, Kin. I don’t know what to do with all this happiness.” His lips trailed to my jaw and then down my neck. Every part of me that had been soft just moments ago grew tight with arousal, and I began to squirm. “What should I do to keep myself from exploding with it right now, baby?”

My breath caught when he cupped my pussy through my jeans. “I’m all for what you’re doing right now,” I said with a moan as his thumb pressed down on my clit.

He grinned against my flesh. “Yeah? Only this?” His lips pressed into my left ear. “Or do you want more?”

“I want everything you have to give,” I whimpered.

His head snapped up, the smile gone, the passion banked. “Is it safe? Will we hurt our sweet pea if we have sex?”

I wrapped my legs around his waist and twisted until he was on his back and I was the one leaning over him. “Jace, you are so freaking adorable right now, it’s killing me. Yes, it’s safe. No, the baby won’t be hurt. Lucy and Harris had sex all the time while she was pregnant.”

Pink filled his cheeks. “I don’t want that picture in my head. Lucy’s like a sister to me.”

Laughing, I leaned back so I could pull my shirt off and unclasp my bra. “She’s hot, though. It’s okay that you liked what you saw when you caught them having sex. I would totally fuck her.”

We both knew I was only teasing him, but the way his cock jerked against the inside of my thigh through our jeans told me he was picturing it.

“You’re evil, you know that?” He groaned when I rocked against him. “Putting that sh—crap in my head.”

“Why are you censoring yourself?” I giggled.

“The baby has ears. Our sweet pea can’t hear that kind of filth.”

“Aw, babe, you’re so damn cute.”

His hand slapped against my ass. “Don’t cuss around the baby.”

“But I like seeing you get so overprotective,” I goaded, a smirk on my lips. “Are you going to be worse if we have a girl?”

“You’re really killing the mood right now, woman. You want me to make you feel good, or you want to make me crazy thinking about all the little dickheads I’m going to have to murder when they see how beautiful our little girl will be?”

My pussy tightened, but my heart was melting into a puddle of goo in the middle of my chest. “Thank you,” I whispered.

His hands caught my hips, holding me in place. “For?”

“For making everything okay again.” I leaned down to brush my lips over his and stayed there, just holding on to him. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, Kin.” His arms folded around me, his lips touching the top of my head. “You’re my everything, you know that, right?”

I closed my eyes. My body was still amped up, but right then, I needed this more. “I do now.”