PLAN FUCKING C.
Matt gave his duffel bag, sitting innocently on the floor of the spare room to which he’d been relegated, a savage kick.
Fun comedy—so why wasn’t he laughing?
Just friends—when it was fucking obvious that things had changed and he’d just made it fucking obvious to both of them the only way he could keep his hands off her was to do it from the other side of the fucking Atlantic!
He didn’t know how to describe the way he was feeling. Like he desperately wanted to get away from her...yet he was terrified of not being with her. Like he was a wolf baying for a mate...but strangling himself to silence.
Excruciating. Agonizing. Confusing. Bewildering. All of those things together. With an overlay of panic that in two weeks’ time she’d be pregnant...but maybe she wouldn’t. That he couldn’t control what happened, and couldn’t even blame her for taking control out of his hands because he’d made a fucking mess of things in two countries!
Ha. To think he was in this latest mess all because of an X in an email. That pathetic X of a kiss, which was the way Romy signed off her emails to everyone—even that prick Lennie—and to which Matt had taken exception on the basis he wasn’t going to start being an “everyone” to Romy after ten years’ being number one with her!
And then to get to her apartment, and see Teague and...and resent him, in part because Teague was so damn perfect he hadn’t slept with her when he’d had the chance?
Up came his hands, fingers rubbing at his forehead.
It was going to be a struggle to live with Romy in this tiny place for two weeks. She’d complained about noises through their old thin walls, but she’d hear his thoughts ticking in this apartment—and his thoughts were far from celibate. God help him if she came into this room, because there was barely room for the two of them to stand. He could probably cross it in three strides.
He took one long step past the single bed to test that theory, another, stretched his arms out and up and...stopped, mid-third-stride, because his hand had hit something.
He looked up and saw the mobile hanging from the ceiling—silver-and-white stars.
With a sense of foreboding, he turned a slow circle, taking in the freshly painted walls—a silvery gray with a scatter of white stars on one wall, the small rug on the floor with the same white stars on a gray background, a new white bureau against one wall.
Bump-bump-thump went his heart.
Because he was standing in the nursery.
He’d be sleeping in his baby’s room.
He looked around the room again, soaking in the details. Typical of Romy to have the interior decorating under way before she was pregnant. Not that there was a lot to see other than the paint scheme and the star/moon theme. A lamp sitting on his bedside table—a full moon—was clearly intended for the baby. And the bureau, in white—that had baby clothes written all over it.
Curious, he went over to it and opened the top drawer. “Oh!” he breathed, as he saw the cache of tiny garments.
He lifted out a minuscule white cardigan, raised it to his face, rubbed the wool against his cheek. Soft as a cloud.
One by one, he opened the drawers, taking out all the other perfect things, holding them to his face, inhaling their pure scent. Three sleeper suits. Two pairs of knitted booties. A cap in white wool that matched the cardigan. Baby vests and leggings and tops. Wraps and rugs, a small fluffy towel. The tininess of each item as he carefully placed each item back in its spot squeezed his heart until he felt like it had been pushed up into his throat.
When only the little white cardigan remained, held against his chest, Romy knocked on the door. “Matt?” she asked. “Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes if you want to grab a shower.”
He couldn’t speak.
“Matthew?”
He took a moment to reel everything back in, hand rubbing his throat to ease the choking sensation there, and then forced out a “Got it.”
Pause. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. Because he was fine. Just fine.
If you didn’t count that stinging at the back of his nose and the longing to tuck that tiny white cardigan under his T-shirt, right against his still-throbbing heart.