My heart gave a sudden lurch. “We will?”
“Sure. But not right now,” he added gently, because of course he had to say that. “It’ll be soon, I promise. Let’s just not do it right before a business dinner with Hal. We’re talking about a man whose emotional range starts at ‘quarterly gains’ and ends at ‘buy low.’”
“Soon is good,” I said with a nod, cool as a cucumber… a cucumber that was about to be diced into a salad. “Soon is fine. I can do soon.”
Cal raised an eyebrow but kissed me again, this time quicker, firmer, like sealing a deal. Then he turned toward the bathroom, unbuttoning his shirt as he walked.
“Wear something nice tonight,” he called over his shoulder. “Per Seis kinda fancy.”
“Fancy? Hell, fancy is my bag,” I replied, before mumbling tomyself. “It’s right up there with emotional instability and trying to cope with rejection letters from publishers like they were hand-written by Satan himself.”
I wandered into the bedroom, trying to pull myself together while figuring out what to wear. “God, am I really going to have to put on pants without elastic?” I asked myself before sighing, already knowing the answer.
Anxiously I stepped into our mansion of a walk-in closet, staring at my reflection in the mirrored doors.
I looked ridiculous. Puffy-eyed. Disheveled. With a nervous tick in the soul. And under it all was this quiet ache I hadn’t been able to put into words. I’d thought maybe I was just being needy or hormonal or overly influenced by Instagram reels of single dads bottle-feeding twins to the soundtrack of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow.” But no, it was more than that. It was something rooted. Ancient. Caveman-deep.
I wanted to be a dad.
I wanted to see Cal hold a tiny human and panic about whether he was cradling the baby’s neck just right. I wanted spit-up on my shirt and hand-drawn cards on the fridge. I wanted a secondhand rocking chair that had swayed generations of children to sleep, just so I could doze off with a little person resting peacefully against my chest, listening to my heartbeat, the pair of us rocking ourselves into a weary, blissful slumber.
But what if Cal didn’t want that?
What if he loved our life exactly as it was—quiet penthouse, luxury travel, spontaneous sex on very expensive countertops from Milan—and I was about to blow it all up with my big baby-shaped dream?
From the master bathroom, I heard the water start up, followed by Cal’s voice through the steam.
“Hey babe, can you please pick a tie for me? Something that says I’m professional but still edgy enough to take risks.”
I padded over and peeked into the bathroom, just so I didn’t have to shout back. And also… just for the chance to peek.
He was in the shower, head tipped back under the cascade, eyes closed, water tracing the long lines of his back, his ass, his everything. Steam swirled around him like a Greek myth in progress.
My stomach did a slow somersault.
It was one thing to be clucky. It was another thing to be cluckyanddeeply attracted to my husband while he casually stood there like an apology from the universe for everything that had ever gone wrong in my life.
God, how I loved him. In that messy, sacred, impossible-to-unlove way. He was kind and funny and smart and…oof, built. Yeah, he was maddeningly hot. And he was all mine.
“Matt?” he suddenly asked, still not looking. “Are you standing there watching me? You know I have a superhuman Spidey-sense every time you walk into a room.”
“You’ve got a superhumansomething,” I muttered, watching the tight buns of his ass flex and move.
“I heard that. Youarethere.” He washed shampoo out of his eyes and grinned. “So pervy.”
“Am not,” I said defensively. “I’m just… you know… appreciating you. Like, artistically.”
He chuckled, a low warm sound that made my knees weak.
“Babe, you know I love it when you get allPeeping Tomon me. Makes me downright horny and you know it. But we’re going to be late at this rate. Now go pick a tie. You can seduce me after dinner. I’ll even let you choose the playlist.”
“Yes!” I said with a fist pump. “Babs it is.”
I hurried back to the walk-in closet to do exactly as instructed. I opened his tie drawer, pushed a few neatly rolled ties aside…
And suddenly my hand froze.
There, at the back of the drawer, was a glossy brochure.
