“Of course I will. You’re coming with me to tell Pops.”
“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled, but… I don’t know. I think I’m going to wait until we hit the twelve-week mark to tell her.”
“Okay,” Zoe said. She walked to the coat rack by the door and slipped into her denim jacket, checking that her wallet was still in the pocket. “It’s been hard enough waiting until I told you before telling Pops, but I wanted to, you know, have some sort of plan first. I’ve never been able to keep anything from him.”
“He probably already knows,” Evan said, popping up from the table and swapping places with Ryder to tidy the kitchen. “Unless he thinks you’ve been avoiding him because he knows that you know that he doesn’t like Raphe.”
Ryder stilled and bit down on the inside of his cheek. “Why doesn’t he like Raphe?”
Zoe fired a gnarly glare at her brother to keep his trap shut.
Evan shrugged innocently and nodded back at Zoe to answer.
“Many reasons, I am sure, but it doesn’t help that Raphe doesn’t like football.”
Ryder bit his lips together and choked a laugh.
“What?”
“I, um… I’m not saying I don’tlikefootball…”
Zoe’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened.
Across the kitchen, Evan started humming a deathly dirge. Or maybe it was Darth Vader’s dirgy theme song. Wow, she was not a classical music buff. Raphe would be so disappointed that she didn’t know the difference.
“Don’t tell my dad you don’t like football,” Zoe said, an evil laugh rising in her belly.
“I had to hate it because Grady liked it. I warned you my siblings and I had very different relationships growing up than yours. I played soccer,” he said, as if that explained it. “With Raphe, actually.”
“Oh shit. I accidentally reproduced with a soccer player,” Zoe said with a dark sense of dread, shaking her head as she opened the front door. “We can only hope Pops will love the baby anyway.”
Inthedriveway,outsideof a cozy, middle class family home, Ryder sat frozen in the passenger seat and tried to remember how to breathe. In and out, right? It was a normal human process.
Just like having babies. An entirely normal, natural process.
Fuck. He was so fucked. How in the hell could such a very adult activity lead to the creation of a child? Nature had a sick sense of humor.
Skin paling and his head tingling, Ryder rubbed his face to bring himself back to the present.
“Are you okay?” Zoe said, dropping her hands from the wheel and shifting the truck into park. “I was kidding about the soccer player thing.”
“I know,” Ryder said, the laugh stimulating the ability to breathe again. Voice markedly higher and less present than he had anticipated, Ryder said, “How long did it take for you to accept that this was really, really happening?”
She reached across and thumbed his chin. “I’ll let you know when I get there. If it helps, the nausea is a great reminder that there’s a parasite in my uterus.”
“I could easily vomit right now,” he answered. “But that’s probably just the panic attack brewing.”
“Oh my gosh,” Zoe said dramatically, and turned in her seat to face him. “Ryder Mallory has real human emotions?”
“All of them… all at once, apparently,” he said, turning and leaning into the seat as he faced her.
“Do me a favor?” Zoe asked sweetly.
“Anything,” Ryder whispered, his expression softening and breath flowing in and out as she melted him with milky chocolate eyes.
“Be this guy when we tell my dad.”
“What guy?”
