When he paused, Sable took a moment before speaking. For she felt, right to the very marrow, that she was a breath away from feeling the first true spark of her dream coming true and she didn’t want to ruin it.
“What are you saying exactly?”
“If we do this, we do it together.”
A sudden vision filled her head of them “doing it together”, making her mouth go dry, and her palms turn damp. “Mmm?”
The edge of his mouth flickered. “Not like that,” he said, his voice rough and raw.
Then something flashed over his face that made her wonder if he was imagining the same thing she just had after all.
“I won’t walk away, Sutton. I would have to be involved.”
“Oh,” she said, when she meant, No, no, no, no, no.
This wasn’t part of the plan! The whole point was, she was doing this on her own. She was finally claiming agency over her life.
She should have known he wasn’t the kind of man who would simply walk away.
You did know, a little voice piped up in the far reaches of her subconscious. A little voice that sounded far too smug. She could all but hear it clapping happily at this turn of events.
She shook it off. She couldn’t possibly have been sure of anything after all this time.
Except him. You were always sure of him.
She pushed the voice deep, deep down inside and said, “Involved?”
“I can’t imagine having a child in the world knowing I chose to be uninvolved.” A pause, then, “I know what it feels like to be that kid, Sutton. And so do you.”
Sable blinked so hard she had to stop in order to disentangle her lashes. “Then again it was the parents who stuck with us who made our childhoods harder still.”
She let that sit for a beat.
“Kids are clever. They know when a parent is there under protest. But I won’t be that parent. I’ll be the mum who loves their kid so deeply they never doubt it. Who shows them and tells them, every single day, how wanted they are. How important. How loved. You know I have that in me, Rafe. You know how it feels to be loved by me.”
Oh, God... She heard the words before she could stop them. Saw the heat and the hurt ravage his gorgeous face.
“My point is, if a child is seen, heard, guided, understood, and wanted so patently, surely it doesn’t matter if they have one parent, or ten?”
Rafe’s gaze was hard on hers as he listened. Really listened. No dismissing her, or deciding instantly that his opinion mattered more. Considering the myriad people she’d had to deal with in her life who did the opposite, it was a hell of a thing. And while bigger things were at stake here, she found another piece of herself falling into his hands.
“What was it you said the other day?” she said. “That romantic vision you had of me heading out into the world and—how did you put it?—demanding more. Well, the truth is, until the past few months I’d demanded very little for myself. It was all so foreign, so fast, so lonely—I went along with anything offered. So, this is me demanding more. Demanding I do this on my own.”
Her final words were super husky. But what could she do? There was no hiding this was fraught. No hiding this was emotional. That they were both on the verge of something life-changing.
“And this is me, demanding that if we do this, we do it together. You don’t get to disappear this time. You don’t cut me out.”
The word again hovered in the tense air between them.
She’d come with a plan, with bullet points, and preparedness. And oodles of rediscovered hope. Her expectations higher than any sane person had the right to feel. Now she wavered between panic and possibility. Disappointment and utter joy.
Rafe was offering up her dream. With addenda.
The next step, the next yes—or no—was up to her.
“So what do you say?” said Rafe, his voice wry. “Initial thoughts are fine.”
Sable breathed out a laugh as Rafe tossed her the line she’d already used once on him.
And she said, “Yes. It’s a yes. Yes, please. And thank you. And, oh, my God, I can’t believe this is actually happening!”
“You’re telling me.”
Sable laughed again. “I imagined this moment so many times, certain I’d be leaping for joy. But instead I feel like I might never stop shaking. This is a big thing, Rafe.”
“About as big as things get. Shaking is smart. Parenthood should be humbling.”
“Humbling.” He was right. Right and good and strong and generous. She couldn’t wait to see how all that translated into a brand-new little person in the world. “Can you imagine? A girl with your eyelashes?”
“A girl with your terrible sense of direction.”
“Yikes. A boy with your sense of justice.”
“A boy with your terrible sense of direction.”
She grinned. He grinned back. And she felt it. Like that arrow on her wrist, right through the chest.
Rafe reached out, found her fingers and entwined them with his. Then used them to draw her in. And she went to him. For it felt right, as right as any part of this plan, that they should seal their bargain on a single sweet kiss.
When she pulled away, he had a look in his eye that had her all but ready to ask why the hell they needed doctors. They knew how to make babies the old-fashioned way.
But her reach for independence, for autonomy, her determination to hold true to herself, could not waver.
Yet here they were. Holding hands and gazing into one another’s eyes.
She cleared her throat, took back her hand. And remembered she was sitting inside the car he’d spent years building. For her. It
