Page 51

Twenty-six
Conner
Okay. So, this is real.
Henley is here. I’m wide awake and not so whacked out of my fucking mind that I’m hallucinating.
No, she’s really here. I can hear her moving around in my kitchen, on the other side of the wall.
Which, considering what just happened, should be freaking me out.
No oral.
No kissing.
No bareback.
No repeats.
Those are my rules.
She’s the reason you made them in the first place. Stands to reason she’s the one you’d break them for.
But thinking about it, even now, I can’t seem to work up anything past mild curiosity.
I want to ask her if she’s on birth control. Not because I’m worried, but because I want to know if it’s possible. I want to look at her and know that I might’ve gotten her pregnant.
By all rights, I should be dragging her down to the pharmacy and figuring out our post slip-up options. There are ways to fix it.
That’s not what I want to do, though. The only place I want to drag her to is my bed and the only thing I want to do is fuck her some more, so I can come inside her all over again.
Which pretty much makes me the biggest asshole that ever lived. I’m the one with the experience. I’m the one who should know better. Instead of protecting her, I’m standing here thinking about what she would look like with my kid in her belly.
Fuck me.
I’m the last person who should be thinking about having a kid. Cap’n, sure. He’d make a great dad. Hell, even Declan would be better at raising a kid than me. He may be a raging fuckstain but at least he’s normal. Me? What do I have to offer a kid? A grease pit that’s barely braking even and a better than average chance of inheriting my fucked-up brain. What could I teach them? How to get a girl to drop her panties in thirty seconds flat or the finer points of pretending to be a real, live boy?
That’d make me Father of the Year, for sure.
Giving myself a quick rubdown, I throw a towel around my waist and step into the hallway. I can see her from here, standing at the kitchen counter, making sandwiches with the groceries she brought with her.
She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else, the hem of it skimming the top of her bare knees. Her hair is drying frizzy around her freckled face—probably because she used my cheap shampoo and has no choice but to let it air dry.
She looks so goddamned good—so real—that for a moment I can’t make a sound. Move a muscle. Don’t want to because I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want her to disappear again. But I can’t just stand here and stare at her for fuck’s sake, so I clear my throat and try.
“Hey.”
As soon as she hears me, she reaches up and touches her hair. It makes me wonder what kind of shampoo she uses. Where I can buy it. If I can even afford it.
“I hope you still like chicken salad,” she says, shooting me a quick smile, her gaze drawn to the tattoo on my chest. The one on my neck. My arm. “Mine is nowhere as good as your mom’s, but—”
“Look…” I scrub a hand through my damp hair, careful of the place where I brained myself with a car hood while I try not to squirm like a worm on a hook. I don’t want her to look at them. At me. For a split second, I feel exposed. Torn open. “We need to talk about what happened.” I cock my head toward the bathroom. “In there.”
“What about it?” she says, trying to sound casual but the full-body flush that erupts over her skin says something else.
“I didn’t use a condom.” I drop my hand, letting it flop against my thigh, my gaze drifting past her to settle on the heavy-duty magnet I use to secure my collection of take-out menus to the side of the fridge. “I’m clean. I got tested again a few weeks ago, just to be sure, but I should’ve—”
She laughs. “You already said that.”