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“Have you heard from Matty and Josh?”

I shook my head. My brothers were having a hard time coming around to the idea that their baby sister was having a baby of her own.

I had only seen Matty at dinner the night I’d told him, then his friends had arrived the next morning and I’d come back up to New York with Radley.

Josh had texted me congratulations, but given his messages were usually flooded with emojis and this was blank, I had to assume he was as pissed as Matty.

“I don’t know what bothers them more, that I’ve had sex or that I’ve had sex with a baseball player who doesn’t play for their team.”

“Yeah, you remember Henry and Ben had a hard time with that when I started dating Lux.” She replied, mentioning her brothers. “Boys are so dumb.”

“They are. But because my dad isn’t around anymore, they think they have to take on his role, so I’m giving them a grace period.”

“I can’t wait to see what happens when it’s over.” A smirk curved her lip before she singsonged, “ Ass kicking .”

I chuckled in response, and we made our way along the winding path lined with thick, tall oak trees heading toward the far side of the park, where we’d exit and cross into Central Park.

Aside from the freak lightning storm a couple of months ago, the summer had been mostly dry and the leaves were already starting to crisp around the edges.

Come fall, this place would be a blanket of pinks, yellows, reds, and oranges.

“Oh look.” Radley pointed. “There’s daddy .”

My gaze followed the direction of her finger.

The Upper West Side, around Columbia and Morningside Heights, was New York Lions territory, and woe betide if you should forget, but just in case you did, there were plenty of reminders.

Radley and I hadn’t been in New York for last year’s baseball season; we arrived just before the playoffs and therefore hadn’t really noticed the massive marketing campaign that the Lions undertook every year.

I’d been too busy staring at the trees to notice the lampposts positioned twenty yards apart, and from each one hung a large flag. And on each flag was a player from the current New York Lions roster.

Just like the boardwalk by Lions Stadium, where life-sized posters of each player were plastered across the hoardings, flags hung from any and all available space you could hang a flag, including the Morningside Park lampposts it seemed.

It had gotten to the point where I barely noticed them anymore—the flags or the players.

There were enough of the Columbia school flags around campus that one kind of merged into another, but these ones I was now standing under were almost impossible to miss.

While most of the flags held the Lions logo along with a full body image of one of the players—sometimes posing, sometimes captured mid-swing—these featured a close-up of a player’s face, peering down at you as you passed underneath.

I glanced behind me; we’d passed the great Jupiter Reeves, the Lions’ third baseman; Parker King, the catcher; we were standing underneath Ace Watson, the pitcher, and the next flag up was Tanner’s.

His piercing blue eyes stared right at me. It was all I could see. It was so intense and hypnotic, I swear I could feel it in every square inch of my body. I’d been subjected to that stare before, and we all know how that ended. Before I realized what I was doing, my hand found my belly.

I managed to tear my gaze away from Tanner to glare at Radley. “Don’t call him that.”

“Why not, he is?”

“Yeah, but don’t say it in that way, all breathy and heavy. Daddy. It sounds like we’re in a sex shop.”

“Ooh, Daddy .” She cackled so hard it turned into a snort. “Yeah, I can totally picture Tanner in a sex shop asking for someone to spank him.”

It was exactly the sort of thing I’d have laughed at two months ago; I probably did .

Except it kind of wasn’t quite so funny, seeing as I was now pregnant with Tanner’s baby, and for the millionth time in two days, I was reminded of the day I’d thrown him out.

The idea that I’d become one of many who’d also fallen for the intense, hypnotic stare sat as well with me then as it did now.

It was how he got them, how he’d gotten me.

Now I was a cliché.

A pregnant cliché nonetheless, but still a cliché. And the thought of him with anyone else the way he’d been with me was churning in my belly.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

Since the day I’d met Tanner, and he’d begun his chase of me, Radley and I had never talked about it beyond being a joke.

Because Tanner was Tanner . The reasons I’d kicked him out were exactly all the same reasons why Radley could imagine him in a sex shop asking to be spanked.

It was the guy I’d had sex with when he’d made me beg, or ask me to squeeze his cock .

The experienced guy who somehow knew his way around my body better than I did.

He was not the guy I’d come to know. The one who held me while I cried, or came to my appointments and sent me chocolate brownies.

In between the very brief moments when I hadn’t been hurling my guts up the past few days, my mind kept revisiting the conversation we had after my appointment. Though conversation wasn’t the right word, seeing as it had been one-sided.

Now my brain was unfogging from the morning sickness, I realized the look he’d given me when he’d accused me of lying, in a roundabout way, was exactly the look he’d thrown at me as he’d left my dorm.

That I was full of shit. That I didn’t think we were a mistake, even though my life was upside down because of it.

I couldn’t deny there wasn’t an element of truth in his words. Nor could I say I wasn’t curious to see how he’d prove himself to me, as he seemed hell-bent on doing.

“You know you said you’d never seen Tanner with a girl?”

Radley nodded. “Yeah?”

“Do you mean, like, ever? You’ve never ever seen him with another girl.”

She paused and sat down on a bench we’d stopped by, then slowly shook her head.

“No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with another girl.

When Lux and I got together last year, Ace was the only one with a girlfriend, and Parker was already hung up on Scout.

And the only other girl I’ve ever spent time with in the apartment is Holiday. ”

“Had Lux ever mentioned anything? ”

“About Tanner?”

I nodded. “About him with other girls.”

“No, I can ask if anything’s happened on their away series, but if they’re anything like Lux, they’re too tired after a game. Why are you asking?”

My cheeks puffed out a sigh. “I don’t know. We had a bit of a weird moment the other day.”

“Like what?”

Sitting back on the bench, I puffed out my cheeks and replayed our conversation, up to the point where Tanner declared his intentions to make sure we became an us.

“Wow,” she said eventually. “How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know.” I waved to my belly. “I kind of have a lot on. But he seemed sincere about proving I wasn’t just another girl. I guess I wanted to check he’s telling the truth. He thinks we have something.”

“And what do you think?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. You know I’m not looking for a relationship, I wasn’t when we had sex. It was a momentary lapse in judgment.”

“Was it good?”

My teeth sunk into my lower lip and my brow raised as I looked at her.

“ That good?”

“Yeah. And it’s clouding my judgment. Right now he’s teetering on the edge of not being totally annoying to me. It’s probably the hormones messing with my head. I’m still trying to wrap it around the fact I slept with him in the first place. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Sure, of course it doesn’t.”

“And it’s normal that I don’t hate the fact he’s not with other girls, right?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“That’s what I thought.” I stood up, ignoring the way Radley was staring at me, just like Tanner did. That I was full of shit, I just couldn’t quite admit it. “Come on, we have pregnancy books to buy.”

As we walked off, I didn’t dare turn around for one last glance, because who knows what that would have done to my brain. It was enough that I was pregnant with his baby. I wasn’t about to start developing feelings too.