Page 31 of Reluctantly Ever After (The Oops Baby Club #2)

I've always been a possessive bastard, but there's something about watching Wren sleep in my bed that makes me want to build walls around this house just to keep her from ever walking away.

Pink hair spills across my pillow and I can't imagine it any other way.

She's colonized my space—stealing my shirts, my sweatshirts, my socks, and pieces of my sanity every time she bends over in front of me.

I catch myself staring at her, memorizing details like they might disappear: the dip at her waist, the small sigh she makes before fully waking up, how she unconsciously rubs her stomach in her sleep.

I'm falling for her so hard and fast it scares the living shit out of me.

The moonlight filters through the blinds, casting silver stripes across her bare shoulders.

She's curled on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek and the other resting on the swell of her stomach where our son grows bigger and stronger every day.

I can't stop staring at her, memorizing the scatter of freckles across her shoulders that you'd never notice unless you were close enough to count them.

I've counted all nineteen of them.

I should be sleeping. It's almost two in the morning, and I've got shit to do tomorrow. But sleep feels like a waste when I could be watching her instead.

Carefully, so I don't wake her, I slip out of bed and pad down the hall to my office.

The sketchbook I keep hidden in the bottom drawer calls to me.

It's where I put the things that matter most—beer label designs that are too stupid or off the wall to share but have sentimental value, drawings that reveal more of me than I'm comfortable showing to anyone.

I flip through pages of half-finished sketches.

There’s beer shit, sure, but also the vintage Harley I've been planning to restore, designs for a custom crib I want to build in my workshop downstairs, and stupid little cartoons of Clover with Noble that I text her whenever she sounds stressed on the phone.

Then I find what I've been working on for weeks now. It's not for any beer we currently brew. It's my own project—a special batch I want to release when our son is born. My own way of marking the day everything changes.

The label doesn't have Timber's usual look.

I've designed something different. It’s a simple silhouette of pine trees against a night sky that lightens at the horizon.

There's a constellation mapped out among the stars, the same one on Wren’s shoulder scattered in freckles.

At the top, I've lettered "Dawn Breaker IPA" with smaller text beneath: "Crafted for the newest James. "

It's understated, nothing overtly about babies, but it still means something.

The trees represent legacy, something passed down, something that outlasts us.

The stars are a reminder of her, of something uniquely hers that only I would recognize.

And the name, it's about endings and beginnings, about the light that comes after darkness.

Our kid will break the dawn on whatever the hell comes next.

Fuck, it's sentimental garbage. The kind of soft shit I'd never put in our regular lineup. But every time I try to scrap it and start over with something edgier, I keep coming back to this design. It says things I don't know how to say out loud.

I add more detail to the stars, my pencil moving while my brain churns through the mess of my life.

How did this happen? Four months ago, I was hunched over divorce papers for a woman who drove me fucking insane.

Now I wake up every morning with her pink hair in my mouth, and the thought of her not being here makes my chest feel like I took a sledgehammer to the ribs.

A soft sound from the doorway makes me look up. Wren stands there in nothing but my t-shirt, hair a mess from sleep, eyes sleepy. Those long legs go on for miles, and my dick immediately perks up at the sight.

"What are you doing?" she asks, her voice husky from sleep.

I close the sketchbook quickly. "Couldn't sleep."

She tilts her head and her hair falls across one eye before she tucks it behind her ear. "So you were drawing?"

"Something like that." I set the book aside and push back from the desk, opening my arms to her. "Everything okay?"

Instead of answering, she crosses the room and settles onto my lap, her legs straddling mine in the chair. My hands automatically find her hips.

"I woke up and you weren't there." She loops her arms around my neck, fingers playing with the hair at the back of my neck. "I got cold."

"Can't have that." I pull her closer. Having her this close does things to me—makes me stupid, makes me soft in ways I never thought I could be. "Better?"

"Mmm." She nuzzles into my neck, and I feel her lips curve into a smile against my skin. "Much."

We sit like that for a minute or ten, her weight settled comfortably against me, her breath warm on my throat. It feels goddamn perfect, like she was made to fit against me.

We’re also both ignoring my half-hard dick that’s trying to join the party between us.

"Kasen?" She pulls back just enough to meet my eyes.

"Yeah?"

"I need something."

The way she says it, with that little catch in her voice, tells me exactly what she needs. I've learned to read her these past weeks—learned what every sigh, every shift of her body means.

"What do you need, Pink?" I slide my hands under her shirt, up the warm skin of her back.

"Pickles," she says, completely straight-faced. "The garlic dill ones. With chocolate syrup. And cheese puffs crushed on top."

I blink at her. "You're kidding me."

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" She raises one eyebrow in that way that makes me want to kiss the brat out of her until neither of us can breathe. "Your child is apparently a culinary terrorist, and he wants pickles with chocolate syrup. And cheese puffs. Can’t forget those."

I can't help but laugh, the sound rumbling up from my chest. "A culinary terrorist? Jesus, Pink."

"This isn't funny, James." But she's fighting a smile now. "I'm dead serious. I need this disgusting concoction or I will actually die."

"Dramatic much?" I squeeze her hips. "Why do these cravings always hit in the middle of the night?"

"Because your son is an asshole who hates sleep. Just like his father."

"Hey." I steal a quick kiss. "I thought we established that you like his father. A lot."

She rolls her eyes. "His father is acceptable. When he brings me food."

"Only acceptable?" I slide my hand up to cup her tit, gratified when her breath hitches. "That's not what you said last night when I had my head between your?—"

"Pickles, Kasen." She cuts me off, but her pupils are blown, her cheeks flushed. "Focus."

With a dramatic sigh, I lift her off my lap and set her on her feet, smirking when her eyes drop to where I’m adjusting my dick. "Fine. Garlic dill pickles, chocolate syrup, and cheese puffs. Anything else, Your Highness?"

She pretends to think about it. "Maybe some of that strawberry ice cream? The one with the chunks of actual strawberries?"

"You hate strawberry ice cream."

"I know." She grimaces. "But apparently your spawn doesn't. I've been thinking about it all day."

I shake my head, moving to the bedroom and pulling on jeans and grabbing a hoodie from the back of the door. "The things I do for you."

She catches my arm as I'm about to leave, rising on her tiptoes to press her lips to mine in a kiss that's equal parts gratitude and promise. "Thank you," she whispers against my mouth.

Fuck, the things she does to me. And not just my body, my goddamn heart. "Anything for you, Pink. You know that."

And the crazy thing is, I mean it. I'd drive across the state in the middle of rush hour if she asked. I'd probably drive across the country. I blame it on my need to make her happy.

The night air is cool against my face as I slide into my truck. The streets are empty. It's peaceful in a way Portland rarely is during the day.

As I drive, I think about how these midnight food runs have become a strange highlight of my days. There's something about doing this for her, about being the one she turns to when she needs something, that feels right in a bone-deep way I've never experienced before.

My hand drifts to my pocket, fingers brushing against the metal ring I still carry everywhere. I should probably get around to putting it on my finger one of these days, since this marriage is looking less and less like something we're going to dissolve.

The twenty-four-hour market is a fluorescent-lit oasis in the dark. The cashier barely looks up when I walk in. At this point he’s probably used to seeing me on bizarre food missions.

I grab a basket and head straight for the pickle aisle, then the ice cream section, moving with the efficiency of someone who's done this too many times in recent weeks. The chocolate syrup takes a minute to find, and I grab the cheese puffs last.

Standing in the checkout line, basket filled with the strangest combination of foods imaginable, I catch my reflection in the security mirror in the corner.

I'm smiling like an idiot, and I look... happy. Actually fucking happy, at two thirty in the morning, buying pickles and chocolate syrup for a woman who I used to want to launch into outer space so I wouldn’t have to deal with her.

Life's fucking hilarious.

The drive home feels quicker, anticipation building as I picture the smile that's going to light up Wren's face when I walk in with her disgusting snack. She gives them to me so often now I’ve stopped counting.

I'm turning into one of those guys who gets off on making his pregnant wife happy.

Banks and Reed would give me endless shit if they knew how soft I am for her.

Then again, Banks is the same way with my sister, and if he wasn’t, I’d kick his ass.