Page 132 of The Renegade Billionaire

“Okay. We don’t need anything.” She opens her mouth to say more, but I lean down and kiss her before she can.

“I’ll be right back.”

“She’ll be fine.” Savvy looks to me with a little bit of wonder in her eyes. “Labor can take hours and hours. We’ll be right here.”

Hours? Really? Sage was born so quickly, I never stopped to ask if it was normal. Nothing about his birth was normal.

My head is a cloudy mess as I exit the hospital and find a bench to sit on, and an image of Madison with a large round belly nearly knocks me onto it.

I don’t want kids. Do I? Does Madison? Is it too early for those kinds of thoughts?

What if she does want babies? Could I handle her being pregnant?

Grey’s phone vibrates in my hand, and my mother’s name flashes on the screen. Pushing everything to the back of my mind, I answer her call.

30

MADISON

It’safter one in the morning before I make it home from the Chug, so I’m not expecting anyone to be up. But as soon as I open the door, Braxton sits upright on the sofa. His hair is sleep mussed, and he has lines on the side of his face from the pillow he was using.

“Hey.” His voice is gruff, tired—he’s been this way since we left the hospital a few days ago.

“What are you doing down here?”

“It’s late.” He looks at the clock on the wall. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. If you weren’t home by eleven, I was going to head down to the Chug to wait for you.”

Dropping my bag by the front door, I feel my shoulders relax as he crosses the room. “I’m a big girl, Braxton. I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“I thought you were going to cut back since I rented all those rooms.”

How do I tell him I’m planning for the future—a future I’m not certain he’ll be around for?

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he pleads. His hands wrap around me and tug me into his chest. He smells of home, and safety, and all the things I shouldn’t want from a man.

“Right now, I have a buffer,” I admit. “But what happens in March? What happens next summer or next year? You never know what the future holds, I know that better than anyone, so I have to prepare for a time when I don’t have…”

The truth is, ever since I held Elle’s beautiful baby girl, Keela, in my arms, my own future has felt more fragile than I expected.

“When you don’t have what?” He runs his hand in soothing motions up and down my spine.

You. When I don’t have you.I wish I could say that. I wish I could tell him every fear in my head, but my fears have been used against me before, and I vowed to never put myself in that position again.

“When I don’t have that buffer,” I say instead.

He doesn’t respond with words. But he takes me by the hand and leads me up the stairs and into my room. When he flips on the light, it takes a moment to adjust to the brightness, but when I blink the room into focus, my heart pinches. It’s not only my room anymore—it’s ours.

His sweatshirt is draped over the back of my chair, and the dress shoes he arrived in are lined up next to all the heels I hardly ever wear. There’s an indent I know smells of him on the pillow on his side of the bed, and a laundry basket that contains both of our clothes.

Braxton shuts the door, then spins us so my back is to it. One hand cups my face as he kisses the side of my neck.

“Explain your buffer to me, sunshine.”

It’s hard to think when his lips and tongue dance across the pulse in my neck.

“We, ah, we don’t know what the future holds.”

His fingers work the buttons on the front of my blouse. “You see, to me, that sounds an awful lot like you’re worried about what happens when my time is up here.”