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If anything, her reasons for not tumbling head over heels for Aaron had just multiplied. This wasn’t some guy she could avoid after things fell apart.
He was the father of her future child.
She couldn’t just keep shutting him out, though. He was right about that. There had to be some kind of compromise that got them through this with the least amount of strife. That compromise probably doesn’t include amazing sex and screaming his name. Way to muddy the waters. She silenced the snide little voice inside her. There would be plenty of time for self-recrimination on her seventh run to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
She finished her pancakes and sat back. “Did you want kids? I mean, if life played out according to your perfect plan.”
“What makes you think I have a perfect plan?”
Becka rolled her eyes. “I pay attention, that’s what. I think you’re even more type-A than Allie and Lucy—combined. That’s saying something.”
He made a face. “Guilty as charged. Though I only ever really had a plan for my professional life. I’ve known I wanted to work in cybersecurity since I was in high school, and it only took my first internship in college to solidify that I wanted to work for myself and own my own business. That goal kept me busy enough that the personal stuff was always being pushed to the back burner. And the last time I agreed to a date, my prospective date ran off with the matchmaker.”
His date, her sister.
It hurt to think about, but he and Lucy might have fit. They were both ambitious and driven and more than a little pretty. Lucy and Gideon were perfectly matched, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that Gideon had thought Aaron was a good match for Lucy when he compiled his list of bachelors. That was back when Lucy had hired the headhunter to find her a husband—a position Gideon ended up filling in the end.
Becka couldn’t be more different from her sister if she’d tried. She was driven, sure, but her dreams had never been to make partner in some law firm or to own her own business. All she wanted to do was live her life to the fullest, to do what she loved and make enough money to pay her bills and travel to places she’d never been before.
Hard to travel with a baby.
She took a hasty drink of her orange juice, aware of how closely Aaron watched her. “That’s nice.”
“Uh-huh. To answer your question—yeah, I want kids. I always have. My sisters might have been aggravating to grow up with, but we’re pretty close now, and there’s something comforting about the chaos of a home filled with a family.”
She wouldn’t know anything about that. Becka’s parents had divorced early on, and her mother had always been more concerned with her agenda than with her daughters. When Becka was bullied, it wasn’t her mother she ran to. It was Lucy. Her sister had started filling that parental role from an early age, and she’d never quite stopped.
She still remembered the moment when she realized she was more like her mother than she’d ever be like her sister. Becka was fourteen and had been going on about some drama that she didn’t even recall now, years later, and thirty minutes into her bitchfest she’d realized that Lucy was upset—had been upset through the entire conversation while Becka went on and on about her petty problem.
It turned out, Lucy hadn’t gotten into the school she’d pinned her hopes and dreams on and was crushed.
And Becka hadn’t even noticed.
She’d promised herself right then and there that she wouldn’t walk their mother’s path. She wouldn’t keep being a burden on her sister the same way their mother was. She’d be independent and strong and take care of her own problems.
A promise she’d mostly kept over the years. Sure, Becka developed a wild streak in college that never quite went away, and she knew her sister worried sometimes about her resistance to the idea of settling down, but those were small sins compared to the kind they’d grown up witnessing.
At least... they had been small sins.
Until now.
She shook her head, suddenly aware that Aaron was looking at her like he expected some kind of answer. “I’m sorry, I missed what you just said.”
“I asked you if you had ever wanted kids.”
She pushed to her feet. “No. I never wanted kids.”
Aaron watched Becka walk away with her shoulders bowed, looking like someone had just kicked her puppy. Things had been going well. Better than well. They’d been going good. She’d teased him a little, the sex had been outstanding and they’d managed to share a meal and half a conversation.
It’s possible you need to set the bar for “well” a little higher.
He wanted to chase her down, to try to talk her into telling him what put that haunted look on her face. It was more than not wanting children. Even as the words came out of her mouth, she looked conflicted, as if it wasn’t quite the full truth. She wanted kids. She wouldn’t have gone forward with the pregnancy otherwise.
Which meant there was something holding her back, some reason she thought she shouldn’t want kids.
He could call Lucy, but that meant letting her in on the fact that Becka was pregnant, and if Becka didn’t want her sister to know yet, it wasn’t his place to share that information. He’d threatened to, of course, but what had been said in anger and frustration before would be a betrayal of trust now. No, that wasn’t an option.
Not to mention, he wanted Becka to trust him enough to let him in and let them both get to know each other. He couldn’t do that if he kept fumbling shit so thoroughly.
