“What are you saying, Jasmine?” I asked. “Are you saying you want to get pregnant?”
“I’m saying… I already am.”
“You…” I shook my head, speechless, and then my hands traveled from where they held her waist to wrap around her stomach. It was still smooth and toned and impossibly flat.
And yet, it wouldn’t be soon.
Everything caught up to me in one crash of emotions, my eyes welling with tears as I pulled her into my chest, hugging her tight, kissing her hair over and over again.
“You’re pregnant,” I whispered, shaking my head. “We’re having a baby.”
“We are,” she said, and her own eyes were blurred with tears when she pulled back and searched my gaze. “Are you okay?”
“Are you fucking kidding? I’m ecstatic.” I reared back, yelling as loud as I could. “We’re having a baby!”
My voice boomed and echoed off the water, and I thought I heard distant claps from the bungalows around us. Jasmine just laughed and shook her head, burying her face in my chest before she peered up at me through wet eyelashes.
“Wait,” I said, pointing to her drink at the pool’s edge.
“Virgin,” she assured me.
“Thank God. I was about to go full dad mode before I’m even a dad.”
Jasmine watched me in a curious way, shaking her head, her brows meeting in the middle of her perfect forehead. “I was so scared to tell you.”
“How long have you known?”
“Just a couple of weeks. But I… I mean, we weren’t even married yet. I know it’s not the timing we planned…”
I laughed, arching a brow. “Has anything in our lives gone according to timing or what we’ve planned so far?”
“Not even close.”
“See?” I kissed her nose. “This fits perfectly.”
A tear spilled over her cheek, and I thumbed it away, watching her with my heart swelling in my chest.
I shook my head. “Just wait until Mom finds out. She’s going to freak.”
Jasmine laughed at that, and then worried her bottom lip. “I was thinking… I want to tell my mom, too.”
I froze. “You do?”
She nodded, a thick swallow straining her throat. “I know I haven’t talked to her since the day she left, but… now that I have you, now that we have…” She touched her stomach, but didn’t finish the sentence. “I just don’t want to hold onto the resentment I’ve carried all this time anymore. Maybe she won’t want to see me, maybe she won’t care at all that I’m pregnant, but… I want to try.”
I framed her face, shaking my head in awe before I lowered my forehead to hers. Her eyes fluttered closed first, and then mine, and I smiled.
“You are spectacular, Jasmine Wagner.”
She answered me with a kiss, one that was slow and deep and rocked me to the very foundation of who I was. I pulled her into me, and with her still wrapped around me under water, I made my way out of the pool, carrying her with me until we were back in our messy bed. I didn’t even care that we were both still soaking wet. I’d call for fresh sheets later if I needed to. Right now, all I could think about was laying that perfect woman down and making her feel loved in every possible way that I could.
The breeze wafted in off the sea, waving through the transparent white fabric draped over the canopy bed as I slowly peeled Jasmine’s wet suit off her slick body, kissing every inch of newly exposed skin as I did. I took my time, paying special attention to her stomach, knowing that even if we couldn’t see it yet, she was growing our child inside it.
Our child.
Emotion surged through me, and I crawled my way up to claim her mouth with mine, silently promising that I would protect them both, give them the life they deserved, do everything in my power to keep them from ever being hurt.
So much time wasted, so many moments lost…
But our forever was just getting started.
And I had a feeling it’d be the best damn one to ever exist.
The End
Can’t get enough of Tyler Wagner? Check out this bonus scene to read the wedding rehearsal from his POV.
If you liked Make Me Hate You, you’ll love the Best Kept Secrets series. Here’s a sneak peek of the first book – What He Doesn’t Know!
Charlie
On the northeast side of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, there was a house.
It was a beautiful house, stoic and grand, with a little over half an acre of land, five bedrooms, and three luxurious bathrooms. The front view stunned those who passed by, the grand steepled entrance made completely of glass, the regal chandelier visible through that pristine window after the sun set.
The house was once magical, once filled with love and joy and plans for the future. It was entirely too big for the young newlyweds who purchased it, both eager to fill the spare bedrooms with babies, to fill the expansive kitchen with little footprints and messy high chairs, to fill the walls with memories captured in sepia-tone photographs.
Inside its walls were many things that belonged to me.
There were my books, of which I had many, lining the shelves in one of the spare bedrooms where I would often sit and read. There were the china dishes my mother had gifted me on my wedding day, the gardening tools I used every weekend to primp the garden I’d always dreamed of having, the breathtaking, gold-plated bird cage I’d taken such pride in, once home to two Budgies, now empty — just like me.
And a man.
A man who also belonged to me.
A man I no longer wished to keep.
A man who, no doubt, had not slept, though the sun was rising now. Because that house where he waited — that large, desolate, haunting house — was where I’d laid my head to rest every night for the last eight years. Until last night.
The old snow crunched under my boots as I crossed the yard that was not mine, my head hung, sun shining too brightly for my taste. It seemed to be judging me, the first eyes to see me as the woman I had become overnight. The house I was leaving was much unlike the one across town. It was smaller, cozier, filled with music and laughter and late-night confessions whispered quietly into beige cotton sheets.
I slipped silently into the driver seat of my luxury SUV, the door shutting with a simple, soft latch behind me. The car was empty, too. A family car. Too many seats for just one woman.
My fingers gripped the steering wheel, knuckles pink from the cold until I reached forward to start the car with a push of a button. I closed my eyes, shoulders rising and falling with a new breath, flashes of the night before assaulting me in little bursts behind my lids.
A touch. A sigh.
A man. A woman.
Fingertips and lips. Moans and breaths.
Old longings brought to life with new fervor, new discoveries uncovered with old, shaking hands.
Freedom. Passion.
Pain.
When I opened my eyes once more, I found my reflection in the rearview mirror, but I didn’t recognize the woman staring back at me. Her long, unruly chestnut hair, falling down in messy waves around bright, wide chocolate eyes. Lips red and swollen, cheeks tinged pink.
If you told anyone who knew me, they’d never believe you. They’d never believe that soft, sweet, quiet Charlie Pierce was pulling out of the driveway of a man who wasn’t her husband, that she’d known him in a way she was never meant to, that she’d felt his hardness between her thighs and his lips on her pale white skin.