I’d needed my mom there with me when I bought my dress. I needed my dad there to walk me down the aisle and give me away to Kash. And I needed them there for whenever we had kids. They were supposed to be there through all of it, and they couldn’t. How was I supposed to get through everything without them?
Shea’s little hand fisted around the collar of my shirt again and I swallowed the imaginary lump in my throat when realization set in. I wasn’t sure I could get through everything without them.
Kash
“ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME what was going on with you tonight?”
I glanced up from looking at her stomach just before she caught me staring and shrugged. “What do you mean?”
Setting down her purse and kicking off her shoes, she practically fell onto the couch. “I don’t know, you’ve been really quiet for the last few hours. You didn’t say anything to me on the drive home. I’d ask if I did something wrong, but you don’t look pissed off anymore, you’re just quiet. It’s not like you.”
“How many kids do you want, Rach?”
Her head jerked back as her eyes widened. “Um, I don’t know.”
“One, two, three . . . ?”
“Kash, I don’t know. Why does it matter right now?”
Sitting down next to her, I pulled her into my arms and laid back. “I just want to know.”
She stayed silent as she thought for a minute. “Uh, well I didn’t really like being an only child. I mean, I always had Candice and Eli, but they weren’t really my family and I wish now that I’d had someone else. Did you like being alone?” I shook my head negatively, and she nodded as her eyes got that faraway look. “I don’t want a huge family or anything, I guess two.”
If I would get to see Rachel holding infants like she had been this afternoon, I’d want to have a damn football team with her. My hands left her shoulders and slowly moved past her waist and my thumbs trailed over her flat stomach. I wanted the visual I’d had in my head all day so fucking bad.
Her mouth found mine and I whispered against her lips, “I want to have children with you.”
“We will, someday.”
“Now.”
Rachel’s body went rigid before she sat back to look down at me. “Slow down there, cowboy. Why don’t we get married and enjoy a year first. What brought this on?”
My eyes automatically drifted back to her flat stomach the same time my hands did. “I was watching you with my little cousins all day, and I want that with you. I don’t want to wait years. We’re getting married in two and a half months, you wouldn’t even be showing.”
She burst out laughing and fell back. “Oh my God, Kash, no. Just . . . no. We’re not having a baby right now, and we’re definitely not getting pregnant before we get married! We can start thinking about it in a couple years.”
“Why? What’s the difference of now and in a year or two?”
“There’s a huge difference! That’s a lot of time of just us that I want. This is the most backward argument we’ve ever had. Shouldn’t I be arguing your side and you arguing mine?”
“We’re not arguing, we’re discussing, Sour Patch.”
“Okay, well discussion over,” she huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “No mini-mes running around.”
Switching our positions from earlier, I curled my body over hers and pressed my lips to her throat. “I want a family with you, Rachel, and I don’t want to wait for that. I had to watch you for hours playing with my little cousins and holding Ava’s baby. All day all I’ve been able to think about, or see, is that image and wanting it to be ours. Wanting to see your stomach growing with our child. I want to start our family.”
“Kash,” she whispered and pulled my head up to press her lips to mine. “That was a really good effort, but no.”
I growled and mumbled, “I’m going to hide your birth control.”
Rachel sucked in a large amount of air, and I knew she was about to let me have it, but I’d just realized I knew where her birth control was.
She must have seen the recognition flash in my eyes, because hers widened and she gasped, “Oh no, sir!”
I jumped off the couch, but she grabbed me before I could land, and we both hit the ground with Rachel now caging me to the floor. Not that I couldn’t get out, but I fucking loved the position we were in.
“Logan Kash Ryan . . . I swear to God if you hide my pills, I will go to my doctor and get one of those birth control things put in tomorrow. You know those ones last five years unless you get them taken out? Actually five years until kids sounds pretty good right about now.”
My hands had been traveling up her waist, underneath her shirt; but when I realized what she was saying, I froze. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would and I will,” she gritted out.
“Fine.” I shrugged and ran my hands back down her flat stomach. Flashes of me running my hands over Rachel’s stomach, round with our child, hit me hard. Just like they had been all day.
I’d thought about having kids . . . eventually. But now? It was all I could think about. Something about seeing Rachel holding Shea had made it all click today, and I wanted it so bad, it felt like it was all I’d be able to think about until I saw it through. And, Jesus Christ, I wanted to see it through.
“It’s like you said”—I whispered, and my hands went to the button on her shorts—“they aren’t one hundred percent effective anyway.”
Her face fell. “You’re using condoms again. Starting now.”
“The fuck I am!”
“Kash.” She sighed and sat up, but her body curved in on itself as I watched hidden exhaustion set over her features. “I don’t want to even think about this right now. Okay? We can figure something out in a few years, but for now just . . . stop. Don’t push the issue of having kids on me.”
Whoa, what? “The issue of having kids? I thought you wanted kids.”
“I don’t know, Kash . . . I just—I can’t talk about this right now.”
“Rach—”
She pushed off me and had gone two feet before she turned and pointed a finger at me. “If you want kids so damn bad, figure out how to have them yourself!”
What the hell? When did she go from wanting kids eventually to not wanting to talk about it at all?
“Rachel,” I called after her when she turned to leave again. “Come here and just talk to me.”
She kept going. Slipping into her sandals, she grabbed her purse and headed toward the front door. I scrambled up and ran over to her, grabbing her arm just as she’d reached out for the doorknob.
“Are you kidding me? What the hell is going on? Why are you throwing shields at me, and how did that conversation just turn into you being upset and leaving?”
She kept her head down and refused to look at me. “I just want to go for a drive. Let me go.”
If I let her go now, we would go back ten steps . . . and I wasn’t willing to go back to how we’d been. Rachel keeping things from me. Shielding me from her emotions. Pushing everyone—including me—away. Hell no. Never again. “No. First off, you don’t leave when you’re upset or if we’re in the middle of a fight. You talk to me. Second, I told you a long time ago we were done with your shields, and we’re not about to start up with them again. So sit down and tell me what’s going on with you all of a sudden.”
“Kash, just let me go clear my—”
She hadn’t acted like this, or shielded me, for almost a year. To be honest, it was freaking me the fuck out that she was starting it again. Knowing she would keep this up until I dropped it or she eventually left, I did the only thing I knew in order to get her to listen. “I said sit the fuck down, Rachel!”