Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 125866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Madelyn was watching me with an amused smile, but her eyes were glossing again. She sniffed, shaking her head.
“No,” she whispered. “You’re going to be the best dad in the world. To both of them.”
I let out a puff of a laugh from my nose. “Holy shit. I’m going to be a dad.”
“You already are.”
I shook my head, tucking the loose strands of Madelyn’s hair behind one ear. “I gotta say… this has been one hell of a summer.”
She laughed, tilting her head back, the sound sweet as it reverberated off the empty walls.
“And all because you had insomnia and couldn’t resist house shopping at three a.m.”
“I think I should lose sleep more often.”
“Oh, believe me — you’ll lose plenty of sleep in about nine months.”
“Good thing it’ll be offseason.”
“Sebastian will be the best big brother,” she mused with a watery smile.
“That’s because he has the best mom.”
“No,” she said softly. “It’s just who he is.”
I smiled, thumbing her chin, and we stared at each other like we couldn’t believe the new world we’d just stepped into, and like we couldn’t bear the thought of any other possible outcome.
“I love you, Mads.”
She leaned into my touch, closing her eyes and nodding on a smile. “I love you, Daddy.”
One eye peeked open at that, and her smile turned mischievous.
I wet my lips, spanking the side of her ass. “Say that again, and I’m going to put two babies in you.”
“I don’t think that’s how this works.”
“Only one way to find out.”
I swept her into my arms as she let out another sweet laugh, and I basked in every decibel of it, every centimeter of her lips against mine on our way back to her room, and every moment of stripping her bare and laying her down and sliding inside her until we were one.
She bit my shoulder to muffle her cries of pleasure, and I buried myself deep, marveling at how one seemingly insignificant decision can set our lives on a completely new track.
The life that was stolen from us would never be ours to hold again.
But we did hold the power to build a new one.
And I counted my lucky stars that the universe gave us this second chance.
Madelyn
By the middle of October, I finally didn’t feel like death.
The first trimester of my unexpected pregnancy had hit me hard. Between the constant nausea — that lasted all day, by the way, not just in the morning — and the extreme fatigue, it was like walking in a fog I just couldn’t wait to find the end of.
Add in the fact that I hadn’t been working, we’d moved across town, and things were slowly progressing in the court case against Marshall, and you could say I didn’t even feel like a real human. Nothing in my life was the same. Everything was chaos.
And yet, somehow, I’d never felt happier in my life.
Because I had Kyle.
Kyle, who doted on me every day as if he didn’t have enough on his plate with a full-time job as a professional athlete and the start of his very first season in the NFL.
Kyle, who massaged my back and took completely over cooking, hiring a chef to do it on the nights he couldn’t.
Kyle, who wouldn’t let me lift a finger during the move, who was reading expecting father books and trying every nausea cure under the sun that he could find.
Kyle, who spent all his free time that wasn’t devoted to making sure I was okay, to caring for my son, making sure he was loving his new school and settling into his new neighborhood and home.
This man had taken every notion of what I thought a husband was and fast-pitched it out the window.
We weren’t even married yet, and he was illustrating what I thought was just a fairytale. He was my partner. He wasn’t just leaving me to endure this alone. He was there, every step of the way, doing everything in his power to make the first trimester suck less.
I was thankful for the fact that I didn’t feel like throwing up or passing out on the first soft surface I could find to get horizontal on as Sebastian and I made our way up to the club level of Lumen Field. Kyle had refused for me to sit anywhere but in a suite for our first game — especially in my condition. Apparently, he and a few of his teammates had reserved a suite together, which had Kyle assuring me I would be welcomed by wives and families.
I didn’t feel that comforted.
I was over the moon to finally be able to watch a game live. I was thrilled to have Sebastian with me, whose eyes were so wide as we walked through the stadium that I thought they were going to pop out of his head. He’d been glued to the TV during every game of the season, teaching himself the game and asking Kyle question after question when he got home. He was full-on obsessed.