Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
“But?” Luna freezes.
I’m bracing myself. She can see I’m preparing for an impact. “But…before we got married on your planet, I probably shoulda told you that I don’t want kids.”
Her gaze drops.
She didn’t expect that.
“Luna…?”
“No kids? Like zero?”
“Zero,” I confirm.
Luna moves slowly into the dimly lit room. Fuck me. I scrape a hand against the back of my head, and I follow while she plops on the edge of the hotel bed. The curtains are wide open. Glittering New York on the other side of the window.
I lean against the dresser and give her a minute or two.
Turns out she needs five before she speaks. “You don’t think you’ll change your mind?”
I exhale a strained breath. “A baby is forever, Luna. You can’t send it back.”
“So it’s the commitment of one?”
I shake my head, confused. With anyone else, I wouldn’t wanna commit to raising a child with them, but with Luna…
I wouldn’t call myself a commitment-phobe.
She even mentions, “You’ve practically adopted Orion.”
“Yeah. He’s my big fluffy son.”
Luna opens her hands. “See. We already have a child.”
“He’s not a human baby,” I say gently.
“Our baby will be part-alien.” She’s grappling with how to make this work.
I lick my dried lips, my throat burning. And to tell the complete truth, she’s making me smile right now. “Are the alien genes dominant or recessive?”
“Dominant.”
“Yeah, that’s probably for the best…” I trail off and shake my head. “Luna.”
“I don’t want kids anytime soon. It could be many, many years from now.”
Many, many years. I rest my elbows back on the dresser. “You’re fertile for a window of time. It can’t happen after a certain period.”
“Unless we hop into a cryopod. We could be frozen in our thirties for a few decades and pop back out.” She’s smiling off mine. “Science has come a long way.”
“How much hope are you huffing?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have infected me with it.”
“Nah, I’m not regretting that.” I soften a loving look on her. “I can’t even picture you not having a baby.” It hurts my heart just imagining. “You’d be a great mom.”
“You’d be a great dad.”
“Maybe,” I say. “It’s responsibility that I’ve never wanted ‘cause there hasn’t been a point in my life where I’ve been totally stable. I’ve been looking out for myself, and when I felt like I had that under control, I started looking out for your family.”
“You don’t think you’ll reach a stable point in the future? To where you’d want one then?”
I dunno. “It’s felt like a dream,” I admit.
“A baby?”
“Stability enough to have one.” I let out a breath. “Where I feel like I can touch something that innocent, and I won’t harm it.” I lock eyes with her. “My past has been breathing down my neck, and it’s bad enough what happened to you because of it. I never want our kid to feel that kind of pain.”
“Our kid?”
I rock my head back. “We’re not having a baby.”
“Part-alien baby,” she corrects.
“Luna,” I say with a smile.
She sighs, then nods. “I know what you’re saying. I get why you’d feel that way. But…”
“But?”
“But hypothetically, if your dream were to come true and everything felt stable enough for a baby, then would you maybe consider one?”
I stare off, unable to even visualize that. Before I answer, I ask, “Would you still be with me knowing we will not, under any circumstance, have a baby together?”
Her body sinks. “This is a deal-breaker, isn’t it?”
“I don’t even know how to let you go,” I admit.
She shrugs. “I might not even be fertile.”
Why does that roil my stomach? I brush two hands through my hair.
“Which would be bad…” She winces, staring out at New York. “I forgot to tell you…”
“Tell me what?”
And then she explains how she offered her eggs to Farrow and Maximoff. The most crushing thought is knowing Luna would have to see a baby with her features and never have one herself.
I smear a hand down my face.
“I can take it back—”
“No, you can’t,” I say. “I’m not doing that to my best friend.”
Luna scoots back on the bed. “The answer is yes.”
I drop my hand. “Yes what?”
“Yes, I’d still be with you if we never have kids. I’d only want to be the mom to your baby, and the key part here is you. You are what I really want first and last.”
I exhale a long breath and nod. “Maybe I’d consider it.”
“Maybe?” She brightens.
“It’s a really big maybe, Luna.”
She nods a lot. “Very big. It’s overtaken all of New York. I see it right there.” She points to the window.
I grin over at her. We’re okay. We’re going to have a future together. “You wanna open Cordelia’s prediction?” I didn’t have it in me to trash it. A part of me has wanted to know what the future holds with Luna. To have one at all with her is what matters to me.