“Thank you.”
I order a burger, and when I’m done, the waitress winks at me. “Let me know if you need anything special tonight, Mr. Hart. I’ll be sure to take special care of you.”
I nip that in the bud. “I’m all good. Just the food, thanks.”
As she walks away, I pick up a glass full of crayons from the center of the table. “Want to draw?”
He shakes his head. “No. I want to talk.”
I sit up straighter. “What’s on your mind, little man?”
“I heard what Miller said when we were leaving. He told you to call Roxy and talk to Roxy, and then he said to get your butt moving. And I want you to know I agree.”
“Oh, you do?” I ask, curiosity gripping me, since there’s little better than the insight of the young.
“Yes,” he says emphatically. “You should just be best friends forever with her.”
I chuckle. “You think so?”
“I know so. It’s pretty simple, Daddy. You love me, I love you, I love Roxy, Roxy loves me, Roxy loves you, and you love Roxy. So there. Be best friends forever.”
He lays it out so clearly, so beautifully, in a way that only a child can. My smile is as wide as a city block. “It’s that simple?”
“It’s super simple. It’s like when you’re hungry, you eat. When you love someone, you tell them. Like this.” He leans closer, reaching across the table and giving me a peck on the cheek. “I love you, Daddy.”
Now the grin stretches the whole length of Manhattan. “I love you, Ben.”
He’s right.
It is that simple.
On the one hand, the situation is vastly complicated. I have a young boy who I’m raising alone in a new city as I navigate playing in a band while falling in love with my buddy’s sister who’s six months pregnant with a sperm donor’s baby.
On the other hand, it’s easy, so easy. The way I feel for him, for her, and the other her, the little person in Roxy’s belly, is patently clear. So clear, in fact, I know what to do.
And I know, too, this is a chance to show my son how it’s done.
Only, when I call Roxy after the food arrives, she doesn’t answer, and I remember she was planning to drop off papers at her new place tonight.
“We need to go, and we need to go now.”
Ben stuffs the rest of his chicken sandwich in his mouth, and we take off.
33
Miles
C’mon.
I will the bearded man at the counter to move faster as he works.
At the same time, I’m damn grateful I live in New York City where everything can be procured around the clock, even on a Sunday evening.
Because I’m not showing up at Roxy’s place empty-handed.
After she gave me a golden opportunity to tell her I loved her earlier and I botched it, I’m not screwing up a second chance. Hell, my brothers wrote songs for the women they loved. They told their women onstage, and in concert, how they felt.
I’ve learned enough as the youngest that you can’t simply imitate the guys who went before you. But I also know that when you want someone for the rest of your life, you need to back up your words with actions.
As soon as the bearded man finishes, I hail a taxi and head to Roxy’s, calling her on the way, hoping to heaven and back she hasn’t signed the contract for her new place yet.
This time, she answers. “Hi.” She sounds nervous.
I’m nervous too, but I’m also raring to go. “Hey, Rox. I was trying to track you down to see you. Are you home?”
“I was in the shower. As soon as I got out, I saw you had called.” Briefly, I picture Roxy in the shower, and that image is not appropriate for me to linger on with Ben by my side, so I wipe my brain clean.
“I was worried you were at your new building.”
“No. Not yet. I was showering because I wanted to see you.”
“You do?”
“I do want to see you,” she says, and her tone is sweet and vulnerable, and it wraps around a heart that’s already hammering for her.
“And you needed to shower first?” I ask playfully.
She laughs. “I did.”
“How about I come see you? I’m with Ben. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“I’ll be ready.”
Ten minutes later, I turn to my son as we head down her hallway. “How do I look?”
“Like a chicken magnet.”
She opens the door, and the air evacuates my lungs as I look her over. She wears a coral sundress that she fills out beautifully. Her hair is loose, curling over her shoulders.
When she sees the two of us, she smiles, and it’s the kind that tells me she might, just might, feel the same way I do. Hope bursts inside me. How could I have doubted us?
“Hi, Roxy.” Ben waves. “Can we come in?”
“Of course.” She opens the door, and Alan practically leaps off the couch, speeding around the corner.
Ben laughs and darts over to the cat as he hightails it to another room. This is my chance, and I’m not missing it this time.
I reach for Roxy’s hand and press a metal object into it.
When she feels it, her eyes widen. “Miles?”
I swallow and look into her eyes, seeing forever in them. “I have something for you. It’s a key. I want you to live with me. I want you to live with us. Even though that two-bedroom is beautiful, I don’t want you living there.”
“You don’t?” Her voice is feather-soft.
I shake my head, nerves skittering everywhere, but I banish them. I have to do this. I have to say this. I cup her cheek, running my thumb over her jaw. “Live with me, because I love you. I love you so much.”
She gasps, pressing a hand to her mouth. Her eyes shine.
I go on, curling my hands gently over her beautifully round belly. “And I love this little girl. She’s yours, sweetheart. But she feels like mine and yours, and that’s what I want her to be. Ours.”
Tears slide down her cheeks. “Ours,” she murmurs, wonder in her voice.
“I want the four of us to be a family.”
34
Roxy
Some things in life are easy.
Saying yes to the man who’s fallen in love with you and your baby. Saying yes when you’re madly in love with him and his son.
Also, crying buckets is ridiculously easy when you’re preggers and have just been love-proposed to.
In between sobs of epic happiness, I throw my arms around him. “You’re my guys. I love you, and I love Ben, and I want everything,” I say, my voice breaking. “I want it all. I want you. I love you so much I feel like my heart is bursting when I’m with you.”
He laughs happily, as if I’ve made his year. “That’s my kind of yes.”
More tears slip down my face, and I don’t care that I’m crying a river. “I’m a little emotional these days, but I’m emotional because I’m so madly in love with you, and I can’t believe this is really happening.” I’m shaking I’m so happy. “And I’m so worried I’m dreaming.”
He runs his thumb over my cheek. “Your dreams are my dreams. Let’s make new dreams together.”
He brushes his lips across mine, and it’s the sweetest kiss in the history of the world. It’s a kiss that seals a promise. It’s a kiss that tells a story of how a family came together.
When we separate, I run a hand over his shoulder and down his chest, like I need to verify he’s still real.
And he is.
Right here before me, asking me to be a part of his life.
Even though my mom told me I didn’t need a big gesture, and even though I believe her, I still have one. I reach for the apartment papers I left on the entryway table, and I rip them in half. “I like your place better. Also, just to clarify, when I said multiples earlier, I meant multiple nights. I meant all the nights, and all the days, and all the everythings.”
He draws me in close, pulls me tight, and kisses me hard on my lips, making me
soar. “You have a deal. On all the types of multiples you want.”
That includes multiple kids, and the first one shouts a hurrah. Ben rushes over and thrusts his arms in the air. Miles and I separate.
“Don’t forget about me!”
“Never,” Miles says and scoops him up in a hug, wrapping an arm around Ben and another around me, as Ben pats my belly once more.
And that cues a fresh new round of waterworks.
35
Roxy
One month later
The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens is teeming with fragrant flowers, their ruby reds and sunburst oranges forming the backdrop for Mackenzie’s “I do.”
I stand beside my best friend as she pledges to love Campbell for the rest of her life.
By his side are his brothers, and my gaze lands on the one I love.
A smile stretches across my face when we make eye contact, and I can’t look away from Miles’s blue eyes, his sexy grin, and the love I see written on his face for me.
By the way, falling in love is certifiably magnificent. I was more than ready to go it alone in life, to take on motherhood and business and anything else all by my lonesome. I’m sure I would have done fine. I’m more certain though that doing life with Miles will be so much better.
Once the ceremony is over and pictures are taken, we dance, and we eat, and we toast.
As night falls, Ben yawns and starts to fall asleep on his father’s lap. Soon enough, we leave, heading home.
To our new home.
Alan and Gloria are perched by the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the park, their tails twitching in tandem as they stare at something only cats can see in the night.
“I’ll put Ben to bed,” I say, then I give Miles a wink. He knows what that means.
I take Ben’s hand, walk him to his bedroom, and find his jammies. He rubs his eyes and climbs onto his mattress. “Can you read me a book, Roxy?”
“Of course,” I say, reading him a bedtime story till he’s sound asleep. I turn off the light, tuck the sheets around him, and close the door.
I sigh happily as I walk down the hallway to my new bedroom. I don’t miss my place—it’s just a place, after all. Our home feels like exactly what it should be—home.
With Ben in the land of nod and Miles waiting for me, this is everything a home could be.
When I reach our bedroom, Miles is lounging in boxer briefs on the bed. I wiggle my eyebrows. He holds up a bottle of lotion and says seductively, “You ready?”
I hold up my fingers. “Give me five.”
I kick off my shoes and slide off my dress, take a quick shower, and then slip on panties and a tank top that stretches over my bump.
I return to the bedroom and give my man my best seductive voice. “Rub my feet good, Miles.”
I flop down on the bed and moan in pleasure as he administers one of my favorite things as a pregnant lady—a foot rub.
A little later, he tugs me under the sheets and wraps his arms around me. As he layers kisses along my neck, he says, “You know what I was thinking when Mackenzie and Campbell said I do?”
“Mmm. What were you thinking?” I murmur, pushing back against him. One touch, one kiss makes me sizzle.
“How much I’m looking forward to fucking my wife.”
I smile as I rub my ass against his hard-on. “It won’t be much longer till you can do that,” I say, since we’re tying the knot in a few more weeks.
“But tonight, I think I’d like to fuck my fiancée.”
“Is that so?” I ask playfully, reaching my hand behind me to grip him. “Oh yes, you definitely want to fuck me from the feel of this.”
He slides my panties lower, glides his fingers between my legs, and groans. “Seems like my fiancée wants that too.”
He proposed to me the night I moved in, asking me over the dinner he made me. That was how I wanted it—simple. I didn’t want to make it a big deal. After all, we’re pretty committed already. But I do like the ring, and I like what it symbolizes—us and forever.
And when he positions himself behind me, his big spoon to my little, I like, too, how extraordinary every touch from him feels. I’m still a live wire with Miles, and I suspect I always will be.
As he squeezes my breasts and rocks deep inside me, I moan and murmur and whisper his name in one long, needy breath. Because it feels spectacular to be with him like this—free and honest and wildly in love.
As he sends me to the edge, I tighten, gripping him harder.
“Come with me,” he urges, and that’s all it takes.
I shatter, and seconds later, he’s with me on the other side.
When we come down from the high, I turn to face him, kissing him, smiling giddily. “Why do you think it feels so good every time?”
He runs his hands over my curves. “I love fucking you because I fucking love you.”
Yes, some things in life are easy.
36
Miles
A few weeks later
Our wedding is simple.
Some people say that and then invite fifty guests.
But I mean simple.
We have dinner and a ceremony at my parents’ house in New Jersey one Sunday in August, with my folks, Roxy’s parents, William and his wife and kids, my brothers and their women, and all the kids too. A justice of the peace my dad knows makes it official.
“I do,” I say to my beautiful bride, who is incredibly big. Her belly is basketball-size now, and yet somehow she’s more gorgeous every day.
“And now the rings,” the justice of the peace says, and one little guy who’s excited to be a big brother hands us the rings.
I slide a platinum band on Roxy’s finger, and she does the same to me. And then I kiss the bride, something I plan on doing every day of my life.
Later, a string quartet plays. But not just any string quartet—this is Mackenzie’s son, Kyle’s, band, and he rocks it on the violin while Sam belts out the tunes. When she launches into Sam Cooke’s “Cupid,” I reach for my wife’s hand and dance with her in the backyard under the stars.
I tip my forehead to the tree house at the edge of the green grass, high up in an oak. “That’s where we used to play when we were kids,” I tell her.
“Funny. I can perfectly picture you jamming in a tree house with your brothers. I bet you had the best time.”
“We did. We had a blast. In fact, I’m having a blast playing with them now. I think I always sort of missed it, even when I was solo.”
“But you always seemed happy with your solo career.”
“I was happy, but now I’m happier. Because that’s what brought me back to New York. It brought me back to one place. And it brought me to you.”
And then I kiss the bride again.
And again.
And again.
Later, I snap a photo of her as she slides into the car so we can head home.
She arches a curious brow. “What’s that for?”
“A new folder of hot pics I’m making. I’m titling it ‘Sexy Shots of My Wife.’”
Epilogue
Roxy
The struggle is real.
The one to get comfortable.
The one to sleep without feeling like a beached whale.
The one to fit through a freaking doorway.
Nine months and five days.
This baby does not want to leave her house. That’s what I am now. One gigantic home for a girl who seems to think the elephant’s gestational period is fine and dandy.
September rolls into town, and it’s time for Ben to start kindergarten.
“Please roll me to the Helen Williams School,” I say at the breakfast table on his first day.
“You don’t have to take me to school, Roxy,” Ben says. “You should take a nap. Nap time is cool.”
“I plan on sleeping all day long once she’s here, since you’re going to take care of her, right?” I tease.
He laughs. “I’ll help out if
she’s not smelly.”
“It’s good to have lines, son,” Miles says in mock seriousness.
“Also, I’m not missing your first day of school.”
Miraculously, I manage to take him to school without waddling the whole way, but as Miles and I leave, we walk one block, chatting about how well the expansion of Fluffy & Fabulous is going, and then my water breaks.
Contractions are no joke.
But as determined as this girl was to stay inside me, she’s just as determined to make her great escape.
When we reach the hospital, the nurses whisk me to a labor and delivery room and administer an epidural.
Bring it on.
And I love it because everything people say about the pain of labor should be multiplied. That stuff hurts like hell.
But nothing hurts now, thanks to drugs. Yay, drugs.
“You’re almost there,” Miles says, cheering me on.
The curly-haired nurse squeezes my hand. “Just one more push, honey.”
Panting, I grit my teeth and try again.
“You can do it,” Miles urges, and I think this is where I’m supposed to yell at him, but I don’t feel like yelling. I feel like meeting my baby. I’m so damn ready.
The next time the nurse tells me to push, I focus all my energy on what I’ve wanted so badly these last several months.
Her.
“You’ve got it. You can do it,” my husband says confidently, like he believes so deeply in me.
And in my ability to pop out a watermelon.
I bear down. With a primal scream, my little girl announces her arrival into the world, and relief and joy flood me.
“She’s perfect,” the nurse says proudly.
“She’s magic,” Miles whispers, complete wonder in his voice as he gazes at the little creature who’s been setting up shop in me for the last nine months.
Once Upon A Wild Fling Page 16
