Page 113 of Sweeter Than Fiction

When I’m finished, I say, “So, there you have it. I’m never going to be able to have kids.”

“Abby, have you ever wanted to be a mom?” He asks. “I’m genuinely asking.”

My eyes fall as I struggle to find the words. “Before yesterday, I hadn’t thought about it much. I’m so focused on the now that I don’t often think about the future. When I did, it didn’t involve kids. But when I thought I might be…” My voice cracks with emotion.

“Me too, baby,” Don says, bringing my hand up so he can kiss the back of it.

“I just started picturing what it could be like. And it sounded…nice, I guess. But then, it all just got ripped away. Maybe I had the right idea before, never thinking about it. And now, I can’t give you what you want either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, Don. You just said yourself that you got excited. You can’t tell me that you don’t want to be a dad.”

“Baby, listen to me. Did I get excited at the thought? Sure. But I’m like you. I’ve been so focused on the present that I haven’t thought about kids…not in a long time anyway. I’m not sure that they fit into my plans anymore. But if I were to have kids, I’d be damn lucky if they were with you.”

“But they won’t be,” I interrupt.

“Abby, just because you couldn’t carry a child doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have kids if that’s what we wanted. There’s surrogacy. There’s adoption. I know that there are a ton of kids out there who need good homes. I don’t care that you can’t get pregnant.” He stops for a second. “That sounded wrong. I know that it’s a big deal to you, and I wish I could make it better. But that’s not make or break it for me. You not carrying our baby isn’t going to be a reason why I run away. There’s no reason I’m going to run away.”

My eyes well up with tears again, but this time, they are full of relief rather than sadness. “I really love you. Do you know that?”

He pulls me against his chest. “I love you too, Abigail Jones. Forever. Speaking of which, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Oh, my gosh. Are you going to propose?” I blurt without even thinking about it.

“I wasn’t planning on it. Do you want me to propose?”

“No! I mean, not right now. One day, yes. But right now, it just seems like it wouldn’t mean as much. But if you were going to, I don’t want to stop you. I’d still say yes. Good lord, Abby, stop talking.”

He laughs at my rambling. “Well, no proposal. Yet.” He winks at me. “But there is another step that I thought maybe we could take together.”

“Okay?”

“It occurs to me that you and I are spending a whole hell of a lot of time together. I don’t think we’ve spent more than a night apart since this whole thing started.”

“Pretty close,” I agree.

“Maybe you and I start just sharing one place instead of two…”

He looks at me, waiting for me to catch up. Apparently, I need a little bit longer, though.

“What do you mean?”

He chuckles. “I mean, maybe you and I move in together.”

“Oh. Are you sure?” I ask. “You’ll see how weird I am.”

He grins. “Baby, I think I have already seen how weird you are. But I don’t care. I want to wake up next to you every morning in a place that we share. Plus, we would only have to pay one rent.”

I lean forward to kiss him. “Well, when you put it like that, I would love to live with you.”

“Really?” He asks as I climb into his lap to straddle him.

“Really.”

“You make me the happiest son of a bitch in the whole world,” he says before grabbing onto my hips and kissing me deeper.

It doesn’t take long before he’s pulling my shirt over my head and then unhooking my bra. I’m so focused on the amazing things he’s doing with his tongue while he kisses me that I barely realize when he lifts me in his arms and lays me beneath him. Without taking his lips off mine, he removes my pants like some magical wizard or something.

---