Page 48 of Together

“Do you not want to be so touchy with me?”

“Clearly not,” I admit. “But that doesn’t mean I have the right to do it. I’m sorry.”

She groans and throws her arms up, letting her hands slap against her legs. “Please stop apologizing about stuff like this. It’s super annoying. Like, you havenoidea how annoying right now. I have a bad enough feeling that I’ll be second-guessing every single one of my own moves without you second-guessing yours. I understand that you’re a physical guy. I knew that the first night we met. If I don’t want you to do something, I’m a grown up and I’ll tell you as such. You need to trust me, okay? If you can’t do that, this,” she gestures between us, “won’t work. I don’t mind you touching me. I don’t mind when you wrap your arm around my shoulders. I don’t mind when you grab my hand or get me out of my comfort zone and encourage me to do something different.”

Blinking, I look at her in shock. “Okay.”

She blinks back. “That’s it?”

“I don’t think there are any words left in the English language to say, do you?”

“Jerk.” She smirks.

“A simple, touch me all you want, is all you needed to say.”

“But now you really know, right?”

“Facts. Also, now that you know that I’m an affectionate guy and now that I know that you don’t mind it, I’m not going to hold back.”

“You’ve been holding back?”

“Well, no.”

“How about this: I promise to be honest with you. If I ever feel like you’re overstepping, I’ll let you know.”

“Deal.”

We shake on it and together we make the short three block trip back to my truck that’s still parked at the diner. Then we drive together to the hospital and I realize that one day this will be us. I wonder if I’ll be as calm as I am right now.

My prediction? Absolutely not.

Chapter Eleven

Ashley

This was a mistake.A big mistake. Dare I say, a bigger mistake than the one I made the night I forgot that antibiotics mess with the effectiveness of birth control. Though, that wasn’t necessarily a mistake so much as me being an idiot.

But I digress.

Right now, I’m regretting my behavior from thirty minutes ago.

When I was begging Nik to let me come with him to the hospital because it would be a learning experience. What the heck was I thinking?

This isn’t okay. The baby is literally killing Nik’s sister. There’s no way what we saw five minutes ago is normal.

“You okay?” Nik leans over and asks me. We’re sitting in the waiting room after the nurse calmly escorted us out of the room Josie is about to die in. But there are some things you don’t forget. The combination of the sound and look of pain that Josie was experiencing at the time is one of those things. So basically, I’ve decided that I’ll keep the baby inside my stomach forever. Modern medicine is a miraculous thing. I’m sure it’s plausible.

Shaking my head, I tell him, “Nope.”

“That was a little extreme,” he agrees.

“She’s going to die.”

He pulls one of my famous moves and snorts. “No, she isn’t. Though I imagine her body will never be the same.”

“This is the twenty-first century. Why haven’t they come up with a better system for extracting babies from a woman’s womb?”

He presses his lips together to stop from laughing. “I’m not sure that there’s a system. It’s kind of nature.” He points upward. “He had a hand in that design so if you have a problem with it, you might need to take it up with Him. I’m sure he’s open to suggestions.”

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