Page 129 of Stuck with my Mechanic Daddies

Mason cocked his head curiously to one side. “Huh?”

“Aurora’s book,” Owen countered. “Her uncle kept a copy in the store all these years.”

Ethan nodded, dead serious. “That sounds epic. I want to read it.”

A surprised laugh burst out of me, unsteady but real.

They were joking, but something about Owen’s words settled deep in my chest. My heart pounded.

I had spent years chasing stability, prestige, control. I had poured everything into building a career I thought would keep me safe, keep me successful.

Yet I had always wanted something else, hadn't I?

“Ididalways want to be a writer,” I murmured. “Before marketing got its claws in me.”

Ethan tilted his head. “So what stopped you?”

I chewed my lip, looking down at the grease-streaked floor. “Fear, mostly. It felt too risky. Too unstable. I wanted something I could rely on, something that wouldn’t leave me wondering where my next paycheck would come from.”

Mason nodded. “Makes sense.”

Owen’s voice was softer when he spoke. “But now?”

I looked at them—the three men who had somehow become my constants, the ones who had pulled me out of the wreckage of my carefully planned life.

And I thought about the bookstore. The place that had once felt like a burden but now felt like something else.

Maybe something more.

I took a shaky breath. “Now, I don’t know. But maybe the bookstore isn’t the worst idea. If I can keep it.”

Ethan smirked. “Whenyou keep it.”

Owen nodded. “Damn right.”

Mason grinned. “And when you do, we’re expecting at least three sequels.”

I laughed, shaking my head.

I was no longer just fighting to hold on to something. I was fighting for something I wanted.

I was so caught up in the emotion of the moment that the words slipped out before I could stop them.

“I’m pregnant.”

Silence.

The kind that stretched and thickened, wrapping around me like a vise.

My pulse thundered in my ears; my breath hitched in my throat.

I hadn't meant to say it. Not like this.

Not in the middle of an auto shop, surrounded by the scent of motor oil and metal, with my body still trembling from the weight of everything else I’d just admitted.

But there it was. Out in the open.

Owen was the first to react.

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