Page 62 of Flirty Thirty

“Only me?” I ask, my voice a rough whisper. “You’re okay with… only me in your family?”

“Well, and me, too.” His lips tilt upward in his signature half-grin, the smile line a heart-pounding indicator that he’s telling me the absolute truth, and I feel a dip in my stomach, a sick taste on the back of my tongue that I, too, need to be completely honest with him.

“You really mean it?” I ask, building up the courage to say what I need to so we both know for sure. “You’d be willing to give up having children?”

He puts his hands on my cheeks, sets his forehead on mine and looks straight at me with those soulful blue eyes. “Yes.”

And with one syllable, my trepidation, my worries, my every fear flies out the window and off into the night. My hands find his wrists, grasping onto him and holding on to keep steady. I take a deep breath, let it fill my lungs and let it slowly seep out. He’ll understand, won’t he? He understood without the entire truth.

“Cooper,” I say, pulling his hands away. “I can’t have kids.”

“I know,” he rushes out. “This isn’t some trick I’m playing. I’m not just telling you I’m okay with it while secretly holding out hope for something different. If you don’t want kids, I accept that.”

“No.” I lock on his eyes and hold them until he understands what I’m saying. “Ican’thave kids.”

The realization hits him slowly, the light brightening across his expression. His lips part, but his breath is gone away, and I gulp and shake my head at the floor between us.

“I… I thought I was pregnant. I thoughtwewere pregnant. But the doctor… she told me I won’t ever be.”

A warm hand presses against the small of my back and pulls me up against his strong, firm chest. He wraps me in a cocoon that not a single negative thought can penetrate, a place that I needed the day I found out, but I was too scared to venture into. His breath comes out in a long, sad sigh over my head, his arms a warm blanket on a cold day.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated to stay with me,” I say into the comfort of his chest. “I didn’t want to be the broken woman who took away any possibility for you having children.”

He coaxes my chin up, making sure that I have a good look at his face when he says, “You are not broken, Maya. Don’t ever think that.”

A hint of a smile plays at the corner of my lips. Can we really move forward like this? Could I really take the life he wanted away from him? I consider other options; I know there are more. Adoption, surrogacy… but it all seems like too much right now. I quickly push away from him for some much needed air.

“I’m not ready to talk options,” I tell him. “I don’t know if Iwantany other options. I’m thirty years old, and it feels like I’d have to fast forward the process because it takes so long for everything, and I’m not ready for that. My brain, my body, my heart…” I settle a hand on my chest, begging my tears to stay under control, but they rarely listen to me. “I saw that future you painted for us. I caught a glimpse of it that last night with you.”

“When you scared the hell out of me in the pool?” he teases, and I smile, grateful that he knows to make me laugh when I feel so low. My brain fast forwards to future moments when I hope he’s still there to do it again.

“I saw it, Cooper. I saw a wedding and a house and a backyard with a swing set and kids with your blue eyes and my baby fat. I didn’t only see it, Iwantedit. I wanted everything.” My shoulders slump, and I fold my arms, hoping to find the same comfort from myself that I had from him. I’m unsuccessful. “I’d hate myself forever if I took that away from you.”

He shakes his head. “I see something different for us now. Something just as good, if not better.”

“Don’t you want to be with someone who can give you everything you want?”

He steps forward, enclosing us in a tight bubble that no one can pop. His hands find my cheeks, and his eyes hypnotize me into not moving a single muscle.

“You areeverythingI want.”

I’m gone again. He’s melted me into the floor, and I fly to the moon as his lips come down on mine. He pushes me against the wall, his hands soft, his mouth anxious, his pulse pounding under my fingertips. He kisses away my pain, my hesitation, my worries, and I kiss him back with everything I have.

“I still wish you would’ve told me,” he says, breaking away to breathe. “You wouldn’t have had to go through this alone.”

“I’ve got my cats,” I tease, loving that he can make me feel happy enoughtotease in the middle of something so sad. “I’m never alone.”

He wrinkles his nose at me. “Can I take you somewhere?”

I’ve missed his blurting almost as much as I’ve missed him. “Where?”

“Cabo.”

“How did you…?”

“Facebook,” he says, and a lightbulb pops on over my head. Now I have the answer to how he knew where I was. “Let me take you.”

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