Page 67 of The Exception

“I’ve only recently started thinking about it since this one came along,” Sonya said. “Emma’s kids are older. We were all so young when they were born. I love her boys, but I was too busy to let Baby Fever catch on back then. Besides, she has Adam who’s like Dad of The Year. Marcus was gone all the time. It wouldn’t have gone the same for me.”

Trav looked over his shoulder from the stove. “Things are different now.”

“They are.”

He took the pan off of the heat and spooned the mixture into a flour tortilla, taking the baby while Sonya dug in. Lucia’s giggles filled the kitchen, getting louder with every tickle or tummy raspberry he gave her. If the conversation wasn’t enough to put thoughts in her head, that did it.

He glanced up and caught her watching him, but she didn’t look away.

“I think seeing my dad ruin all of his marriages and maintain a clinical detachment to his only kid could have gone either way for me,” he said. “I could have ended up the same. But my step-mom, Marielle, she changed my view on that. I wasn’t her blood, but she was a mother to me. Made me see how a functional parental relationship was supposed to look.”

Sonya smiled. “I’m glad you had that. Some kid someday will be better off for it.”Someone’s kid.

She finished her taco, taking the plate to the sink. “That was amazing.”

Trav smiled at the compliment. “Where’s Lulu’s bottle? I’ll feed her.”

“You haven’t eaten yet.”

He shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”

“You just wanted to feed me?” Sonya fetched the bottle from the warmer, testing it on her wrist.

“And her.” Their fingers tangled as he took the bottle from her and she was sure he could see every runaway thought in her brain. Here they were on a friendly weekend away, practically playing house with Cat’s daughter.

This was too much. She went back to the dishes because she wasn’t about to sit there and watch that man rock a baby right after he’d just finished cooking her an amazing meal.

It was adorable,hewas adorable. It made it way too easy to look at that scene and imagine a future that had always seemed a little cloudy with Marcus. She’d always reasoned it away by telling herself it was because she hadn’t completely developed her plan for that part of her life. But watching Trav interact with Lucia, hell watching him this entire weekend, had the whole picture coming through in high definition. It was an image she struggled to shove away.

When she finally ran out of housework to distract herself with, Trav was sitting on a barstool at the island with Lucia sound asleep on his shoulder.

They grinned at each other. “I can’t believe she’s asleep already,” he said.

“Now we know why her parents had no problem staying in tonight.”

“That’s true. So what are we going to do with all this free time?”

She should’ve said something like play cards or watch a movie. Those would be friendly things for them to do until the others came home, and friendly was what they were supposed to be there for.

She pretended to clean a spot on the counter, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t know. It’s a beautiful night. We could take the monitor down to the dock. Maybe look at the stars.”

As soon as the words left her lips, her entire body tensed.

Where did that come from?

Trav with a baby had not only destroyed her ovaries, it had melted her brain. Topping things off, that damn breathy voice was back and Sonya was starting to think that was just going to be her normal whenever she was alone with him.

Trav gnawed on his bottom lip and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head, proving that she was being more than a little confusing. The dock… the lake at night… stars… Damn it. Her offer sounded like the lead-in to a teen movie love scene.

Talk about sending mixed signals.

Her instincts screamed at her to revise the idea to almost anything else, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to go down to the dock with Trav and talk like they had the night of the benefit. She wanted to have that connection with him again, and for once, she was going to listen to the voice telling her to stop overthinking things.

She was going to just… go with it. And that was terrifying.

Trav must’ve finally worked through whatever he’d been chewing on because he finally nodded. “That sounds like a plan.”

Sonya didn’t know why she was so relieved to hear that, but she was. That was something else that she would normally dissect, but not tonight.

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