Page 114 of Home Run

I pointed to the walk-in closet. “Clothes in there, but the crib and furniture will go…Hang on, give me a couple of minutes. I can go and get the design layout and show you properly?—”

I rushed out and grabbed the key to the boys’ place. Tanner and I had been going over the plans from Julie the other night, and it was on his nightstand.

I’d been in Tanner’s room plenty of times without him here. In the past month I’d gone to sleep in his bed, waiting for him to return home from an away series or a game I’d been too tired to attend.

But standing in the doorway now felt different—comforting me in a way I hadn’t noticed before. The rich, woody scent of him lingered in the air and I stopped to breathe him in, filling my lungs and our baby until there was no space left for me to breathe any more.

What the hell was I doing?

My mom was right, I’d been trying to stop myself falling in love with him and I couldn’t.

I loved him.

I loved Tanner.

Only I could make something so simple seem so complicated?

I needed to call him back. I wanted to tell him. Hedeservedto know. He deserved everything, except me being an idiot.

My eyes fell to the nursery design by his bed, sitting next to the framed photo of our first ultrasound I’d given him. Reaching to grab it, I spotted a box on the middle shelf of his nightstand, and my name had been scrawled across a Post-it stuck on the top.

It was a set of baby-bump headphones where you could record your voice and play it to the baby. Tanner had been on a baby-tech buying spree recently, most of it coming from the spreadsheet his brother had given him.

Therefore I tended to ignore it, but this looked cool.

“What’s that?” my mom asked when I walked back into the nursery.

“Headphones for the baby. Tanner bought them,” I replied, passing her the sheet of ideas for the nursery, plus the rudimentary drawings of where we wanted everything to go—crib, changing table, and the rocking chair Tanner insisted on.

“Baby headphones?”

“Yeah.” I glanced at the box and my eyes scanned over the instructions. “It links to an app?—”

Of courseit linked to an app. Tanner must have added a dozen different baby apps on my phone, only one of which I ever looked at—the one with the fruit and vegetables. And when I opened my phone, the baby headphones one was right there.

“Millie, honey, go and run yourself a bath while I start washing and organizing all this.” She waved to the piles of baby clothes. “Then we can order takeout once Radley gets home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

I wasn’t going to be told twice.

Five minutes later I was sinking into warm water laced with Tanner’s lavender bath salts, waiting for him to pick up his phone while I stared out of the window in the direction of The Mark past the miles and miles of lights twinkling below.

For the second time the phone rang out.

Rubbing bath oil across my belly, I leaned back and let the water wash over me until the lavender got to work, though I probably shouldn’t be staring at my phone, willing Tanner to call me back. My eyes fell to the box for the headphones—I could make myself useful while I waited.

According to the instructions, I could make recordings in the app, so I opened it up, ready to begin. Except there already seemed to be a bunch…

The first time I ever saw your mom, she was standing across a crowded bar…

I hit Pause and stared at my phone and picked up the box again. Weird. Maybe these were samples?

I pressed Play again.

Uncle Lux had spotted your auntie Radley, but I only had eyes for the one standing next to her…

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