Page 52 of Home Run

When he looked at me it was almost like he hadn’t realized I was there. I wanted to ask what he’d been thinking but bit my tongue instead. Tugging my hand, we stepped around the corner and into a shaded side street. Pulling out his credit card holder, he tore the top image off the strip, folded it in half, and tucked it behind a black Amex.

Blue eyes scoured my face. “So, I guess we’re really having a baby.”

“I guess we are.”

He was doing that thing guys do when they widen their stance to try to get a little closer to your height, but in doing so they take up all your personal space. There was an intimacy to it that was making it hard to concentrate on anything but him; the cobalt flecks edging his iris, the barely there scar running across the bridge of his nose, the dart of his tongue across his soft lower lip.

Emotions had been running far too high this morning for me to make any sensible decisions, and it never occurred to me to move away when his thumb brushed against my pulse point hammering in my neck.

It was exactly how the kiss had started all those weeks ago in front of my dorm room, the one which led us to this morning, but alsonothinglike it.

Where that was a clap of magnets, this was slow and gentle.

Sogentle.

The way his lips pressed to mine. More gentle than I’d ever imagined Tanner was capable of. Although, as I thought about it, the Tanner I’d known these past few monthswasgentle. Kind, thoughtful, and attentive—three adjectives that would never have been top of my list to describe Tanner. But I was beginning to realize that the Tanner I thought I knew, wasn’t the real Tanner.

ThisTanner, the one I saw in private, or with his friends, this was the real one.

His tongue slipped past my lips, slowly tangling with mine. The loose hold he had on my jaw tightened. A quiet moan rolled up my throat before he eased away. It was quick, there was none of the ripping of clothes we’d had before, but it was equally as passionate.

It was a perfect end to an (almost) perfect morning.

But then he had to ruin it all by opening his mouth.

“You fall in love with me yet?”

TWELVE

TANNER

“Isthis what impending fatherhood is doing to you?”

Lux rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled out a stool to sit down at the kitchen island.

“Yeah,” I replied, securing the lid on the breakfast smoothie I’d made and sticking a straw through the hole. “What d’you think?”

His gaze swept around the kitchen, taking in the banana peel, the spilled milk, and splashes of berry juice along with the dusting of protein powder from when I’d misjudged how flimsy the bag was and it bounced back to knock half of it off the scoop. So annoying.

“I’ll clean it all up, don’t worry.”

“No, I’m impressed. Six months ago you’d still be asleep.” Lux reached for the blender jar, ran his finger around the edge, and stuck it in his mouth. “This is good.”

“Iamcapable of making a smoothie.”

“Yeah, but you’d always wait for someone else to do it.”

He got me there.

Since the day we’d moved into this apartment, thekitchen was Lux’s domain. Every day he’d make breakfast for us in some capacity—usually eggs and pancakes—and given how the rest of us only possessed the skills limited to opening a cereal box or making a smoothie, we were only too happy to let him.

In the two years we’d lived together, Lux had slowly been teaching us the way around the kitchen. We weren’t quite at the pasta-from-scratch, three-course-meals stage yet, but I could definitely make breakfast if no one else was awake, and not just cereal.

“Why are you up so early, anyway?” He glanced at the clock. “Not to mentiondressed.”

“My parents are in town.”

“Ahh. And today is the big reveal? You flew them in?”

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