Page 97 of Dash

“For the coffee shop where I also work.”

What the actual fuck? “All these late finishes were because you were working a second job?”

No wonder she was so fucking tired. Two jobs, pregnant.

She shifts her shoulders. “Existing is expensive, Dash, especially for a girl living alone in a city.”

I rub my temple, a headache forming somewhere behind my eyebrow. She’s growing our baby and working two jobs while I’ve been coasting on club money. “You’re not doing that anymore.”

The shift in her demeanour is visceral. Playful has left the building. Now, she’s moving into irritated. “Am I? Are you going to pay my bills?”

“Yes,” I say without missing a beat.

She blinks at me. “What? No. That’s not how this works.”

“That’s exactly how this works. Do you really think I’m going to let you work yourself into the ground doing two fucking jobs?”

“I mean, it’s not ideal?—”

“It’s not happening.”

She drops her hands to her hips, her lips pouting, and fuck, I want to kiss her.

“You don’t get to tell me I can’t do things just because I’m having your baby now. That’s not how this works.”

I kiss her temple, and some of the fight drains out of her. “Let me tell you exactly how this works. I take care of you, and you don’t run yourself into the ground just trying to keep the lights on. If I’d known you were working two jobs these last few months, I would’ve stopped it.”

“I’m fine. I survived.”

The flippant way she sees it strikes a nerve inside me. “I don’t want you to survive, Dayna. I want you to fucking live. I want you to be happy. I want you to enjoy your life, not be worn down by it.”

I tear my fingers through my hair, needing to do something with my hands before I put them through something. “All this time, you’ve been breaking yourself in half and you didn’t even think to tell me that you were struggling.”

“I didn’t think you’d be here long enough for it to matter.” And there it is.

The way she says it breaks something inside of me. She genuinely didn’t think we were going to last.

I was building a future for us behind the scenes while she was creating backup plans for when it went wrong.

“It mattered.”

“I know that now, but I didn’t at the time.”

I take her face in my hands. “You’re everything to me. Even before I knew about the baby, I was all in this. I fucking love you.”

Her breath hitches, as if I punched her in the heart. I keep going, not wanting her to lessen the moment with a joke.

I’ve never been more serious in my entire fucking life.

“I’ve loved you since the first moment I heard you laugh in that fucking bar,” I continue. “From the moment you opened your mouth and gave me that sharp fucking tongue of yours. You look at yourself and you only see the bad, but those parts of you that you want to hide, those are the ones I love the most. You never have to shrink yourself from me, Dayna. I want you to be unapologetically you.”

Tears brim in her eyes, and when they fall, I capture them with my thumb. It makes my chest ache to see them. “It’s really not fair of you to make a hormonal pregnant woman cry.”

“Every time you cry, I’ll just kiss those tears away.” I scan her face and then take a leap, hoping she’ll jump with me. “Move in with me.”

She blinks. “That’s a bit quick, isn’t it?”

“You’re standing here with my baby inside you. Quick has left the fucking building.”

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