Page 88 of Cluelessly Yours

The entire way home from Waverly’s, we’ve been kissing and touching and doing pretty much every PDA thing you can do while still out in public and not put yourself at risk for coming face-to-face with the NYPD. And now, with my apartment door officially in view, I’ve got no plans for stopping.

“Fuck the food,” I tell her as I blindly guide us off the elevator and down the hallway toward my door.

Sammy giggles around my persistent lips, andfuck, I’m barely hanging on by a thread at this point.

I fumble for my keys when we turn the corner of the hallway, the view of my door nonexistent because Sammy’s mouth is still attached to mine. She tastes like chocolate milkshake and Sammy and perfection, and I just hope I can get us into my apartment before I start ripping her clothes off.

“Noah.”

My eyebrows pull together as I kiss Sammy harder, fancifully fascinated with how she’s managed to say my name and keep her tongue in my mouth all at the same time.

But when she disentangles herself from me and turns around to face my apartment door, I realize the magic of Sammy saying my name while we’re making out is that she wasn’t the one saying it at all.

“Ashley?” I question, confusion turning my voice raspy. I haven’t seen or talked to this woman in months. What the hell is she doing at my apartment?

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you, but I guess I can see why you’ve been ignoring me,” she responds, and she glances back and forth between me and Sammy.

“Noah?” Sammy asks. “What’s going on?”

“Listen, I’m sorry to catch you off guard like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. It’s really important.”

It’s only then that my eyes catch sight of the perfect roundness of her stomach, and a mountain of dread covers me so swiftly I can hardly breathe.

“Noah, I’m pregnant,” Ashley says. “And we really need to talk.”

Still Sunday, May 29th

Sammy

Time shrieks and the world stands still as words I never considered a possibility churn over and over and over again in my head.

Noah, I’m pregnant. And we really need to talk.

Noah, I’mpregnant.

Noah, I’m pregnant.

Another woman is standing in front of Noah’s apartment, her rounded belly evidence of the words I can’t unhear, and everything thatwasten seconds ago is gone in a flash.

And Noah doesn’t question this woman. He doesn’t ask her who she is.

Instead, he says her name.

“Ashley…” He pauses, and his eyes move from me to her, from me to her, until he just stops on me. Silent apology sits behind his irises as his gaze searches mine. His pupils are constricted, his mouth is set into a firm line, and the only thing I can do is avert my attention to the floor.

This is too much.

“I can see that this isn’t a great time.” The woman’s voice shakeslike leaves ready to fall from a tree. “And I’m sorry, Noah, I really am, but Ineedto talk to you.”

My heart pounds and my palms sweat, and when I find the strength to look up from my shoes, my vision tunnels around the myriad of emotions that are drifting across Noah’s handsome face.

Shock, upset, and maybe most potent of all, acknowledgment, war in his beautiful blue eyes as he works to find a way to make this all okay. It’s like he’s searching for a way to make me feel secure without dismissing her, to make all of this somehow disappear like it doesn’t exist.

But Noah is a magical person, evidence of which I’ve received on a daily basis for the last month, and the best trick he has up his sleeve is his ability tonotdisappear.

He shows up and shows out, and there’s no way he won’t—or shouldn’t—do that with his own child. He is the antithesis of my ex-husband, and he wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with if he weren’t.

He has to explore this. He has to hear her out. He has to give himself a chance to be a real father, and most importantly, this baby deserves a chance at Noah Philips’s brand of unconditional love.

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