“Nat?” Devlin caught hold of my hands as I took a step back without even realizing I was pulling away from him. “Your hands are freezing.” Of course they were. How could they be warm when I felt as if there was no blood left in my body? There was a wound in my heart that was emptying my body of every last drop and I had no one to blame but myself. “What’s wrong? Talk to me, baby.”
That one word hit me square in the chest with the force of a wrecking ball. “I need to tell you something.” It came out a whisper and I was surprised that it had even been that loud. Surprised that any sound had left my throat at all it was so tight with the lump that was now choking me.
“Okay. So tell me.” He gave me a small smile, but his eyes were full of worry. “Whatever it is we can deal with it, and then we can go back to the bus. Screw this party. I just want to be with you.”
I opened my mouth, only to close it. I had to swallow hard several times before the lump loosened even a little. “I…” Fuck, this was hard. How had I been so stupid? What had possessed me to..?
“Nat?”
I closed my eyes as another tear spilled free. “I didn’t… I couldn’t…” Shit, I wasn’t even making sense. Taking a deep breath, I just blurted it all out. “I-I didn’t take the pill. I couldn’t. The idea of even putting it in my mouth and swallowing it, of possibly hurting something that we created together, had me throwing up. So I flushed it.” I had to swallow again as a sob tried to break free. “I bought the Plan B pill on my way home that day, but I didn’t take it.” The sob escaped and I pulled my hands free from his suddenly slackened hold to cover my mouth.
“But we’ve been having sex without protection for weeks now.” He stepped back, his eyes almost accusing. “You said that it was safe. That you went to the doctor…”
I closed my eyes to block out that look, wanting to vomit. Had that look been on his face when Tawny told him that Harris was his son and not Liam’s? In that moment, I could picture that it had been.
“I-I d-did go to the doctor…” I stuttered through the clarification as I fought another sob. I should have told him sooner, should have told him when he’d texted me the next day that I hadn’t been able to take that fucking pill. Maybe we could have cleared up everything long before now. Maybe then he wouldn’t now be looking down at me like I’d committed the worst possible crime. “W-wh-when I m-missed my period.” His face visibly paled and I wanted to run away from him.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
If he’d yelled the question at me it might have hurt less. The look on his face, the betrayal in his eyes as he looked down at my waist, gutted me. “When were you going to tell me?”
Devlin
How was it possible to go from so jealous I couldn’t see straight, to feeling like I’d been given everything I’d always wanted when Natalie said that she loved me…to this? All within ninety minutes? I felt like a yo-yo being twisted and turned by some magician.
I couldn’t believe that Natalie had lied about taking the morning-after pill. Although, to be fair, she’d never really said that she had taken it. Just that she had bought it. Of course that had made me think that she would automatically take it. Why would she have told me repeatedly that she’d bought it if she hadn’t used it?
Clenching my jaw, I turned away from the sight of her as she struggled to get the words out, to tell me if she had even planned to tell me I was going to be a father again. It hurt to look at her. I couldn’t help but compare what was going on between us right now to the day that Harris had been born and Tawny had had no choice but to name me Harris’s father instead of Liam.
I’d been blindsided that day, too. I’d figured that after my drunken mistake with Tawny that I wouldn’t have to confess that I’d betrayed my best friend by sleeping with his girl. It had been a mistake, one that I never planned on repeating. When Liam had made the announcement that Tawny was pregnant, I still hadn’t thought that the baby could be mine. I remembered putting on protection. I was safe. The baby wasn’t mine.
And then Harris had been born and there was no way that anyone could ever make the mistake of who had fathered that baby. He’d looked just like me, from a head of dark hair to the tone of his skin. I’d been helpless and kind of hopeless as I’d watched Liam’s love and trust in me fade from his eyes as he’d looked from me to that little baby wrapped in a blue blanket.
“I—” Natalie broke off and I turned to face her again. “I was waiting to see Dr. Rashid on the thirteenth.” My eyes narrowed, remembering that text message from the doctor’s office. She’s said it was for Lana and Dallas. Obviously she had forgotten to say that it was for her as well.
“Were you trying to punish me for that fucking bet? Is that why you didn’t tell me?”
“No!” She shook her head, tears pouring down that elfin face that I loved so much. But I was so pissed, so fucking hurt, that her tears didn’t gut me like they might have if I’d been thinking clearly. “If I’d wanted to punish you for the bet, I would have followed through with the one I’d made with Marissa. Not telling you about being pregnant had nothing to do with your bet with Zander.”
It took a moment for my anger-fogged mind to realize what she’d just said. “You made a bet with Marissa?” What the fuck? Natalie and sweet little Marissa had made a bet? “What kind of bet, Natalie?”
She winced. “I wasn’t going to go through with it.”
“What kind of fucking bet?” I demanded. I didn’t know why the thought of her making a bet with Marissa bothered me so badly. Hadn’t I done the same thing? Maybe it was because I already sensed that the bet those two chicks had made was going to hurt more than anything else ever had…
Natalie bit her lip and looked anywhere but at me. “Marissa was hurting over what she’d thought Wroth had done, and I was still mad and hurt over your bet with Z. So Marissa made me a bet…” She broke off and I glared down at her, silently telling her to continue. “She bet me that I couldn’t make you love me and then walk away at the end of the summer… Before she did the same with Wroth.”
If words could inflict physical wounds, I would have been a dead man right then. She had planned on making me love her and then walking away without a backwards glance? I took a stumbling step back, unable to believe that she would have agreed to hurt me like that.
“You…” I shook my head. “You hated me that much?”
“At the time I hated everything and everyone.” She rubbed a hand over her tear-soaked face, smearing her eye makeup. “But it only took a few days before I realized that I didn’t want to follow through with the bet. I barely even thought about it. By the time Marissa backed out, I had almost completely forgotten about the damn thing. I was happy.” She stopped, swallowed hard and then continued. “It felt like we had gotten a fresh start and I wanted to see where we could go before I brought up my pregnancy.”
It was all too much to take in all at once. I felt overwhelmed with confusion at all she’d just thrown at me. I was torn between being pissed off at her for keeping the pregnancy from me and how the knowledge that I was going to be a dad again felt. I was hurt that she had made a bet to give me everything I’d ever wanted and then walk away. That she hadn’t been going to follow through with it didn’t matter at the moment. I was confused and unable to sort through how I really felt about it all.
Hadn’t my bet the year before proven that nothing good could come from making stupid, spur of the moment bets?
“Dev, I’m sorry.” She took a step closer; her hands rose as if she was going to touch me.
I took a step back, putting some distance between us. The pain that twisted her beautiful elfin face was another stab to my gut, but I couldn’t help it. If she touched me I would have yet another emotion to dig through to get to the bottom of how I really felt. My need for her would burn through everything else until I was exhausted and still deep inside of her. I needed to sort out everything else before I touched her or I let her touch me ag
ain.
Natalie’s chin trembled and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip to steady it. “D-do you want me to have an ab…” A sob tried to escape her but she swallowed it down. “A-abortion?”
If I’d thought everything she had said up until that point had hurt, it was nothing to the pain that exploded in my chest at that one question. Get rid of our baby? No, no. No! I couldn’t even stand the idea of her not having my baby. All the confusion I’d felt up to that point about her being pregnant vanished.
With that one question—that one fucking word—my brain cleared of all the fog I’d felt up to that point. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t told me about the baby until now. It didn’t matter that she and Marissa had made some stupid bet. All that did matter was that this woman loved me as much as I loved her.
And she was going to have my baby.
Another tear spilled from her eyes and I fell to my knees, unable to keep myself on my feet when I saw just how deep the pain in those tear-flooded eyes went. With a sob of my own, I reached out and wrapped my hands around her waist, pulling her close so I could bury my face in her still flat stomach.
Her entire body was trembling and I held on tighter, scared that she might fall. “Please don’t cry,” I whispered.
“I’m so s-s-sorry.” She sobbed so hard I knew she had to be destroying all her vital organs. It was fucking destroying me.
“Stop.” I pressed a kiss against the center of her abdomen through her shirt. “I’m sorry too. I love you, Natalie. Don’t cry, baby. I’m sorry.” I kissed her stomach again. “It’s okay. Everything is okay. I’m not mad. I love you.”
“I’m no better than she is.” I flinched, having one of my earlier thoughts tossed back into my face like that made me see that this situation in no way compared to what had happened with Tawny over sixteen years ago. I hadn’t loved Tawny, hadn’t even liked that bitch. But I loved Natalie and I definitely wanted the baby that was now growing inside of her. “I should have told you… Or taken that damn pill after all.”
“Don’t say that,” I begged, tightening my hold around her. “You aren’t anything like Tawny. Nothing. Do you hear me, Nat? She was just looking for a free ride through life when she did what she did. And I’m glad you didn’t take that fucking pill.”
Natalie made a disbelieving sound in the back of her throat and I grimaced. “Okay, so at first I wasn’t glad. But it just hit me wrong when you first said that you were pregnant.” Her lips trembled again and I wished I could hit rewind and completely redo the last ten minutes. “I was terrified, Nat. I’m still terrified.”
“O-of what?” she whispered brokenly.
“I’m scared of messing up. You and me, us? We’re still new at this whole relationship thing. I screwed up royally last time, baby. I love you. And I love the little rocker that is in here.” I kissed her stomach again, this time lingering as I imagined pressing a kiss to our child’s forehead. “I don’t want to fuck things up for us or it again.”
Shaking fingers combed through my hair, holding my face against her. “I’m scared, too. I love you, Devlin. So much it freaks me out sometimes. I don’t want to mess us up. I-I don’t want to live without you ever again.”
“Good, so you’ll marry me and we can learn to not fuck us up along the way.” I nodded. “Sounds like a good plan to me.” I felt her go completely still and raised my eyes to meet her gaze. Her blue-gray eyes were wide, her mouth gaping open. When I saw more tears spill from her eyes, I groaned. “You’re not supposed to cry anymore. I’m trying to fix this.”
“You want to marry me?” She breathed dazedly. “But you don’t want to get married. You used to say all the time that you didn’t believe in marriage.”
“I’ve been thinking about marrying you for a few weeks now,” I confessed. “I used to think that marriage was a trap, that it took away your freedom and tied you down. But I see now that it isn’t like that. At least marrying you would never be like that for me. I love you, Nat. I want to spend the rest of my life with you… Will you marry me?”
The tears seemed to be coming faster now. I bit back a curse. I should have waited, done this better. I’m sure that if I’d asked Emmie she could have come up with an awesome way to ask Natalie to marry me. She’d pulled off a fucking miracle for Wroth with that fucking Wizard of Oz theme for Marissa. I didn’t even have a ring for Natalie yet. Girls like that kind of shit. Right?
“Yes,” Natalie whispered so softly that I nearly missed it.
“Yes?” I echoed. “Did you say yes?”
She nodded her head. A small, broken laugh escaped her and her face lit up with the brightest smile I’d ever seen on a crying chick. “Y-yes. I love you so damn much. Of course I want to marry you, Dev.”
A mixture of relief and elation washed through me. I felt happy tears burn my own eyes and I buried my face into her stomach again before she could see them. She’s said yes. Thank fuck.
“I’m not going to be like Wroth and say let’s get married today. But… soon, okay?” I stood so that I could kiss her. “Okay?” I repeated, lifting my lips.
“As soon as this tour is over, we can get married,” she promised. Her hands dived into my hair and pulled my head back down for another kiss.
After only a few seconds, I knew that kisses weren’t going to be enough. I pulled back, grabbed her hand and headed toward our bus. “You need to get us our own bus, baby,” I told her as I pulled her past a few of the roadies who were drinking beer and eating plates piled high with amazing-smelling food. If I hadn’t been so hungry for her, I might have stopped to grab a plate for the two of us. But I needed to be inside of her. Now.
The rollercoaster of emotions she’d taken me on today—fuck, in the last two hours—had left my body pulsing with a need that I’d only ever felt with her. Now that I had her promise to marry me, knew that she loved me, a bomb going off wouldn’t have stopped me from making love to her right at that moment.
“Okay,” she said and laughed behind me as she practically ran to keep up with my large steps. “Whatever you want.”
Our bus was just a few yards away when I heard someone calling out Natalie’s name. I didn’t stop as I glanced around to see who wanted her attention. When I saw Harris and Lucy hurrying toward us, I nearly groaned. No way could I go into that bus and start making Natalie scream with ecstasy with those two right outside. I was going to kill that boy later, but for the moment I stopped to see what he wanted.
When he reached us, my son’s eyes went straight to Natalie’s face. When he saw the tear stains on her cheeks, he turned an accusing glare on me. “I thought you two had everything worked out?”
“We did,” I bit out, trying to calm the need burning through my body and not punch my kid in the face for stopping me from celebrating with Natalie the only way I really wanted to celebrate: with her screaming my name as I pounded into her tight little pussy.
Natalie pulled her hand from mine and grinned at my son. “Your dad just asked me to marry him,” she told Harris and I was thankful that she had omitted anything else that had just happened between us. I really didn’t want to announce to the world yet that I had knocked my future wife up. Especially not when her brothers were so close by and could start swinging fists if they didn’t like the idea of me impregnating their little sister.
“Really?” Harris demanded in a voice that hadn’t been so high since he’d hit puberty. He hugged Natalie hard before hugging me. Fresh tears burned my eyes. Damn, the kid hadn’t hugged me in years. Not like this. If I’d known that asking Natalie would have made him this happy I would have done it long before now.
I met Natalie’s gaze over the top of Harris’s head. She grinned up at me happily. My heart clenched at the sight of her so happy. Damn, I loved that chick.
“Congrats Dad,” he said in a voice raspy with emotion. “I’m happy for you and Nat.” He pounded me on the back twice before stepping back. “I was hoping that you two would get married.”
&nbs
p; Yeah, I could see that in his overly bright eyes.
Lucy hugged Natalie. “That’s great. I’m so happy for you guys.”
“Who’s happy for who?” I heard a deep voice ask and groaned when I saw Jesse walking over with Layla’s hand in his own. Fuck, now I knew we weren’t going anywhere near our bed anytime soon.
“Nat and Mr. Cutter are getting married, Daddy.” Lucy beamed up at her father.
Jesse’s crazy changing eyes widened for a moment before he was sticking his free hand out. “Congrats, man.”
Layla kissed Natalie’s cheek. “Congrats, Devlin,” she said once she’d pulled back and stood on tiptoe to kiss my cheek.
Within the blink of an eye, everyone was surrounding us again. Drake and Shane came over, followed by Nik and Emmie. The Demons all shook my hand and then my bandmates were pounding me on the back in congratulations. Before I knew it, we were being pulled into the party.
We didn’t get to celebrate the way I really wanted until several agonizing hours later…
Natalie
The morning of July thirteenth I woke up a bundle of nerves. It was going to be a good day, I promised myself. No matter what happened, it was going to be a good day. I was going to make Phoenix, Arizona my bitch. That thought had a small smile tilting at my lips.
Devlin groaned in his sleep and rolled over. One long arm reached out, searching for me. When his hand found my breast, he groaned again and pulled me against him, his face buried in my neck without even opening his eyes, his nose nuzzling against my ear. “Morning, baby.”
I snuggled closer. “Morning.”
“Feeling okay?” he asked, his hand massaging my breast. My nipple beaded instantly, my panties growing wet even as I felt his cock hardening against my thigh. “Headache back?”
“Nope. I haven’t had too many for a few days now.” Not since I’d told him that I was pregnant, actually. Linc told me he thought it was because my blood pressure wasn’t through the roof now. I figured he was right.