Page 36 of His Vivacious Angel
Forest grins as he makes his way to his bedroom. “Did you pack mine up too?”
“No, but I will for fifty bucks.”
He chuckles. “Nice try.”
I’m thinking of an excuse I can tell Dad to get him to leave, so I can finally abandon the safety of the couch, when Forest suddenly fills his doorway, his eyes wide and unblinking. He doesn’t have to say a damn thing when he lifts the plastic grocery sack—the one he’d tossed to the side before he’d fucked me and came inside me for the second time.
With Dad’s back turned to get a bottle of water from the fridge, I shoot off the couch and sprint across the living room. Forest steps back a half second before I plow into him, and I snatch the bag from his hand. He sets Sebastian down on the bed and follows me into the bathroom.
“You didn’t take it?” he asks with a whisper, having a tough time ripping apart the hard plastic packaging of the emergency contraceptive pill.
“We fell asleep.” My hands shake so badly when I fill the hotel-provided cup from the faucet that the water spills over.
“Oh shit,” Forest says as we watch the pill slip, in slow motion, from his bumbling fingers. It lands in the sink and immediately starts to dissolve. He’s slow to pinch it with a grimace and brings what little is left to my mouth, as if to hand-feed it to me.
“I’m not taking that.” I gag at the thought of swallowing itand turn my head away. “I have no idea how clean this sink really is and what kind of germs it might have picked up.” It crumbles between his fingers, anyway, before I can decide if it’s worth trying to force it down.
“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to risk it. We’ll…find one at the airport,” he says with a questioning lift of his voice and a heavy sigh, washing his hands. “If they don’t have one?—”
“I guess I’ll run to the store when we get home,” I finish quietly. “That should be fine, right?”
Forest’s shoulders drop. “Maybe?”
We stare at each other for a long time. Is he imagining, like I am, what would happen if I were to take the pill too late for it to work and we had a child together? Forest and I would be attached to each other for the rest of our lives.
Finally, I ask, “Will you grab my suitcase so I can change?”
He steps back, perhaps only now noticing that I’m wearing his clothes. “I wish you didn’t have to.”
“You have to stop looking at me like?—”
“Like I want to put a baby in you?”
“Yes!”Though he might have already.I push him through the door, then shoo him away. “Go!”
When we get back to Texas, Dad and I help Forest bring his and the kids’ luggage inside his house. Since we all live on the same street, it only made sense to hire a shuttle bus instead of driving separately to and from the airport.
“Are you staying to help put the kids to bed?” Dad asks me.
“Yes,” Forest and I answer at the same time, though Forest’s voice comes out shriller than mine.
“Jinx,” Dad says, his brows pinching because I hadn’t saidit first. With a short wave, he heads home, rolling both our luggage down the street.
As soon as I close the front door, I motion for Forest to hand me his keys. “I’ll take your car.”
Forest brows wrinkle briefly. “Why can’t you take yours?”
“Dad will think it’s suspicious.”
“I think we’re well past that.”
He’s so right. Dad hardly spoke on the flight, keeping tabs on me after I chose to sit on Forest’s side of the aisle with Josephine between us instead of beside Dad.
Forest spins his keys on his index finger and clicks his tongue. “Are you sure you’re okay to be out driving this late?”
Considering it’s only nine o’clock, I tell him, “I’ll be fine. I’ll go slow.”
“I don’t know…” he says, scratching the back of his neck.
