Page 123 of Homewrecker

“A big one.”

He smiled slightly. “The kind you’ll pretend you don’t care about while controlling every fucking flower arrangement.”

I laughed through my stupid tears.

He moved closer. “I want us to travel.”

His hands found mine. “I want to build a house with you.”

My chest hurt.

“I want to argue with you over furniture I’m going to lose the argument about anyway.”

I cried harder.

He smiled. “And then I want a baby.”

The dream. Everything I’d daydreamed about alone suddenly coming out of his mouth. The exact picture I’d been painting in my head.

“I want to experience all of it with you.” He squeezed my hands. “All the stages.”

I looked down. “Then why can’t this be part of it?”

His face fell. “Because the timing is wrong.”

I closed my eyes.

“I don’t want our blessing to destroy someone else in the process,” he said.

I opened my eyes. “You mean her.”

“Yes. If Ravenna finds out right now…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what that does to her mentally.”

I stared at him.

He continued. “She’s finally improving. Finally.”

His voice cracked. “If this pushes her over the edge, Blair…”

Because I was me, empathy had ruined me more times than cruelty ever had. I imagined Ravenna finding out and doing something irreversible. Caleb and I living with it. And our child eventually learning that their beginning had been attached to someone else’s ending. I hated that he put that image inside my head. I hated it more that it worked.

I sat down.

Caleb crouched in front of me. “Baby.”

I stared at the floor. I knew what next steps meant now. I had known before he walked through the door.

I had spent last night holding my stomach because I knew. That was why I had loved my baby so aggressively for those few hours like I could cram a lifetime into one night.

I wasn’t going to beg him. I refused to have a child with someone who had to be convinced to want it. I wasn’t going to spend eighteen years hating Caleb because he’d shown me on day one that it wasn’t what he wanted right now. I had grown up inside resentment. I knew what children heard even when adults whispered.

No.

If I became a mother, I wanted someone beside me who was terrified and excited, not someone looking at our child like collateral damage.

I lifted my eyes. “Do you want me to terminate?”

Caleb froze.