“What?” I choke out.
“This is too much house for me. It’s a four-bedroom home and I can’t maintain it. I don’t want to sell it either, so the only logical thing if for you and the girls to move in and when you take the next step with Harrison, he and his son will fit nicely in here. This house needs a family, not an old man.”
His words throw me. I never thought he’d be accepting of another man the way he is and to suggest that we live together, blows me away.
“I don’t know what to say.”
He smiles although it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You say yes.”
“Where will you go?”
Mr. Powell rubs his hands down the legs of his pants. “I was thinking of travelling some or I could live at your place.”
“We’re really pregnant!”
“Very,” I say showing him the picture.
“Why does the baby have two heads?” I shake my head. Sometimes he’s the poster child for dumb football players, I swear.
“Twins,” I say quietly. We can’t afford one baby, let alone two.
“I made two babies?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Mason, your super human sperm created not one, but two babies that have taken over space in my body.”
Mason fist pumps. I don’t think he understands the magnitude of what’s happening here.
“You know two babies means double everything.”
“I know, I can count.”
“Of course you can.” I sit down on the couch and cradle my head. I don’t know how we’re going to make it. We live in a two-bedroom apartment with Josie and Noah, there’s no way we can add two more of everything there. “We have to move.”
Mason sits down next to me and pulls me to him. “I talked to my dad the other day. He and mom suggested we move into the house until we can save for a down payment on our own place. He says that we can take what we’d spend in rent and put it away.”
“Is that what you want to do?” The thought of living with the Powells doesn’t exactly appeal to me, but living with them is better than living with my parents.
Mason shrugs. “I don’t know, think about it. Mom would be there to help with the babies and you know she wants to.”
I nestle into the side of his neck. His thumb is moving back and forth along my abdomen. “We’ll never have alone time.”
Mason adjusts and pulls me into his lap. “Seriously? I’m fairly sure you and I have had a lot of alone time in that house. For all we know, these guys were created there.” He pulls up my shirt and kisses my stomach.
“If you think we should move to your parent’s home, then I’m okay with it.”
“I do. Just think about how much fun Mason Junior and Mason Junior Junior will have there.”
“Oh my god, Mason, we are not naming our children that.” I punch him lightly in the shoulder.
He pulls me into a hug. I cling to him as if it’s last time I’ll hug him like this.
“You know the girls spent their first Christmas here.”
“And others,” he adds.
“After Mason died, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make the house payments by myself and Liam helped. He told me that I can’t lose the house that holds all of their memories of Mason, but this is where we brought them home too.”
“You’ll move in?”
I smile widely. “We’d be honored.”
I sit in my car and stare at his house. It’s dark and his car isn’t in the driveway. I suppose I’m thankful he’s not home, because getting caught lurking in the shadows is something I definitely don’t want to happen. I don’t know what I’m doing out here. What I thought I’d find.
I feel as if I’ve deceived Mr. Powell. I should’ve told him that Harrison and I are no longer together, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. They sound easy in my head, but I’m not capable of saying them out loud because that would make this all too real and I’m not sure I can handle that right now.
My thoughts run away as I ponder all the things he could be doing now. Is he at the bar dancing with some woman that he doesn’t plan on knowing the name of? Does he hate me for leading him on? That’s how I feel right now. I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Looking for any excuse to kick him out of my life and that’s what I’ve done.
“Mommy, what are we doing?” I look in my rear view mirror at Elle and close my eyes to erase the thoughts of Harrison.
“Nothing, mommy just had to stop and think for a minute,” I say as I put the car in drive and make my way over to Liam and Josie’s to pick up Peyton.
I open the door to Liam and Josie’s house and am met with just the sound of the television. Usually this house is loud and boisterous, especially when the kids are all here. Elle runs past me into the living room and shrieks.
“What are you doing?”