“I see,” Lacey said.
One of the other boys pointed at me. “Who’s the stiff?” he said.
Lacey looked back at me. “Oh, him. He’s my brother.”
“Your real brother?”
Lacey laughed. “No. He’s my brother from another mother.”
The boys looked at each other. “Not so different from us then?”
“Not so different,” Lacey agreed.
Then she came back to the car.
“Let’s go,” she said.
I looked at her. She’d always been a thoughtful person, but I hadn’t seen her in a mood like this in quite a while. It was as if she was questioning her life, and her role in the world.
“You like those kids?” I asked as we rounded the corner. I mostly said it to break the silence.
“My father went out looking for boys like that,” she said. “After my mother died, and it was just me and him, he decided that he had to find a new purpose in his life.”
“I know it,” I said. “If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead now. Or in prison.”
“He found you, Grady, Forrester, and Jackson. Four boys.”
“He saved our lives,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “And in the process, he saved his own life, and mine. Who knows how things would have ended up for him and I if it hadn’t been for you and the brothers coming to join us. It was the four of you that completed our family.”
I nodded. “Do you feel like you should do something similar?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, I guess I’ll start a family.” Her hand was on her belly as she said it.
The image flashed across my mind of the night in the hayloft. What had I been thinking? I’d made her let me do it without a condom. It was crazy. It was almost as if I’d wanted to create a situation that would force us together. I’d wanted fate to take over, to bring us together, to fuse us. I’d made her call me husband too. And I’d called her wife.
I was in love with her. As I looked at her, sitting there, thinking about her life, I knew I was in love with her. I looked at her hand on her belly. What if I’d made her pregnant that night? I mean, I presumed I hadn’t. She’d have found out by now, and she’d have said something to me. She sure as hell wouldn’t have accepted a proposal from Rob if she was carrying my child. I was certain of that much. At least, I thought I was.
She’d tell me, wouldn’t she? If she was carrying my kid? She’d tell me?
I pulled the car over again and turned toward her.
“What are you doing?” she said.
I reached out to her, and took her face gently in my hands. Then I leaned in and kissed her. I was consumed with a feeling I’d never experienced before. It wasn’t just lust for the delicious sweetness of her lips. It was love too. I wanted to kiss her, I wanted to put my tongue in her mouth, because of the love I felt for her.
Kissing her was like being frozen, on a cold night, naked, and suddenly the sun coming out and shining on me. It gave me life. It poured warmth and joy into my heart the way the sun pours heat and light.
I pressed my lips against hers, creating a seal that I never wanted to break. My tongue touched hers, the softness creating a surge of desire through my body that I couldn’t control. My cock stiffened and throbbed.
My hands slid down over her shoulders and down to her back. I pulled her closer to me, lifting her from her seat and forcing her to straddle me and sit on my lap. I continued to kiss her, my mind and heart melting into hers in an embrace that rocked me to my core. It wasn’t like any kiss I’d ever known. It wasn’t even like the kiss I’d had with her before, in the loft. This was different. It was different because I knew I was in love with her now. And I knew I could lose her. If I didn’t do something, and soon, she’d end up with Rob, and that would be a crime against our destiny.
“Grant,” Lacey said, after I continued to kiss her, more and more passionately. “Grant stop. We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Grant. I’m engaged. Please stop.”
“Lacey,” I said, but I didn’t have any words to follow it up with. Words had abandoned me.
She climbed off me and got back into her seat. Then she looked at me.
“I can’t,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right. Rob might not be the perfect man, but he proposed to me, and I said yes. I can’t cheat, Grant.”
I nodded. Of course she couldn’t. She didn’t have it in her.
“I’ve been cheated on,” she continued. “I know the pain it caused. It just wouldn’t be right to inflict that on another person, no matter how badly we want it. I can’t do that.”
I nodded. I pulled back into the traffic and cleared my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course you’re right. I wasn’t … I wasn’t thinking.”
“I know,” she said.
“Sometimes I get carried away.”
“We all do, Grant.”