Never Tied Down (The Never Duet #2)(45)

I shrugged. “I don’t think she felt well today.”

“Yeah, but I mean, it was weird, right? She was fine one minute, then sick the next. She was starving, but then she wasn’t hungry.”

I cringed because I knew it was only a matter of time before he came to the same conclusion I had. Finally, I let out a loud sigh. I wasn’t going to just let him flounder around, he needed to be put out of his misery.

“Do you think, possibly, and I’m just throwing this out there, that perhaps…she could be pregnant?”

My question was nearly a physical force. I could almost see the way it hung in the air between us before it landed right on top of his head with a brutal impact.

“Pregnant?” he asked, but more exclaimed. Loudly.

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling my hand free from his, wanting to give him all the space and hands he needed to deal with his emotions. “I just thought the way the smells got to her, how hungry she was, how she kept saying she would be okay, or that it would pass, like she knew exactly what was wrong and knew nothing could be done about it.” I held my hands up and scrunched my shoulders. “It kind of seemed like she was pregnant to me.”

“Pregnant?” he repeated, his face blank except for his eyebrows, which were reaching new and uncharted heights.

“I don’t know. I mean, I could be way off base.”

“Like ‘having a baby’ pregnant?”

“I don’t know of any other kind of pregnant,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. He was quiet for a few more moments and then turned to look at me.

“You think my baby sister is going to have a baby?”

Again, I held up my hands and scrunched my shoulders. “Possibly?”

Then his eyebrows dropped to their regular height, and he got a little quieter. “She did mention something to me about having thirty weeks to figure everything out…”

Oh. My. God.

“Riot,” I said gently, placing my hand on his thigh. “She’s totally pregnant.”

“Shit f*cking damn it,” he cursed, as he slammed his palm against the steering wheel.

“She’s probably ten weeks pregnant, which totally explains why she still has morning sickness, why she isn’t showing, and her, uh, emotional instability.” I thought of her eyes at lunch and how they were begging me to save her from her brother finding out she was, indeed, pregnant, and suddenly I felt like a traitor to the female sisterhood. “Listen, you can’t tell her I told you. In fact, you can’t tell anyone. She didn’t even tell me, I guessed. But I figured it out at lunch and I’m pretty sure she knew I’d guessed and she gave me the look that said, ‘Please don’t tell my brother.’ So, please, don’t tell her I told you.”

“I’m just supposed to tell her I figured it out myself?”

“No! She’ll never believe that.” He looked at me, eyebrows back up, offended. “I just mean that she’ll never believe that a man who’s never had a kid or been around a pregnant woman before would put all those clues together.”

“Okay, I won’t tell her. But I’m calling her every week. And I’m texting her daily. What’s she going to do? Have a baby on a cruise ship?”

Now he sounded like he was getting angry. The rest of the drive was me listening to him list all the reasons why Halah couldn’t have a baby. I didn’t bother telling him that it was not really any of his business whether or not his sister had a baby. It took me a few minutes to realize he was driving to my apartment, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to anger the beast. He parked my Rover and then scrubbed his hands over his face.

I let him calm down for a moment and then I quietly said, “Your truck isn’t here. It’s at the lot. Do you want me to drive you there?”

He leaned his head back and then turned it to look at me.

“No, I just want to drink a beer, relax for a bit, and go to bed.”

“Here?” I couldn’t even try to hide the surprise from my voice.

“Did you expect, after everything that went on between us this weekend, you would ever sleep alone again?”

My heart swelled at his words. I flung my arms over the center console and wrapped them around his neck, pulling myself to him. He hugged me and one of his hands ran down the back of my head, stopping on my neck and squeezing me there. My pulse picked up with his touch. A hand on my neck had always been something I associated with Riot. It was his signature move, and feeling it in that moment only made everything inside of me heat up and liquefy.

“I don’t mind if you want to take things slow, Riot. You don’t have to stay with me.”

“Babe, I was all in months ago. I’m all in now. If you want me to go to my own place, you just have to say it. But I don’t really want to be away from you. Not now. Not when we just really found each other again.”

His words were said against my neck and even though I couldn’t see his face, I could hear his sincerity, his need. And even though a rational person would take a step back and not rush into such a serious relationship so quickly, there wasn’t even a tiny part of me that wanted to be apart from him either.

But there was one thing.

“I don’t know if I can stay at your apartment.” He didn’t say anything, just squeezed me tighter. “Marcus slept in that apartment and I just don’t think I could be in your living room without seeing him there and remembering…”