I smiled down at Rhiannon as she reached up to tug on my whiskers. I’d been involved in a special order project for a customer until the wee hours of the morning, and shaving had been the last item on my list today.
Ow. My niece had a grip on her.
As the minutes passed, my heart throbbed in my ears. What was going on in there? Was she all right? Maybe I should make sure she hadn’t passed out or something.
I turned with Rhiannon in my arms as the door opened.
Kinleigh’s eyes were shadowed and heavy, her mouth drawn tight. Neither diminished her beauty, but there was no missing her pervasive sadness.
Momentarily forgetting the baby in my arms, I crossed the room to her and wrapped my arm around her to draw her close. I brushed a kiss over her forehead. “It’s okay, Kin. We’ll figure it all out, I swear.” Even as I spoke softly, my mind was whirling and my pulse was racing. I couldn’t take in enough air.
This was really happening. We were having—
Kinleigh combed her fingers through Rhiannon’s baby fine curls and looked up at me, her chin trembling. “I’m not pregnant.”
Her words struck me mute. No delay in my brain this time. I understood exactly what she’d said, and I didn’t know how to compute it.
Rhiannon looked up between us and grabbed for one of
Kinleigh’s curls, tugging hard enough that she broke our eye contact and squeezed Rhi’s chubby little fist.
I didn’t know what to say. So many emotions were tangling inside me that I couldn’t verbalize them.
As if Kinleigh understood—or maybe she just needed to hold onto the baby right now—she eased Rhi out of my arms so I could walk to the window. I braced my palm against the glass and tried to come up with something rational.
This was a good thing. It was. We weren’t even in a relationship. Not from lack of trying on my part but still. We definitely weren’t in the space to have a baby.
“August?”
Kinleigh’s soft voice just about killed me. I forced myself to smile as I turned back toward her, noticing my niece had quieted in her arms and fallen asleep again. Soothed by her easy rocking and how she cuddled her against her just right.
“You have a way.” I nodded at the baby and she glanced down, smiling faintly before her chin trembled again.
She lifted it defiantly and met my gaze. “Glad I have my niece.”
So much was unsaid in that statement, and none of it made sense. A few minutes ago, she’d been worried about being pregnant. We both had been. So why did it feel like now we were…disappointed?
I tucked my hands in my pockets. “This is what you wanted,” I said carefully.
“What we wanted.”
“You’re sure?”
“About what?”
“The test…you did it right?”
“It’s not rocket science, Becks. You pee on a stick and it tells you your future.”
“Maybe it didn’t work? Isn’t that a thing? Like sometimes it says you aren’t and you are?”
She shifted the baby, seeming as if she couldn’t figure out how she wanted to hold her. Rhiannon was currently unconscious, so she didn’t mind. “Do you want me to be?”
“I didn’t say that. The timing isn’t good. We aren’t—hell, what are we?”
Kinleigh shifted her gaze somewhere over my shoulder. “We’re important to Ivy.”
“Right. We are. But as for us, you and me, what are we?”