“Sera! Would you stop?”
She came to a halt about halfway down the sidewalk, the sounds of the bar heavy and throbbing through the frosted windows. Whirling, she turned to face Gavin. “What is the matter with you? I’m going home. I told you that you don’t need to follow me.”
“I want to know what’s wrong. One minute we’re all having a good time, and the next you’re running out like the hounds of hell are on you. What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
The urge to make an excuse hit her once more, but Sera ruthlessly pushed it back and went for the truth. “No, Gavin. That’s my point. Nothing happened. We were in there with two couples, both of whom were supportive and loving of one another. Both of whom had quiet moments of intimacy talking about their day. And it made me realize—”
She stopped, aware this sudden burst of honesty was tied to a stressful day that capped off a stressful week. Gavin was back in her life. She was pregnant. And, based on her conversation with Kerrigan, she wasn’t hiding that fact particularly well.
And then Kerrigan went and said that incredible thing about how Gavin looked at her like she was precious, and somewhere after that she’d managed to lose her equilibrium.
Did she even want that?
A small voice whispered very loudly in the back of her mind that yes, she most certainly did. Even as another one wanted to shut it up with copious amounts of ice cream and cake.
“It made you realize what?”
“We’re not a couple. We had amazing sex, and we’re having a baby, and we’re not a couple. And I have no idea what to do about that.”
She didn’t. For someone who usually had an answer for every challenge she faced, this was a new experience. She was fresh out of answers. Worse, she was so confused she didn’t even make sense to herself, let alone to anyone else.
Which made her next move that much more puzzling.
Right there in the middle of the sidewalk, she moved straight into his arms and wrapped hers around his neck, dragging his mouth down to hers.
White-hot need electrified his body as Gavin quickly caught up to the woman who’d wrapped herself up in his body. He sank into the warm welcome of her and the even warmer welcome of her mouth, desperate to convey all he felt, even as he knew there were so many emotions he hadn’t fully figured out yet.
The confusion that had carried him through the past few minutes—all while trying to understand her abrupt change of heart—wasn’t any closer to abating, but he had to admit he definitely preferred this version of Sera to the one storming out of a bar and leaving him in her wake.
Even if the question behind all of it was why. A point his body was presently ignoring as the kiss spun out between them, wanting and needy and even a little bit sad.
It was the sad that had him lifting his head, his gaze never leaving hers. “It’d be my greatest pleasure to kiss you straight through to next week, but what’s this about? Talk to me.”
Sera slipped from his arms, and while he was loath to have her pull away, he recognized the dangerous emotional ground they were both treading. Heavy emotional territory that included a new life they still hadn’t spent all that much time discussing.
Was that what had her upset?
“Oh, Sera, I’m sorry. I know we need to talk about the baby. Really talk, about their future and how we’re going to parent. Maybe a night out wasn’t what either of us needed.”
“We do need to talk about the baby.” She nodded her head, her gaze distracted as she focused on something across the street. “But that’s not why I wanted to leave.”
“Then what has you upset?”
“I’m not upset. I’m emotionally all over the place. And it should be about the baby, but, I don’t know. We’ll work it out. I want what’s best for our child, and I might not know you well, but I do know you well enough to understand that you want the same. We’ll figure it out together.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
She stared across the street once more before turning back to him, the warm woman in his arms vanishing beneath all those emotions.
“It’s us, Gavin! I’m trying to figure out us. What we are to each other. We have attraction, that’s for sure, and we have from the first. But we don’t have a relationship. We’re not beholden to one another. We don’t know each other!” That last piece seemed practically torn from her lips, almost like a plea.
But before he could respond, she pressed on, “I stood there at a table with two couples who not only know each other, but are so intimately involved with each other’s lives that they read each other. Effortlessly. And I’m having a baby with a man I don’t know. Not you or your moods or even what you like for breakfast.”
Her gaze drifted off again at the end, and Gavin finally turned to follow her line of sight before turning back to her.
“We’ll get there. This is all new, but I’m committed to getting to know you, Sera. To letting you know me.”
“You mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why did you clam up when I said you were part of a family with the Harbor team? And why haven’t you mentioned any family member at all to me? Not once, even a casual reference?”
Her gaze drifted once more, and Gavin felt rising anger at how Sera had seemingly split her focus. “What the hell is so important over there? All while you’re accusing me of not sharing things with you.”
She shook her head, her attention snapping back to him. “Something over there keeps moving. And I saw something flash in the light of the streetlamp.”
Her split focus kept distracting him, especially since he’d wanted to ask her the exact same questions she was pressing on him.
Where was her family? Beyond Enzo and Robin, she hadn’t said a word. Had she told her parents she was pregnant? Had she told anyone? Because nothing they’d spoken of to date suggested she had.
Yet despite all that and what was possibly the most important conversation of his life, his cop instincts had kicked in and he couldn’t let her comments go. “Flash how?”
“I don’t know. It was probably somebody’s bag or shoes or who knows. But something keeps catching my eye.”
