“I know.”
“I started my period,” she said quietly, her voice barely audible. “There is no baby. You can go back to your life, to your family, and we can be just friends.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut.
There is no baby.
I should’ve felt relieved. Should’ve felt like I had dodged a bullet, like the weight I had been carrying for weeks had finally been lifted. But I didn’t. I felt...disappointed.
And that realization—that I had been hoping, on some level, that shewaspregnant, that we would be tied together in a way that couldn’t be undone—shook me to my core.
“I don’t want to be just friends,” I said, my voice low and steady.
She looked up at me, her eyes wide and searching. “What?”
“I don’t want to be just friends, Hope.” I tightened my grip on her hands, pulling her closer. “I want to take you on a date. I want to spend time with you without hiding. I want to see where this goes. And I don’t give a damn if there’s a baby or not. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?” she whispered.
I looked at her. Really looked at her. At the way the streetlight caught in her hair, at the tears glistening in her eyes, at the way she was holding her breath like she was afraid of what I might say. “Because you make me feel alive again,” I said simply. “Because when I’m with you, I don’t feel like I’mdrowning. Because you’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. Because I’m falling for you, Hope. And I don’t want to fight it anymore.”
Her breath hitched, and a tear slipped down her cheek.
“So, yeah,” I continued, my voice rough with emotion. “I want to take you on a real date. I want to see if this thing between us is as real as it feels. And I want to stop pretending that I’m okay with just being friends.”
She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine. And then, slowly, she nodded.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay?”
“Okay.” A small, trembling smile tugged at her lips. “Take me on a date, Chapman Moore.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding, and before I could stop myself, I pulled her into my arms. Her face buried against my chest. And for the first time in weeks, maybe months, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Chapter Seventeen
Hope
The porch light was on when I pulled into the driveway.
That wasn’t unusual. Faith always left it on when one of us was out late. But the figure sitting on the front steps, silhouetted against the warm glow spilling from the windows, made my stomach drop.
Zeke.
I turned off the truck’s engine and sat there for a moment, my hands still gripping the steering wheel. My heart was still racing from Chapman’s words, from the way he had held me in the diner parking lot like I was something precious. The scent of his cologne still clung to my jacket, and I could still feel the ghost of his arms around me.
I’m falling for you, Hope.
His words echoed in my mind, sweet and terrifying all at once. But now, looking at my brother waiting on the porch in the warm summer night, reality came crashing back. Zeke didn’t know where I had been. Didn’t know who I had been with. And if he found out, if he discovered I had been meeting Chapman Moore, his former Golden Skulls brother, in secret for the past few weeks, there would be hell to pay.
I took a breath, steadying myself, and climbed out of the truck. The gravel crunched under my boots as I walked toward the porch. Zeke didn’t move, didn’t look up. He just sat there with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped loosely between them. The porch light caught the edges of his dark hair, and I could see the tension in his shoulders even from a distance.
He was waiting. And he wasn’t happy.
I climbed the steps slowly and sat down beside him, leaving a small space between us. The wood was cool beneath me, and the night air carried the faint scent of wood smoke from someone’s fireplace down the road. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
Zeke still didn’t say anything.