Page 102 of Nine Month Contract
“Are you supposed to drink coffee?” I bark, my tone more judgmental than I intended.
Her brows lift as she pauses at the foot of the bed. “Was there a coffee clause in our contract that I missed?”
Her reply hits me like a ton of bricks.
My teeth clench as I narrow my eyes on her. “No, but I’m pretty sure caffeine isn’t good for the baby.”
She waves me off and pads barefoot over to her closet. “I know it’s not. I just do decaf. Don’t stress, Papa Bear.”
My lips curl at that nickname. She’s never called me that before, and something about the way she said it feels…intentional. Distant. I walk over to her closet and lean on the door behind her as she rifles through her stuff.
“Are we good?” I ask, my voice sounding more uncertain than I like.
“We’re great!” She pats me on the chest and shoots me a wink. “That was a really good offer, and I’ll seriously consider it. But right now, I need to clean myself up.”
She moves past me, and I watch her walk away, feeling awkward as fuck for some maddening reason. Shaking off my irritation, I grab my jeans off the floor and say, “I’ll fix you breakfast.”
“Don’t bother,” she calls out from the bathroom. “I’m going to eat at the coffee shop. I’ll just see you later!”
She closes the door to the bathroom, and I’m left with an odd, familiar feeling that I haven’t felt in ten years. Like something—someone—important is slipping through my fingers. Something too valuable to lose.
And this time, it feels far more terrifying.
WeeksPregnant:21
AnimalsontheMountain:9
“Morning, Papa Bear,” Calder yells out his truck window as he pulls up in front of my house on Monday morning for work.
I bristle at that label as I get up from my deck chair, coffee thermos in hand. My eyes move to the barn for the hundredth time this morning, irritation prickling in my veins. For the past few months, I have been delivering breakfast to Trista’s front door at six o’clock every day because I’ve never seen her leave the mountain before six fifteen. Today, she was gone before I came out, and the irrational rage I feel over the fact that I didn’t get to feed her is something I’m failing to get control over.
“You look especially broody this morning,” Luke huffs as I slide into the back seat.
I grunt my wordless reply.
“So it’s going to be one of those days,” Calder groans as he traverses down the mountain.
I fight the urge to text Trista to make sure she’s okay. There’s something about giving her breakfast every day that made me feel like it was our daily check-in. If I saw she took the food, then I knew she was good. The fact that she most likely didn’t eat this morning is making me fucking crazy.
“I have something that will cheer you up,” Calder says brightly, turning his neck to glance back at me. “I’ve figured out what we’ll do for our Dark Night.”
My brows lift. Our Dark Night is a thing the three of us do around Labor Day every year because it was around this time that we almost ruined our whole family.
All over a girl.
My mind flashes back to when we all discovered we were secretly dating Robyn. It was like this slow-motion explosion of realization after realization that all three of us were getting played. I can’t help but wonder how long she would have kept stringing us along…if it weren’t for the baby.
“I want you all to keep an open mind, okay?” Calder says, his tone light and bouncy. “We did Luke’s stupid lumberjack competition last year. The year before that, you made us go fishing in Canada, Wyatt. Super thrilling, by the way. Talk about an adrenaline rush.”
I growl at the back of Calder’s head. Our Dark Night has been a variety of things throughout the past decade, so we’ve had to get creative to come up with new activities. The point of it really is just to help the three of us reconnect and remind us of what we almost lost when we let a girl come between us. One year, Calder made us fucking skydive, and while I was not happy about that selected activity, I do admit that afterward, I felt a newfound connection with my brothers over experiencing that together. Our Dark Night is important, and as much as I like to complain about it, I still look forward to it every year.
“I have two words for you guys,” Calder says, eyeing me and Luke with raised brows. “Sex. Club.”
“What?” Luke’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head.
“Sex club!” Calder repeats with confidence.
“Calder, that’s your thing, not mine,” Luke argues, and I feel grateful he’s saying this for both of us.
