Page 70 of Backup Plan

Love.

Kids.

Family.

Penny.

I didn’t think any of it was for me, but suddenly…it feels like it could be.

CHAPTER 20: Penny Calloway

Stability

We kiss, and it’s bittersweet.

It’s urgent and tender at the same time. His hands travel along my skin, his tongue moves along mine, and I can’t stop thinking about how things are going to change. No matter how we look at it, everything is about to change.

This isn’t goodbye, but it feels like one.

It feels like a goodbye to the simplicity with which we’ve lived so far.

Sure, we have our complications. What couple doesn’t? And ours aren’t small ones. Divorce. Secrets. Betrayal.

But a baby brings an entirely new complication into the mix. A good one, certainly, but still an unexpected surprise.

He pulls back and leans his forehead to mine, and his voice is low and raspy when he says, “Come with me. Please.”

“You know I can’t,” I murmur, but when he’s like this, emotionally stripped raw for me, tender, aching, I want to try to find a way to say yes.

“Quit your job. Move to San Diego,” he says.

It’s tempting, honestly. But I can’t just quit my job. I like working even if I don’t love my job. And aside from that, I have the boys to consider, and I’m well aware that their father would never allow me to move to another state with them. “I wish I could, Liam. But you’ll only be gone half the year, and then you’ll be back. So we take it slow, and we’ll figure things out.”

“I know we will, but I need help. I can’t raise a baby alone, and that child will be born, and a week or two later, I’ll start training camp. I want to be able to provide a stable base when everything else in my life is so goddamn unstable, and you represent that to me. Somehow, some way. Out of nowhere, you are my stability,” he says.

I want to be that for him. God, do I want that.

But what I said is absolutely true. Brent has been an asshole through all the divorce proceedings, filing motions and disregarding my requests. There’s no way in hell he’d ever agree to let me relocate.

And it’s not just that.

I don’t like feeling that he needs me with him because I represent help when he feels like he’s floundering. I don’t want to feel like he only needs me because I’m a mom. I had enough of that in my last relationship that I’m still technically trying to end—legally, anyway.

But also…what I said is true. I am falling for him. I want to be with him.

I just don’t think it’s geographically possible at this point.

Instead of saying any of that, I press my lips to his again.

He takes that as the signal, and he sweeps me up into his arms, his mouth never breaking from mine as he carries me over to the staircase. He sets me down on the landing, and he gets on his knees a few steps down. I’m still in my bridesmaid dress from tonight. My hair still has a million pins holding it in place. I’m still wearing the heels Everleigh picked for her bridesmaids to wear at her wedding.

He shoves my dress up my thighs roughly, and he hooks his fingers in through the side of my panties and out the other side, yanking them so they’re out of the way. He pushes my thighs apart and kisses his way up one side, and a few seconds later, his mouth is on me, in me, everywhere as he sucks and licks and drives me toward my climax.

I squeeze my legs around his ears as my fingers dive into his hair, pulling him harder against me, gyrating against his face, the rough hairs along his jawline rubbing my thighs raw. There’s something so sexy about the way he’s eating me. It’s like he can’t get enough of me, and I can’t get enough of him, either.

He drives me straight into my climax. I hold on, riding it out as his tongue continues to shower me with pleasure, until I’m wrung out and exhausted and so beautifully sated.

And my first thought as I come down from the high is that this has to be enough. This has to be it, at least for a little while. He’s heading to San Diego. I’m staying here.