Free Maybe Never by Nia Forrester Page B

apologizing after botching his initial reaction, and since then had occasionally stroked her stomach when they were lying in bed watching television, but they never talked about what it meant that they were going to be parents. These days, all they seemed to talk about was the wedding, which was probably her fault.
    She just wanted it to be perfect . What woman didn’t? Planning to pull off a wedding in six weeks was madness, but Tracy was determined not to have anything resembling a bump when she was in her dress. It was bad enough that she wasn’t sure she would even be getting married if she weren’t pregnant . . . That nagging suspicion was the one thing that continued to plague her late at night, when Brendan was fast asleep: did he even want to get married, or was he doing the Brendan-thing and being her rescuer? After all, that was how they’d started.
    She looked across the table at Nancy’s warm face and smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “If I need you, I promise, I will call.”
     
    ________
     
    “How’s Brendan doing with all this?” Riley asked, stretching her legs out in front of her. She still had a hint of pregnancy plumpness about her face, and had recently cut her hair very short, not wanting to have anything that needed maintaining when she had two small children. But she was still so, so pretty. Happiness had a way of doing that to a person.
    An errant ray of sunlight, streaming through the trees fell across the baby’s face and she blinked rapidly, her little lashes batting prettily. Riley passed her into Tracy’s outstretched arms. They were sitting on the grass under the large red maple tree in Riley and Shawn’s backyard.
    The men were inside, in Shawn’s home studio, probably having the male equivalent of exactly the same conversation. Cullen, Riley’s two-year old was with them, because he was almost always with his father when he was awake. And sometimes when he was asleep as well. Riley had jokingly complained to Tracy that the only way to have crazy, loud-ass sex anymore would be to slip their son some Benadryl and take him back to his room once he’d passed out. Shawn liked him sleeping with them, which Riley grudgingly permitted, but only occasionally.
    “I have no idea how he’s doing with it,” Tracy said kissing her god-daughter’s cheeks. She smelled like . . . baby, the scent unlike any other in the world. “He’s never home anymore. I’m planning this wedding all by myself at this point.”
    Riley shrugged. “Well, you didn’t think he’d be picking floral arrangements, did you?”
    “No, but . . .” Tracy stopped and sighed, kissing the baby again.
    “But . . . what?”
    “I don’t know. It’s like he wants to pretend it’s not happening.”
    “You don’t think he wants to do it? To get married?”
    “I don’t know. Even the way he proposed . . .”
    Riley wrinkled her brow.
    “It was like an avoidance of a proposal. He . . .” Tracy shook her head. “I can’t explain it without being really graphic and you probably don’t want to know the details of our sex life.”
    “I want to know the details of someone’s sex life,” Riley said. “Because Shawn and I haven’t had sex in like, two and a half weeks.”
    Tracy looked at her. “You had a baby three months ago. And you have a toddler. Welcome to the real world, Riley.”
    Her best friend laughed. “I’m just not used to it, that’s all. I swear, I’m almost jealous of my own kids. He’s so into them . . .”
    “And once upon a time the only person he was into like that was you,” Tracy finished for her.
    Riley nodded, grimacing a little, almost as though embarrassed by the admission. “I miss that sometimes. Being the center of each other’s universe.”
    Tracy said nothing. Riley still was the center of Shawn’s universe. Only the recipient of that kind of unrelenting adoration could fail to recognize it. The way he still looked at her when he thought no one noticed, the way he