Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

He watched her face color, a soft pink that matched the petals on the bed. The fact that she could still blush, that she was still shy with him years later left him feeling like he would take on the world for her all over again. "You'd be surprised what tumbles into the burn bin from the trash."

She closed her eyes, shook her head, moved her hands up and looped them around his neck. "I haven't gone to the doctor yet. I wanted to tell you after I was positive."

"That pink line looked pretty positive to me." He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her. "How're you feeling? Have you been sick?"

"Not really." She brushed the fringe of bangs from her eyes, one hand toying with the hair at his nape, the other with his shirt's top button. "Maybe a little queasy, but I've been blaming that on nerves."

"What've you had to be nervous about? Telling me?" His breath caught in his throat as he asked, "Deciding what you want to do?"

Both of her hands stilled. "There was no decision to make. You've wanted this for so long."

"Don't make this be about me." He wouldn't have it, wouldn't stand for it. Couldn't live with it any other way; it choked him up to think she'd make any sacrifice for him. "It can't be. Everything's always been about us. What's best for you and me."

"I have to admit I've been thrown off by the idea of being sixty-three when this child is twenty," she said in a soft whisper as she slid his top button through its buttonhole and moved to the next. "And it's not easy to picture a forty-year-old Spencer with his twenty-year-old sibling."

He looked down. Her fingers had reached the last visible button. She unbuckled his belt, unfastened his pants, pulled his shirttail free, and finished what she'd started. Once she had, she slid her arms around his bare waist, rested her cheek against his bare chest.

It wasn't easy to know what to do. He'd meant what he'd said. Their life together had always been about being together. Decisions made as a couple. Sharing the burdens as well as the joy. Parenting their son. He didn't want her thinking of this unplanned pregnancy as a debt she owed him.

"Yancey?" Her breath tickled the hair on his chest. "You're awfully quiet."

"Why now?" The question burst out before he could stop it. "We've talked about this. About finances and my job, needing a bigger place, another college fund, downsizing Christmas. The way athletics for one child, the games on the road, the booster club and barbeques, ended up replacing family time—"

"Yes. We've talked about all of those reasons. In doing so we also talked around the truth." She stepped back far enough to look up into his eyes. Hers were misty, and her mouth quivered.

His wasn't so steady itself. "You mean whether or not I would love another child more than I love Spencer."

Her fingers stroking his back trembled. "No, Yancey. Not that. Never that. I've always known how much you love Spencer. And I know you. Another child would never replace him in your heart. But what we didn't talk about was me not wanting to be pregnant again. That I couldn't face the memories it brought back. The guilt of what I'd done. To you. To us."

"What do you mean, what you'd done?" He used his hands on her shoulders to set her away, and crossed the room to the window. He braced a forearm overhead on the frame and stared out through the blinds at the street where they'd lived for so long. "You were a victim. One in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I'm the one who took you there. That's eaten at me for twenty years. I've wanted to turn back the clock more times than I can tell you."

He heard the squeak of springs as she climbed up onto the bed, heard her inhale the scent of the roses, heard her sigh. "I want you to know something, Yancey Munroe. I have never ever ever blamed you for what happened to me that night. We went to that party together. As a couple. If anything, I blame myself. Drinking as much as I did was a foolish, foolish thing."

Yancey turned, looked at the woman he'd loved for more than half of his life sitting in the middle of the bed they'd shared for almost as long, rose petals surrounding her, candlelight in her hair. He didn't think she had ever seemed as beautiful to him as she did now.

His chest drew up so tightly, he wasn't sure he could speak. "I don't want being pregnant to cause you to relive any of that. I have Spencer and I have you, and my life couldn't be any more perfect. I love you, Jeanne. I don't want you to be hurt all over again."

Her face softened. She patted the bed, and he pushed away from the window and joined her, cocking one hip up onto the edge of the mattress. "I've suspected that I might be pregnant for almost a month now. I've done nothing but think about what it makes me feel. I haven't thought about the hurt or the past at all. Only about the present. And the future. And you know what? I feel absolute joy."

He waited several seconds for her to change her mind. To add what she'd left out, but she didn't. She only met his gaze as she always did once she'd spoken her mind. He closed his eyes for a long moment, opened them slowly. She was still there, still his wife, still his love.

And she was carrying his child. He thought he would die from the flooding rush of emotions. "That's it? Are you sure?"

She nodded, grinned. "Well, there is the absolute terror of having to keep up with a toddler at my age."

"You're the youngest forty-two-year-old I know," he said as