“I swear I didn’t lie. I swear I’m taking my pills. Winter said that when I was sick, they probably didn’t stay down and that might have fucked it all up, and I didn’t even think about it, and even though I’ve thought about having like a million babies with you one day, I just absolutely did not do this on purpose, even though I’m actually not that sad about it, which sounds awful, because like, I don’t want to trap you with me, so like—”

“Willa!”

Her eyes widen dramatically as she leans back a little. I reach forward and plunk her bare feet into my lap with my good hand. “You’re going to collapse a lung talking in run-on sentences like that, baby. And there’s no one I’d rather be trapped with.” She blinks at me, and I rub my thumbs along the arches of her feet and up her ankles.

“I haven’t shaved my legs.”

I chuckle. “I don’t care. Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you, Willa. Prickly legs, random carrots in your purse, pregnant, not pregnant. I want you.”

Tears spring up in her eyes, and her voice is raspy when she says, “But this has happened to you before, and I don’t want to be lumped in with that shit. I don’t want you being with me out of some sort of obligation. We haven’t even told people about us. We haven’t figured a single thing out. You’ve never told me that you love me. But now I’m pregnant and that’s all going to happen? It just feels . . . forced.”

“Willa.” I can hear an edge of panic to the tone I’m using. “Nothing is forced. We were on this track already. We’re not two people who were unhappy and now are trying to make something work that wasn’t working before. We were happy.”

“Yeah. We were. But this is your personality. This is you swooping in to be responsible before you’ve even processed what this means because your first instinct is to take care of everyone before you take care of yourself.”

I can only blink at her. This conversation is not going the way I expected it to.

“Willa, stop—”

“No.” She holds her hand up. “For all the times you’ve told me to shut up and listen, it’s now your turn, Cade.”