I’m at the front door before I get ahold of myself. I am not going to drive to some college town microbrewery to bring her home. She is fine. We are both fine. Both houses up on this cliffside are secure.

I’m being obsessive and over the top.

I throw my keys onto a table by the front door and stalk back into the house. How the hell’s a man supposed to live like this? She’s been at this meetup for what, two hours, and my heart is going to burst. My hands ache to be around the steering wheel. Even my eyes ache to look at her. It’s fucking absurd to feel this way. Even more ridiculous that I want her to be pregnant by the end of the night.

That’s the only thought that drags me back from the edge. She doesn’t want to get knocked up by some paranoid asshole who comes to bars to take her home because she missed some arbitrary curfew. Hell, she might not want that at all. Not until she has that degree. And I should give her that. I should have some self-control and give her that.

I force myself to read.

It’s the greatest exercise of self-control in my whole damn life, to sit here paging through the book. I read a sentence at a time. A paragraph at a time. I cannot stop thinking of Jane. Jane, my wife. Jane, the mother of my child. Jane, pregnant in this living room, her feet up on the arm of the sofa. Jane, pregnant in my bed, sleeping with her back to me and my hand curled around her belly. Jane, Jane, Jane.

The headlights alert me first. They sweep into the house through the many windows. The sound of the heavy SUV tires crunching on gravel comes next. I force myself not to get up. Not to stride outside and pull her out of the vehicle like some deranged person who can’t live a few hours without her.

Not to meet her at the door and fuck her in the foyer.

Instead I wait, as if I’m a regular guy who’s not obsessed. I hold the book I haven’t been reading, my gaze moving line by line over words I don’t care about.

Keys in the door.

Buttons on the alarm.

And then she’s inside, pushing off her heels and dropping her book bag. She doesn’t see me at first. I take advantage of that, watching her in this unguarded moment. Her clothes are relatively casual but they hug her body in a way that’s incredibly hot. Other guys got to see her wearing this, which I don’t like. Only I get to see her like this, when she’s let down her guard.

“You’re home,” I say, and she jumps.