“
Ruby and Aaron are both crazy patient; they’re good parents.”
“I could be a good dad,” Ivan whispered, still feeding Jess.
I could have told him he’d be good at anything he wanted to be good at, but nah.
“Do you want to have kids?” he asked me out of the blue.
I handed Benny another block. “A long time from now, maybe.”
“A long time… like how long?”
That had me glancing at Ivan over my shoulder. He had his entire attention on Jessie, and I was pretty sure he was smiling down at her. Huh. “My early thirties, maybe? I don’t know. I might be okay with not having any either. I haven’t really thought about it much, except for knowing I don’t want to have them any time soon, you know what I mean?”
“Because of figure skating?”
“Why else? I barely have enough time now. I couldn’t imagine trying to train and have kids. My baby daddy would have to be a rich, stay-at-home dad for that to work.”
Ivan wrinkled his nose at my niece. “There are at least ten skaters I know with kids.”
I rolled my eyes and poked Benny in the side when he held out his little hand for another block. That got me a toothy grin. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just wouldn’t want to do it any time soon. I don’t want to half-ass or regret it. If they ever exist, I’d want them to be my priority. I wouldn’t want them to think they were second best.”
Because I knew what that felt like. And I’d already screwed up enough with making grown adults I loved think they weren’t important. If I was going to do something, I wanted to do my best and give it everything.
All he said was, “Hmm.”
A thought came into my head and made my stomach churn. “Why? Are you planning on having kids any time soon?”
“I wasn’t,” he answered immediately. “I like this baby though, and that one. Maybe I need to think about it.”
I frowned, the feeling in my stomach getting more intense.
He kept blabbing. “I could start training my kids really young…. I could coach them. Hmm.”
It was my turn to wrinkle my nose. “Three hours with two kids and now you want them?”
Ivan glanced down at me with a smirk. “With the right person. I’m not going to have them with just anybody and dilute my blood.”
I rolled my eyes at this idiot, still ignoring that weird feeling in my belly that I wasn’t going to acknowledge now or ever. “God forbid, you have kids with someone that’s not perfect. Dumbass.”
“Right?” He snorted, looking down at the baby before glancing back at me with a smile I wasn’t a fan of. “They might come out short, with mean, squinty, little eyes, a big mouth, heavy bones, and a bad attitude.”
I blinked. “I hope you get abducted by aliens.”
Ivan laughed, and the sound of it made me smile. “You would miss me.”
All I said, while shrugging was, “Meh. I know I’d get to see you again someday—”
He smiled.
“—in hell.”
That wiped the look right off his face. “I’m a good person. People like me.”
“Because they don’t know you. If they did, somebody would have kicked your ass already.”
“They’d try,” he countered, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
There was something wrong with us.
And I didn’t hate it. Not even a little bit.
”
”