We walked along the beach with our feet in the water while Vinnie leaped in and out of the waves like he’d never seen water before.  I swear the dog had Canine Alzheimer’s or something because everyday things always seemed so new and exciting to him no matter how many times he experienced them.  Then again, seeing that he had a mother who was extremely easily amused, he was probably just taking after me.

Kevin was holding my hand and I decided to just let him start speaking when he felt ready.  I could tell he was pondering pretty seriously in his head and I didn’t want to rush him in any way.  “How’d the shopping go, today?” he finally asked.

I smiled, “Real good.  The boys helped me pick out a beautiful dress that’s going to knock your socks off.”

“The boys?  I thought it was just you and Chris that went…”

“Oh no, we had a surprise guest… AJ was with us.  Something about him needing to make sure that my dress was kick ass and how he needed to make sure he didn’t clash with me…” I said and chuckled.

Kevin smiled and nodded, “That’s totally AJ… Cool, I’m glad you two are getting to know each other better.”

“Me too… he’s adorable.  I wish he lived closer...”

“Yeah me too…” he said and looked out at the ocean for a moment before looking back at me.  “So…”

I smiled and squeezed his hand, “No rush… tell me what you want and in your own speed, okay?”

“Okay…” he said and then leaned in to kiss me and smiled.  “I guess I should start by telling you that I’ve always wanted to be a dad.  Like, always.  My dad was like a god to me and I can remember being just a little thing following him around wanting to be just like him.  If he drank sweet tea, I drank sweet tea… if he wore jeans and boots, then so did I.  And because he was a dad, I wanted to be a dad too.”

“You must have been so damn cute as a little boy…”I said with a grin and hugged his arm. 

“I guess…” he said and shrugged then smiled. “But yeah… before I proposed to Kristin we had talks about kids.  I told her that whether we had kids of our own or adopted them, being a dad was something that was essential to me.  And I told her flat out that if she didn’t see kids in her future that I couldn’t be with her.  Which I guess in retrospect is kind of a harsh thing to say, but it was the truth you know?”

I nodded, “Of course… if it’s that important to you then you can’t waste your time with someone who doesn’t want the same things.”

“Exactly. But she swore to me that she wanted a huge family and I believed her.”  He paused and looked away again with a sigh.  I knew right then I wasn’t going to like hearing this story.  The pain in his eyes broke my heart and since I was becoming increasingly more protective of him any sign of pain made my defenses go up and I was ready to fight for him. “So you know how Kristin lied to me about something so big that it ended our marriage?”  I nodded and kept a hold on Kevin’s arm as we walked.  “Well it was about kids.”

“Oh man…” I sighed. 

“Yeah and seeing those pictures of Miles back there just sort of brought it all back to me.  See, early on in our marriage we agreed that we wouldn’t try for kids because we were just too busy.  I was all over the world touring with the guys and she was dancing on Cher’s big finale tour so we barely even saw each other for a while right after we got married.  But then when I went on hiatus and she had a break from touring too we were going to see about starting a family.  But every month would come along and nothing would happen… no baby.”  I was sick with the thought of what Kevin was going to say.  I could clearly see how much being a father meant to him and could only imagine how destroyed he’d been each month when he’d find out that once again he wasn’t going to be a dad yet.  I pressed my cheek to his arm as we walked along slowly.  “I found out about a year ago that the reason she wasn’t getting pregnant was because she’d gone and had her tubes tied when I was on tour with Backstreet in 2002.  She did it right before we had that big break between albums and she knew I was going to be around.”

“Jesus...” I swore and shook my head. “That’s horrible!”

“Yeah…” he nodded.  “She wasn’t going to tell me either.  But she had this best friend Cindy who we hung out with a lot… Turned out that Cindy and her husband Mark were going to have their first baby and the four of us were on vacation just after they found out.  So one night Mark and I are hanging out drinking beer on the beach while the girls were off doing whatever and we started talking about the pregnancy and stuff.  I made some comment about how much I couldn’t wait for Kristin to finally get pregnant and Mark made this face that totally threw me.  So I asked him what was wrong and he told me about how Kristin had stayed with them when she’d had the surgery and how she’d told them that I knew all about it and was okay with it because our careers were more important to us than kids.”

I rolled my eyes in disgust and groaned, “You’ve got to be kidding me… She lied to them too?”

“Yeah… so they never thought to bring it up with me because they thought I knew.  And when I looked back, I realized that she was always telling me not to tell Cindy and Mark that we were trying to get pregnant. But she said it was because THEY were having trouble getting pregnant too and that it would upset them.  All that was a lie too, Mark told me as much.  So basically for five years she lied about trying to get pregnant.  I didn’t even talk to her about it when I found out.  I just went back to our hotel, took all of my stuff and went to the airport and got on the next plane home to Kentucky.  Of course she tried to explain it to me eventually but by then I was so done it didn’t matter.  She says that she decided that she just didn’t want to ‘ruin’ her body and her career as a dancer by having kids but that she loved me so much that she didn’t want to lose me so she couldn’t tell me the truth.”  He sighed and shook his head.  “Right.”

I stopped walking so I could face Kevin and I looked up into his pretty green eyes, “I’m so sorry, baby… That was a horrible, horrible thing for her to do to you and I can only imagine how hard it was for you.  Not just to find out that she’d been lying but always hoping that it would happen and then being disappointed over and over again.”  He nodded and wrapped his arms around me pulling me into a tight hug.  I sighed and held him as close as I possibly could, “She didn’t deserve you… I can’t imagine hurting you like that.  Ever.  She has to be an evil person to have done that to you over and over again.  God, I’m so sorry…”

Kevin pulled back to look at me and gave me a weak smile, “I agree, she’s evil.”  He chuckled and reached out to push a stray curl from my face and tuck it behind my ear, “But I’m slowly beginning to understand that as much as it hurt, I’m glad I finally found out the truth so that I don’t have to waste any more time on her.”

“Yes, because it’s all about me now…” I teased with a wink which made him laugh. 

“It definitely is…” he said and kissed me.  After the kiss he pulled me back into a hug and we stood there for the longest time just hugging quietly.  “I honestly never thought I’d feel this way about someone again…” he said quietly in my ear which made me shiver.  “I didn’t think I’d ever trust anyone again, let alone let them into my heart.  But when it comes to you I can’t seem to help myself.”

I smiled and pulled back just enough so I could look into his eyes, “Same here.  I was the girl who was going to live alone with her dog forever, remember?  Now all I can do is think about you and how utterly gaga I am over you.  Seriously, all day while I was shopping with the guys, I had fun but I was whining internally, then sometimes out loud, about how much I just wanted to be back here with you.  I was pitiful, Kev.”

He laughed, “I did the same thing all day, except I whined to Vinnie. He’s a pretty good listener though…”

“Yeah he is… as long as you don’t mind the drool,” I said and giggled.  “Speaking of…” I said and looked around to make sure Vinnie was still with us.  I laughed when my eyes settled on him belly deep in a hole that he’d dug.  He looked up at me and “smiled” panting which made Kevin laugh too.  “Vin you’re going to have to have another bath…”  He barked at me and then resumed his digging, he wasn’t a big fan of baths but he tolerated them.  I shook my head and looked at Kevin, “Crazy dog…”  I pulled Kevin by the hand and started back toward my house, “I’ve got something to show you but it’s back at the house. But while we walk I need to tell you about Jules.”

Kevin looked at me with a somewhat confused look, “Alright…”

I laughed at his confusion, “It’ll all make sense shortly… You know how I am, I like to take the long way in explaining things.”

He smiled, “True… okay, so what about Jules?”

“Well when she was really young, like still in college she was engaged to this guy and totally in love with him.  But just before the wedding she realized she was pregnant and when she told him he totally freaked out and dumped her.  It was his kid, but I dunno… he just lost it and accused her of cheating and all of this horrible stuff.  So of course they didn’t get married and she ended up losing the baby because she was so stressed out by the whole breakup.”

“That’s horrible…” he said quietly.

I nodded, “So after that, she sort of did the same thing I did.  She closed off her heart and vowed to never fall in love again.  She was all about just hooking up with hot rich men, having fun with them, and then breaking things off.  When I met her, she was like a character out of Sex & the City… and frankly she was happy with it.  Instead of being like me and living with a big dog and sex toys, she had boy toys.” 

Kevin chuckled, “Sex toys?”

“Oh god, you have no idea…” I laughed.  “But focus, we’re talking about Jules!”

“You can’t throw out a statement about living with sex toys and expect me to just ignore it!” he laughed.

I was so happy to see the sparkle back in his eyes and his real smile, “Babe, I promise we’ll have the sex toy talk soon, and trust me… you’ll enjoy it.” I wiggled my eyebrows at him and leaned in to kiss him.  After a hearty kiss that took my breath away I shook my head to clear it as we resumed the walk to my house, “Okay so Jules…”

“Uh huh…” he mumbled with a grin.

“Of course I didn’t know anything about why she was the way she was… I didn’t know about the asshole who’d dumped her and the baby.  I just knew the Jules who always had a new guy on her arm, ya know?  But one day I get this call from her and she says she wants to come down and visit me.  So she flies down here and I could tell right away that something was on her mind, but I let her just relax and settle in.  We just hung out on the beach with Vinnie and talked about random stuff until she finally opened up.  She told me all about the broken engagement and the baby in college and then she told me that she was pregnant with Miles.  So there she was, the perpetual bachelorette knocked up and totally freaked out about it.  She never wanted to be in love again and certainly didn’t plan on having any kids but all of a sudden she was faced with this pregnancy and everything changed.  After many long conversations and lots of tears she finally decided that there was no way she was going to give up the baby or end the pregnancy.  She wasn’t with the dad either, he knows about Miles but is an asswipe and doesn’t care.”   I rolled my eyes and Kevin chuckled at the look on my face, “Don’t get me started on him…” I said and smiled.  “Anyway she decided to keep the baby and I promised that I’d be with her the whole way and we’d figure it out together…”

We were back at the house and I had Kevin sit on the deck with Vinnie so we didn’t get copious amounts of sand in the house and I dashed inside to grab an envelope before returning to sit with Kevin.  I kept the envelope in my lap and faced Kevin holding his hands in mine.  “So you saw how I get when I see Miles…” I said and chuckled.  Kevin smiled and nodded.  “I was there when he was born… saw him come right out and it was the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.  And as soon as I got to hold him in my arms and look down at that gorgeous little face I fell in love.”  I chuckled as my eyes welled up with tears just thinking about it.  “It didn’t take long for me to start getting the itch… you know, to have a kid.  I’d watch Miles and Jules and my heart just tugged because all of a sudden I wanted that so bad for myself… So I started to seriously consider it.  I mean, I was single and had no prospects of being with anyone so my options were pretty much to get a donor, or adopt.  Christian and Josef even talked about being donors for me for a while too but I finally decided that there are so many babies out there who need to be loved, so why should I spend so much time trying to find someone to make a baby with when there are babies just waiting for someone to be their Mama?”  Kevin’s attention to what I was saying was killing me, and I tried my best to hurry up and get to the point.  “Anyway so I went through the whole adoption process.  I hooked up with a private agency that works mostly with high end clients and celebrities so that my business wouldn’t get all out in the public.  I was approved a few months ago to adopt and put on a waiting list because there’s apparently a huge demand for kids.”  I picked up the envelope and pulled out the letter that was inside.  I looked down at it rereading it before looking back at Kevin with a smile, “As of right now, I’m number two on the list…”

I gave him the letter and he looked down at it reading it carefully, “Wow…”

“Yeah…” I said and waited for him to look at me again.  “I got the letter while you were in Kentucky and then when you came back we were busy with the sleepover and then the sex yesterday..” I grinned and Kevin did too.  “I kind of just didn’t think about it.  I wasn’t sure how to even bring it up but all of a sudden there you were talking about her and wanting kids and well…” I shrugged with tears suddenly welling up in my eyes again.  I reached out and cupped his cheek in my hand, “I guess what I’m trying to tell you Kev is that there’s no need for you to worry about me lying to you about wanting kids like she did.  And although I fully expected to do the single mom thing when a baby became available, I wouldn’t exactly put up a fight if you wanted to hang out and try this with me.”  I smiled at him as he turned his face to kiss the inside of my hand and then wrapped his hand around mine.  “I could get a call any day now telling me that they’ve got a baby for me.  Or for us…”

Kevin reached out and wiped away a tear that slid down my face and then pulled me in for a kiss.  “Do you know how amazing you are?” he then whispered against my lips.

I chuckled and more tears fell from my eyes, “No…”

“You are…”

“I don’t want to freak you out, Kev…” I said and pulled back wiping my cheeks.  “I feel like a crazy woman even talking about kids with you this early in our relationship but this was all rolling before I even met you and it could be my reality very soon.  It was one of those things that I didn’t talk about because I didn’t want to jinx it so I almost forgot about it and figured it would happen when it happened.  I didn’t exactly expect to fall in love this summer.  I didn’t expect you to come into my world and suddenly find myself for the first time in my life having thoughts about how my kids would look with someone…”

“We’d make damn cute kids…” he said quietly with a smile.

I smiled and nodded whispering back, “Yeah we would. So… no strings.  I mean, if I get the call and I get a kid, I want you here but I don’t want you to think you’re being pressured or anything, okay?  If you decide that it’s not your thing or we don’t end up staying together, I can totally dig that. It could be a while before I get a call anyway and who knows where we’ll be by then but you needed to know so that if it does happen you aren’t totally blindsided.  God, can you imagine me being all ‘um, yeah by the way I’m gunna have a kid in a couple of weeks so deal with it…’ that would scare any normal man away.  I swear I’m the weirdest most complicated person in the…”

“Kel…” Kevin said with a laugh putting his thumb on my lips to stop me from talking while his hand held my face gently.  “You’re rambling.  It’s totally okay.  And when it happens, we’ll deal with it.  Alright?”  I nodded with his thumb still covering my lips.  “Thank you… for telling me though.  And for the offer to do this with you when the time comes...  That is one of the most amazing things anyone has ever offered me.” His eyes welled up with tears which pretty much killed me and I got all choked up.

I kissed his thumb and he moved it, “Thank you for telling me about Kristin… I pretty much hate her now, you know?” I laughed and Kevin did too as he nodded.  “But I’m glad that you trust me so much.  I know it has to be hard to trust anyone after what she did to you.”

“It is…” he said with a nod.  “But I’m finding out that for certain people, it’s worth it.”  He smiled that beautiful smile at me again, the one that made his eyes sparkle and I fell further for him.  I started crying again and he chuckled and pulled me into his arms, “We’re a mess…”

“I know…” I hiccupped against his chest.  “Is it too early for I love you?”

He shrugged, “Maybe, but it feels right…”

“Yeah it does.”

He made me look at him and smiled, “I love you…”

That made me cry even harder and then I laughed at myself, “I love you too…”

“So stop crying,” he said and laughed.

“In a minute…” I said and snuggled back against his chest.

He held me there until I’d stopped crying and then kissed the top of my head with a smile, “So let’s talk about the sex toys…”