I had kissed Gracie.

Jesus, had I kissed her.

And it had been the most incredible, mind-melting kiss.

Not only that but we had spent time together and it was fun. It was just like how we used to be. Without the watching her get drunk and go home with other guys part.

The Gracie she had been lately was the Gracie I had fallen in love with. Sarcastic. Funny. Easy to be around. I remembered how I had dismissed her in the beginning as a flaky college girl only to find out later that she was so much more.

She was smart. She didn’t advertise the fact that she had almost perfect GPA the entire time she was in school. She wrote amazing stories that she sometimes would let me read. But she was guarded about them, almost as though she were afraid for people to see that side of her.

But she let me see it.

Just me.

I loved seeing her in her element today. Interviewing Mrs. Wagner and later taking pictures of the garden. She enjoyed her job. She felt like she was doing something worthwhile. She was happy.

And again, she shared that with me.

So I had let my guard down. The guard that I had only erected after she had pushed me away. One that was meant to keep her out.

And I touched her. I held her hand. I told her I fucking missed her.

And then to complicate an already overly complicated situation, I kissed her. And she had kissed me back.

I could still feel the imprint of her fingers on my back.

Then she had gotten pissed. She had accused me of being wishy-washy. And she had gotten out of my car and walked away.

Again.

But this time, I really freaking deserved it.

Because I was a royal dickweed.

I turned down a tree-lined road and stopped in front of a small cape cod house with a white picket fence. When I parked I quickly typed out a response to Sophie and hit send and then got out of the car.

“Hey, man,” a voice called out. I found Jordan on the porch, scraping off paint from around the windows on the door. His T-shirt was splattered with paint and a bucket and brush sat at his feet.

“Look at you getting all domestic,” I joked, kicking the empty bucket with my boot.

“Who woulda thunk it, right?” Jordan shrugged, dropped the scrapper into the bucket and picking it up.

“So Maysie finally got her picket fence, huh?” I asked with a smile, following him into the house.

“As you know, what Maysie wants, Maysie gets,” Jordan replied, closing the door behind me and turning on the foyer light.

“This is a great place,” I said, looking around.

“Thanks. I know it’s not some mansion in Beverly Hills with a pool or anything, but we love it. It’s got a big yard, plenty of room and Maysie has her whirlpool bathtub. We’re happy.” He flipped on the kitchen light and opened the refrigerator and offered me a beer.

I took it and popped the cap, tossing it into the red and white checked trashcan that Maysie obviously picked out. “So what brings you to our neck of the woods? Didn’t I just see your sorry ass this morning?” he asked, tipping back his beer and drinking most of it in one gulp.

He was right. I had just seen him this morning when he came by with more donuts from Maysie. We had tried to jam a bit but with the looming weight of our impending call with Pirate, neither of us was in much of a mood to play.

“Just doing some thinking. Thought I’d come by and check out the new digs,” I remarked offhandedly, sitting down on one of the stools at the island.

“You’ve got that line between your eyebrows. You must be thinking pretty hard then,” Jordan observed with amusement.

“Wrinkles are a dead giveaway, huh?”

“Yep. ’Fraid so. They give you a way every time. Your brow gets all furrowed and you look like your channeling your inner Luke Perry. It’s very angsty,” Jordan stated blandly and I tossed his beer cap at his face. It bounced off his cheek and rolled onto the floor, where he promptly picked it up and threw it away.

“Maysie would have ripped you a new one if she had found it, huh?” I deduced and Jordan made a cutting motion across his throat with his finger.

“I would have been a dead man.”

“Oh how times have changed, Piper,” I chuckled, purposefully using his old nickname. A nickname that didn’t carry any weight anymore. He wasn’t the Pied Piper of Pussy anymore. He was a one pussy dude.

Jordan cupped the back of his neck and looked around the brightly decorated kitchen, a look of disbelief on his face. “If you had told me four years ago that I’d be living in a Cape Cod with a white fence out front about to become a dad, I would have laughed in your face.”

I sputtered and almost choked on my mouthful of beer. I quickly swallowed and wiped my lips with the back of my hand. “Hold up right there! What did you just say?”

Jordan grabbed another couple of beers from the refrigerator and laid them on the counter. “Maysie’s pregnant.”

My eyes almost bugged out of my head. “Fucking hell! Are you serious? How long have you known?”

This changed absolutely everything. And from the look on Jordan’s face he knew that too.

“Two weeks. Maysie took a test right after she got back from the concert in Norfolk.” Jordan took a sip of his beer. “That’s why we wanted to move in here. We needed the room. We wanted a place to raise a family. We wanted a home.”

I slowly peeled the paper off my bottle. “So what does that mean for the Rejects then?”

I knew the answer. He didn’t have to tell me. I saw it written all over his face. Jordan Levitt may look like a tatted up badass but when it came to Maysie, he was nothing but heart. He loved that woman. And now he was going to be a dad. That turned his world—and by association ours—on its head.