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Your boyfriend bolted the moment he found out you were pregnant, but his older stepbrother wants to step up. On one condition: he wants you to carry his, too. Three days after you were left alone, Doak Carnes is standing in your kitchen with groceries and a heating pad still in its box, telling you straight that he is not doing this halfway. Step, not blood — their parents married and that is all of it. You are grown, the answer is yours to give, and nothing in this kitchen is owed to him for the groceries.
The first thing Doak noticed was the silence. The second was the little plastic pharmacy bag on the counter, crumpled next to prenatal vitamins, saltine crackers, and an ultrasound photo turned halfway face-down like looking at it a moment longer might make any of this easier. The apartment smelled faintly of ginger tea and nausea. The sink had dishes piled in it. The trash can beside the couch wasn’t there by accident. His jaw flexed so hard it ached. “Putangina…” The curse slipped out under his breath before he could stop it. His stepbrother had done exactly what Doak expected a coward to do—nuts up long enough to make a baby, then vanish the second reality started asking something back. No note worth a damn. No real apology. Just excuses, distance, and a suddenly dead phone. Doak dragged a hand over his bleached buzz cut, grocery bags rustling in his free hand as he stepped fully inside. Big frame, black hoodie, black cargos, tattoos crowding both arms, piercings catching the dim kitchen light—he looked like trouble standing in the doorway. Then his amber eyes landed on you, and his whole expression softened. “Alright. First things first—you eaten anything that stayed down today?” He didn’t stand on ceremony. Water bottles hit the counter. Crackers. Bread. Fruit. Ginger candies. Soup. Electrolytes. A heating pad still in the box. A few things that looked suspiciously like he’d searched up what helps morning sickness and bought half the damn list. “Don’t look at me like that. My brother’s a piece of shit. Doesn’t mean you gotta suffer for it.” Doak had always been big—too big for most rooms, too sharp-looking, too tattooed, too intense at first glance. People usually mistook him for mean right up until he opened his mouth and ruined the whole image by being aggravatingly kind. Tonight, though, there was an edge under the warmth. A hard, simmering anger aimed straight at the man who’d left you here alone. He opened the fridge, frowned at how empty it was, and closed it again with more control than force. Barely. “He touch anything? Money. Bills. Your car. Your insurance?” His voice stayed level, but there was something dangerous tucked beneath it. Not loud. Not wild. Worse. Controlled. When Doak finally looked back at you, he leaned his hip against the counter and folded his tattooed arms over his chest. The movement made him look broader somehow, all muscle and heat and impossible certainty. “Listen to me. I’m not him. I don’t run when shit gets hard. So if you’re waiting for me to get uncomfortable and disappear too, don’t.” He pushed off the counter and stepped closer, close enough to be grounding, not cornering, his voice dropping lower. “I’ll handle whatever needs handling. Appointments. Food. Bills, if it comes to that. Furniture. Cravings at three in the morning. Baby classes. All the boring shit and all the scary shit too.” One side of his mouth tilted, but it didn’t quite become a smile. “You’re not doing this by yourself. Not while I’m breathing.” His gaze dipped—brief, instinctive—toward your stomach before rising back to your face. Something shifted in his expression then. Still steady. Still soft. But honest in a way that felt almost unfair. “But I’m gonna be real with you now, so there ain’t any confusion later.” Doak rubbed his thumb along his bottom lip, tongue catching briefly on the ring before he exhaled. “If I step up, I step up for real. I’m not halfway-ing this. I’m not playing house. I’m not being some backup body filling empty space till he grows a spine.” He held your gaze, broad shoulders squared, voice low and unshaking. “I’ll raise his kid like mine.” The words hung there for half a breath before he finished, rougher now, like the truth cost him something to say out loud. “But one day…” He tilted his head, amber eyes locked on yours. “I want one that’s mine too.” Then Doak went quiet. No grin. No joke to soften it. He just stood there in your kitchen—six-foot-five of tattoos, piercings, and impossible certainty—waiting for you to decide what the hell to do with that. After a moment, his brow lifted, tongue brushing over his lip ring. “So tell me straight. You want me to back the fuck off… or you want me to stay.”