Or so Amanda told me, a soft chuckle in her voice after she gently nudged me back to the here and now.
“C’mon, my Wonder from Down Under,” she murmured, tugging me to my feet. “It’s almost three-thirty. We won’t get the results for Raphael’s test for another two hours. Parker told us to go home and get some proper sleep. We’ll be back by the time Tanner wakes.”
Home. The word played with me. Going home with Amanda.
I tightened my fingers around her hand, stopping her as she began to walk away from the table.
She turned, a confused frown pulling at her eyebrows as she looked up at me. “What’s up?”
I drew her close and lowered my head to hers. “I love you, Mandy,” I whispered. “Will you spend the rest of your life with me?”
She looked up at me. Stared into my eyes. And then smoothed her palms up my chest and smile. “Yes,” she whispered back.
I kissed her there in the cafeteria. I knew there were other people around us, not many, but a few. I knew, given why they were at the hospital in the first place, the last thing they probably wanted to see was someone else’s raw happiness, but I had to kiss her. I didn’t have any other choice. I loved her. And she loved me. And when you realize something as profound as that, when it really really hits you, you have no other choice but to surrender to your heart.
Lifting my head from hers, our breaths mingling, I brushed my thumb over her bottom lip and nudged her forehead with mine. “Home?”
“Home.”
We drove back to her apartment in relative silence. There was nothing strained or uncomfortable about it. I sat in the passenger seat, eyes closed, my hand resting on her thigh.
Mrs. Garcia, I was almost surprised to see, wasn’t perched in her usual spot at her window when we arrived. Hand in hand, we walked into Amanda’s building, up the stairs to her floor. I wanted to scoop her up and carry her over the threshold when she opened her door, but honestly, I don’t think I had the strength. Exhaustion had finally claimed me. I was beyond drained.
I followed Amanda into her apartment, a slow smile tugging at the corners of my mouth as I saw she’d returned Tanner’s toys, his high chair, from their earlier hiding places. When had she done that? When I’d stormed out, angry at her and her non-relationship with Robby and his Rolex?
A warmth spread through me as my tired gaze fell on a collection of Transformers toys in a basket next to the sofa, sitting there waiting for Tanner to play with them again. I could hear his giggles as he waved them about. I could see his grin.
“Oppimus da,” he crowed in my head, waving the robot at me. “Tuck tuck!”
Warm fingers found mine and I lifted my gaze to find Amanda leading me through the living room. I think I was asleep before I made it into her bedroom. I don’t remember lying down. Nor do I remember undressing.
But when I woke, almost two hours later, and found Amanda stretched naked beside me, the pre-dawn sky painting her body in delicate purple shadows, I remembered our kiss in the cafeteria. I remembered my question.
I remembered her answer.
And every molecule in my body – from the base organ between my thighs, to the thumping organ in my chest – reacted to that answer, and the future it meant. Rolling onto my side, my pulse fast, my breath shallow, I skimmed my hand up over her bare leg, over her hip, her belly. My fingers found the tiny stretch marks in her flesh, and traced them. She moaned in her sleep, the softest of sounds, and shifted on the bed, moving into my touch.
I drew closer to her, my fingers exploring the incredible swell of her breasts, the puckered tip of her nipples. My pulse quickened more as I noticed the way the dark points grew harder, the way her body responded to mine. Returning my hand to her hip, I traced the silky lines there as I leaned toward her and took one of her nipples in my mouth.
“Oh yes, Bren,” she murmured, her voice husky with arousal. Her hand fisted in my hair, holding my mouth to her flesh.
I drew harder on the peak, sliding my hand to the curls of her pubic hair, and lower.
“Yes . . .” She rasped, arching as my fingers parted her folds and sought out the very center of her sex. “Yes . . .”
I worshipped her breasts, her sex, with my mouth and my hand. When I lifted my mouth from her breast, when I moved it to her mouth, when I took possession of her lips with my own, she moaned into the kiss and closed her fingers around my wrist. She guided my hand until I felt her inner muscles begin to tighten around my fingers.
“Oh Bren,” she groaned against my lips, squeezing my wrist and holding my hand still between her legs. “I don’t want to come that way . . . I want you inside me. Please . . . be inside me.”
“No worries,” I murmured against her lips, teasing the tiny button of her clit with my thumb before withdrawing my hand and moving above her. I supported my weight with my hands and knees as I kissed her over and over, as I feasted on her breasts and lost myself to her flesh.
I explored her beautiful body. I kissed her belly, traced her stretch marks with my tongue. I parted her pussy lips with my fingers and licked at her clit, teasing it. And then, as she moaned again and pleaded with me to be inside her, I moved up over her again, aligning our bodies, our hearts. Hips together, thighs tangled, I rested my weight on one elbow and caught her wrist with my other hand. I raised her palm to my lips and kissed it center.
Holding her gaze, I whispered I love you, and then entered her. Filled her. Made love to her. Gave myself to her forever.
And when her phone and mine chirped beside the bed, when Parker’s name flashed up on our screens, for a selfish moment I wanted nothing more than to pretend it hadn’t. For one split-second, selfish moment that vanished again just as quickly.
Because our forever – whatever it may be – was waiting for us at the hospital, and I didn’t begrudge that at all, even as I feared it and hoped to God it was the future we wanted.
Fourteen
And Aunty Chase Was Awesome
Remember how earlier I’d mentioned my thoughts on the concept of hope? As I sat in Parker’s office, Amanda’s fingers squeezing mine so hard it hurt, I knew there was a reason for my dismissal of it. Hope had royally fucked me over.
Raph wasn’t a match.
I don’t know at what point I’d believed one hundred percent that he was going to be. But at some stage in the last three hours, between when he’d hugged me in the hospital foyer to when he’d left with Parker to have the tests, my stupid optimism had taken charge of my commonsense and I’d convinced myself my old rival and friend was going to save my son’s life by being the perfect bone-marrow match. Maybe because he was a born chick-flick-hero kind of guy. Maybe because he’d saved Maci’s life by loving her. For whatever reason, I was convinced he was going to be a match and save my son.
He wasn’t. He didn’t know that yet. Neither did Maci. It was only Amanda and me and Parker in his office, the 5:30 am dawn sun streaming through the window, its promise of a new day mocking us with cruel light.
My heart pounding in my ears like a canon, I stared at Amanda sitting beside me, her stricken profile. Inside I was . . . empty.
“No.” She shook her head at Parker.
Parker’s sigh filled the office. He’d come back to the hospital dressed in gray suit pants, a white shirt and a purple and green polka-dot bowtie. The frames of his glasses were lime green. A purple handkerchief poked out of his breast pocket. I knew the colorful display was for the children, but I wanted to take that handkerchief and tear it to shreds.