Because he cursed and left my bedside.
He crawled up behind me, displacing all of my pillows, and all but cocooned me in his body.
I leaned back against the hard chest that I loved so much and inhaled deeply.
“Another one,” he urged. “This time, I want you to push as hard as you can, baby. Leave it all in that one push.”
Tears started to stream down my cheeks.
I swallowed hard and pushed.
I pushed, and pushed, and pushed until I was seconds away from passing out.
Then sweet oblivion.
I floated for a while, my head all full of white noise.
Where was I?
What was going on?
Was I okay?
“…you’re my very best friend in the whole wide world.”
I finally opened my eyes to see the chaos of before had died down.
There was a doctor between my legs, doing something I’d rather not know about at that moment in time, and the man of my dreams was still behind me.
Oh, and I was holding a very content little baby in my arms, covered in nasty goo, looking at me with his or her daddy’s eyes.
“What a woman,” he whispered into my ear, causing me to turn my face up into his. “God, you amaze me. I can’t believe that a woman has to go through that kind of pain. But, God, baby. I’m so glad that you did. Look at what we made.”
Seconds after that beautiful statement, I once again opened my eyes to see my baby on my chest.
Callum’s big hand was covering the baby, holding that tiny little body to my bare breasts.
I looked down into the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen and started to sniffle.
“Boy or a girl, Mama?” Callum asked.
I had no idea.
I’d been so focused on pushing that I didn’t even remember getting him out, let alone having the baby placed practically in my arms.
“Boy,” I whispered.
“I agree,” Callum laughed. “No girl of mine would look at you like that. She’d only have eyes for me.”
I snorted at his ridiculousness and lifted my hand to the baby’s nose.
“Turn him over and see,” Callum ordered.
I helped move the baby to the side and there, proof for any and all to see, was a very obvious penis.
“Well then,” Callum laughed. “Feel like that thing might’ve come on a four-year-old, not an infant.”
“Baby’s genitals swell during the birthing process,” a nurse was half listening as she helped clean me up down below. “This is gonna hurt for a while, hon.”
I had no doubt about my vagina hurting after the baby came out of me like that.
I just hoped that I could use it properly later.
“We’re gonna go over here and get him cleaned up,” another nurse explained. “Do you want to come, Dad?”
“Fuck yeah, I do,” Callum confirmed.
I was all but shoved aside in his haste to get out from behind me, leaving me laughing and half down the bed with no way to get back up.
He did stop to help fix me, though, before he left me like a hot potato.
And there I watched as my husband, who hadn’t wanted kids brought into this hellhole of a world, absolutely melted at the sight of his baby.
God, I loved the man.
“You got a good one, girl,” the nurse said as she helped the doctor do something between my legs.
I rolled my head to the side to look at her and said, “Yeah, I know.”
And I did.
I had one of the best.
• • •
I hope you enjoyed Shine and Iris! Up next is Price and Salem in Rattle Some Cages.
Turn the page for a sneak preview.
What’s Next?
It’s not every day that you see a dead body at the beach. Or the woman of your dreams sitting next to that dead body.
Price Crow first saw Sabrina Proctor in the middle of a hurricane.
She’d been sitting next to her dead best friend, who’d passed away on the beach, with no way to get her back home, thanks to the world’s worst luck, and one hell of a storm.
So Price does what any decent person would do: he carries Sabrina’s dead best friend to their beach house and doesn’t leave her side until he’s forced to.
He had every intention of bridging that gap, of checking up on her and making sure she was okay, but life is funny and has a way of making a mockery of the best-laid plans.
Despite one hell of a connection, under the worst of circumstances, they go their separate ways. At least, he tries to. But he can’t stop thinking about her, and it becomes apparent, very fast, that he has a decision to make.
Choose Sabrina, or live out the rest of his life making everyone else around him happy except for himself.
PROLOGUE
If I were a bird, I know who I would shit on.
-Sabrina to her father
SABRINA
“I’m sorry, what?”
Surely, I hadn’t heard him correctly.
Surely.
“I want my dad to check to make sure that you’re still pure,” Cole repeated, confirming that I had, in fact, heard him correctly. I wasn’t hearing things. “I know that this is rather… odd. But this is something that every single female in the history of my family has done on the night before her wedding.”
I blinked.
Then I burst out laughing.
Because surely he had to be joking.
He had to be.
Right?
But nope, the moment that I burst out laughing, Cole’s lips went all pinchy—which usually indicated that he was about to lose his shit.
But, I kept laughing.
Because how could I not?
I mean, when I’d met Cole at the age of eighteen, I’d found his vow of celibacy until marriage quite annoying, but doable.
I mean, we were meant to have sex, and I didn’t believe in all that hullabaloo like he did.
But since Cole meant something to me, I was more than willing to give him everything he asked for.
And I did.
I gave him six years, as well as my promise of waiting until marriage.
“Only if you let my dad look at your asshole,” I found myself saying, hoping yet again for him to joke right back with me.
Except, he got offended. “What does my butthole have to do with this?”
I literally almost burst out laughing again.
Because he was so offended, in fact, that he had that little line between his eyebrows, indicating that he was even closer to blowing.
I’d been on the receiving end of Cole’s temper before, and I didn’t like it.
He knew this.
I knew this.
My dad even knew this.
Yeah, speaking of my dad…
“I guess I’ll see you later,” I said stiffly.
I stormed out of the house, the only thing on my mind was my father, and what he would do now that I’d called the wedding off.
Probably celebrate.
My dad hadn’t much liked Cole since the moment that I’d met him.
He’d tolerated him, sure, but he hadn’t liked him.
Which was quite surprising, because everyone liked Cole.
Only my dad?
He hadn’t much liked him.
“If you leave, you won’t be welcomed back.”
I looked over my shoulder at my now ex-fiancé.