I shrugged. “I haven’t done it yet.”
Yet.
Yet being the very operative word.
That’s when I saw the change come over him.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but him moving in and wrapping me in a hug so tight that I couldn’t breathe? That was downright surprising.
“One more time,” he said softly into my hair. “That’s all I’m asking for, is one more time.”
I looked over at him sharply, feeling the weight of those words in my chest.
“What if this time you hurt me like you’ve hurt me all the other times?” I asked.
What if this time, you actually break me?
He shook his head fiercely. “I’m all in. I won’t do that to you again.”
Would he?
Would he not?
I guess only time would tell.
But my answer didn’t come to me in some sudden epiphany of ‘you should give him a shot.’
No, it came with the fluttering of the life in my belly.
The very first time that I for sure, felt the baby move.
The very first time that his father was around at the same exact time.
I gasped and pressed my hand to my belly, my eyes going wide.
And there it was again, a sudden fluttering sensation.
A sign that I needed and wasn’t about to deny.
“What is it?” Bram gasped, moving forward and catching me by the elbows.
His eyes were intense, and the way his hands felt on my skin…
“The baby,” I whispered, feeling tears start to form in my eyes.
“What about her?” he rushed, his eyes now super intense, as if he could fix whatever it was making my world wrong by the feel of his body alone.
He couldn’t.
But I knew for a fact that Bram had a will of steel. If he wanted something fixed, he’d fix it.
Even if it was inhumanly possible.
“No.” I shook my head, trying to soothe the fear I could see creeping into his eyes. Fear for a baby I’d at first been afraid that he didn’t want. “It… there’s nothing wrong with her. There’s just… I felt her move.”
Her.
CHAPTER 12
Just FYI, with a 100% certainty, you will experience shitting your pants outside of childhood.
-Secret of life
BRAM
“Don’t get too close,” she whispered. “I have demons inside of me that my brother put there.”
I tilted my head to look at her and said the one thing that I could in that moment. “You can get as close as you want to me. My soul’s been living in hell for a while now. Your demons can come play with mine. Or I can straight up take them from you if you want.”
She looked startled for a long moment before saying, “Because of my brother?”
I shrugged. “Because of a few things. But your brother’s definitely part of the reason.”
She looked sick to her stomach for a few seconds, and I hated seeing that look on her face.
“The last eighteen weeks.” I shook my head. “I never want to experience that again. Not ever.”
She didn’t look convinced. In fact, when she pulled out of my hold and leaned away from me, I felt my heart break a little more.
She looked so far from convinced that I had a feeling I had a very long road ahead of me. Our relationship wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Not to mention, there’d been divorce papers that she’d had drawn up.
She wanted this relationship to end.
And I had a feeling the only thing saving me right now was the fact that she was carrying my baby.
“When were you going to tell me?” I asked carefully as I sat on the edge of her bed.
“Tell you about the divorce?” she asked. “I sent you papers. I figured that was about as good as telling you.”
Her attitude. God, I wanted to kiss it out of her.
“No,” I said. “The baby. When were you going to tell me about the baby?”
She looked at me sharply, as if I’d just said the wrong words.
“I just learned about it,” she grumbled. “I would’ve told you once I had my head wrapped around it.”
I sighed, blowing out a relieved breath before looking toward the door where Gary came in.
“Here, daddy-O. Sign here, here, and here. And she’s free to go.” He tossed a pile of clothes onto the bed. “Since yours were discarded when you were brought in, I grabbed you some scrubs.”
Then, with a flourish, he whipped the signed papers out of my hands and was gone.
I looked at the scrubs on the bed between us and said, “You need help?”
I had no doubt in my mind she needed help.
She swallowed hard, but she didn’t fake it.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I’m not sure how high I can lift my arm right now. I felt like he pulled it out of the socket when he yanked me up off the ground.”
I held my anger in check as I got her dressed. Which was hard since she wanted to shield almost every inch of her body with her hand or the hospital gown as we did.
“This would be easier if you dropped the gown,” I teased.
She swallowed and looked away. “I…”
She didn’t say anything after that, and I realized that I should stop.
If she needed the privacy, I would give it to her.
I’d give her just about anything right now. Anything as long as it didn’t have to do with me leaving her.
Fifteen minutes later, we were dressed and standing next to my bike.
I stared at it, wondering what in the hell I was supposed to do now.
“I don’t know if this is allowed or not,” I admitted, looking from her to the bike and back again.
She laughed softly, then walked over and got onto the back of my bike, as if she’d done it a half a million times.
But she hadn’t.
When was the last time I’d had her there? At least a year. Two or three? Possibly when we went out to eat at a restaurant to celebrate Cannel’s arrival back home.
Holy shit.
Feeling my stomach somewhere in the vicinity of my knees due to it sinking there, I straddled the bike and started it up, only then realizing that I had no clue where we were going.
“Where am I taking us?” I asked. “I have the address, but without pulling out my phone…”
She gave me directions, and not once did she scoot close to me.
Though, that was fairly normal when she rode on the back of my bike.
She never wanted to get too close.
Then again, that was something that she always did.
Something she’d always done since the moment that I’d married her.
The next stoplight we were at, where she pointed that I should take a right, I reached backward and bodily moved her so that she was snugly against my back.
“You’re making me scared being all the way back there,” I admitted. “You shouldn’t be on the bike in the first place, but with you that far back, I have no way to control you if anything happens.”
Meaning, if we went down, she would go no matter what, because I wouldn’t have her where I needed her. Against me.
She gasped at the move, and then slowly, hesitantly, her arms went around me exactly how I wanted them to.
“Now, which way did I need to go?” I asked.