by B. Celeste
“That’s not fair.”
“Answer. Me.”
“I was going to tell you,” I hiss, keeping my arms locked in my pockets.
“When?”
“When I was ready.”
“Not good enough.”
“When I felt you were ready.”
He draws back like I stabbed him.
Knowing he won’t let me walk away, I lift my shoulders stiffly. “You said you don’t love Lena, but you aren’t doing anything about it. I’ve seen the magazines. The tabloids. The stupid e-alerts. You’re still with her. Holding her hand. Hugging her. So don’t act offended that I made the best decision for us.”
Us. Me and baby.
Not me and Corbin.
The taste is sour in my mouth.
His next move is daring, his body pressing against mine as his hands draw mine out of the hoodie and pins them against the wall. “I did not come here to hear you give up on us, Little Bird. You may think your wing is broken, but it’ll heal. We’ll get through this.”
“It’s not that easy!”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re wrong for each other,” I tell him brokenly. “Society will never be okay with this relationship once they learn the truth. We’ll be labeled cheaters. I’ll be a homewrecker.”
“We’re right,” he argues. “And my home has been wrecked long before you showed up in California. I’m not just saying that.”
“Please?” I no longer know what I’m begging for.
Peace.
Salvation.
Closure.
Him.
Always him.
His fingers tighten around my wrist, keeping them against the wall so I can’t push him away like I tell myself to. “We’re getting a divorce.”
Four words.
Four words that change everything.
The way I think.
The labor of my breath.
My train of thought.
And my heart. My heart races and squeezes and warms and expands until I feel like I may combust.
“What?” is all I can fathom to say.
His lips twitch—not into a smile or frown, but the slightest upward slant that tells me all I need to know. “You’re right. Nothing about us is easy. It won’t be. People aren’t going to support us the way we’ll want them to. But you know what? Fuck them.”
“You can’t say things like that.”
“Can’t I?”
“Those people,” I reply, “are the reason you’re so successful. It matters what they think, just like my readers’ opinions matter to me.”
“I’m not saying they don’t.” He sighs. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Do you want me to tell you I’m pissed off that you’re pregnant? That I’m angry? I’m not. I’m surprised. But more than that? I’m fucking happy. If you don’t want to believe that this is a sign, then I will. How many years have we been apart? How many relationships have we failed all to come full circle? Things don’t just happen by coincidence. You flew to me. Broken wing or not, you found your way back to me.”
All I can do is gape at him. We watch each other with mixed emotions on our faces, his coated with something far lighter than mine. He’s genuine about this. And I…
Taking a deep breath, I force myself to close my eyes and block him from my vision. “I hate this. What are we doing, Corbin? This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. We’re supposed to fall in love and fight for each other. We let each other go instead. We lived two different lives. We moved on … or tried to. I hate that this is our story. Our legacy. I just…” I sniffle back tears. “I want so badly to hate you right now.”
“But you don’t.”
I refuse to speak.
“You love me, Little Bird.”
Nothing.
“I hate—”
A warm breath caresses my ear. “There’s more passion in hate, more fire,” he whispers against my lobe. “So, maybe you do hate me and my logic. But every time you say I hate you, I’ll know you burn for me.”
I let out a ragged breath.
His lips brush my cheek, then trail closer and closer to my lips. “So, tell me. Where is our story going next?”
He stops at the corner of my lips, which part to feel his breath radiate from them. I can practically taste him and it hurts.
I’ll know you burn for me.
“I don’t know,” I admit, afraid to open my eyes and look at the last person I should want.
“Look at me.”
My lids twitch.
His teeth nip at my bottom lip, causing me to suck in a breath and arch my pelvis into his as he rolls my lip into his mouth and suckles. When he lets go, I make a disgruntled noise. “I need you to open your eyes, Little Bird.”
I know what he’ll say.
I don’t know if I can handle it.
But I obey.
I peel open my lids and meet the silver color that weakens my knees and drives me mad. Locking my gaze with his, I feel his hands let go of my wrists and wrap around my waist. Our bodies pressed together soothes my internal turmoil, and the burn he knows I hold deep inside sparks for him.
Caressing my sides, he delivers the three words I’ve told myself not to accept. “I love you. You can push me away, hate me, question me, but I will always be here. Right here. This is where I want to be—where my little birds are.”
He cements his statement by pressing his palm against my stomach between us, holding onto the being that ties us together forever.
He’s always been right.
We’re inevitable.
My office floor is littered with plastic totes full of odds and ends that I refused to look through since packing them away. Their familiarity quickens the pace of my heart as I dig through the old memories and pull out the burgundy notebook that both Corbin and I know well.
“Gavin tried getting me to throw this stuff out when he helped me move,” I say, staring at the notebook before turning it to where Corbin stands at the doorway.
His lips part. “Is that…?”
Walking in, he takes it from me and studies the gold lettering that says Most of all let love guide your life. Flipping through the full pages of blue and black ink, he shakes his head as his lips tug into the smallest smile.
“You kept this?” His eyes scan the handwritten words filling each page, looking between it and me when realization dawns on him. “This is the book, isn’t it?”
My cheeks pinken, as I go back to dig through my bins. Silver bows, and smaller plastic containers holding origami birds from high school makes a lump form in my throat.
Sitting on the edge of my desk, Corbin turns the pages of the notebook he gave me for Christmas in high school and begins reading from it. “’I was stupid. Stupid for the way I loved so easily, hoped too deeply, and expected too blindly. I was naive for feeling so carefree, smiling so widely with a simple text, and losing myself so quickly to a man I knew would leave me one day.’”
He pauses, running his fingers down the page before continuing. “’It was silly to believe that things would be different than any other heartache humans experience. I’d been warned, but I ignored the signs. All or nothing—that’s what I gave. He took all. I got nothing.’”
I know for a fact that the ink on the page is smudged and faded in certain parts. To the bottom right is the faintest water stain in the form of a small tear droplet, and I wonder if he can feel my pain if he touches it.
“’And through it all,’” he reads through a hollow voice that wavers, “’I wonder, why not me? I inspect my flaws because there are a lot of them and study my mannerisms because they’re vast. And I think … it was always meant to be this way. Lonely. Trying. Inevitable.’”
Pressing my lips together, I think of the last word and swallow my emotions. Inevitable. Ironic how that word likes to reappear between us—the same word with two different contexts.
“I don’t remember that in the script,” he finally says, clearing h
is throat.
I play with the silver bow in my hands, running my fingers over it without looking at Corbin despite the way he stares. “It didn’t get added into the book.”
“Why not?”
My eyes trail over to him slowly, surely the dark brown color of them wary and distant as we lock gazes. “That was the first thing I wrote when I realized you weren’t coming back. My heart hurt from thinking about you and my eyes hurt from crying all the time. Mom told me to write to make myself feel better, so I did. I bled onto that page with anger and betrayal because you left me like everyone said you would. I put myself in the position to be broken like Gavin always said I’d be. I was angry with myself. I just felt so stupid.”
He abruptly closes the notebook and squats in front of me, brushing hair behind my ear that escaped my messy updo. “I’m sorry. I know those words don’t mean much now, but I am for what it’s worth.”
I lean into my palm. “That notebook went everywhere with me. Every time I thought of one-liners or quotes or scenes, I’d stop whatever I was doing to jot it down. I did what Jamie told me when we met. I wrote a story worth telling, putting it all down no matter how much it hurt. And you know what?”
I move my head away from his touch as I place the silver bow on the carpet and pick up a plastic container. Opening it, I reveal the origami corsage from winter formal. “I used writing as an outlet. We both succumbed to our vices.”
He repositions to sit down beside me, grazing his fingertips across the old relic like he can’t believe I’ve kept it. Honestly, I can’t believe I was strong enough to either. “I wouldn’t exactly call writing a vice.”
I set the bird down and rummage through my other saved memories. “It is when you use it like I do.” I laugh softly and grab the same worn Stephen King book I used to read to him at night like he’d ask me to. “Writing was supposed to be an escape. It was meant to let me get my feelings out in a therapeutic way so I could move on. And instead, I wrote about the very thing I was supposed to forget.”
He grabs the book from me and flips through the pages, seeing the random notes littering the margins. I hated when he wrote in it, so it became a habit of his just to irritate me.
“You did what you had to do,” is what he thinks to answer, closing the book and resting it in his lap. I stop digging in the bin, soaking up his words. “I think what you did was the best thing you could have done. Think about it, Little Bird. The reason so many people resonate with your characters is because there are thousands of people just like Beck and Ryker out there. You gave your readers an outlet too.”
Drawing in my bottom lip, I give him the tiniest shrug. I know he’s right, but something is holding me back from admitting it. “Tell me why you gave them a happy ending. Explain to me why you made them go through years of never knowing how to be happy, just to come full circle and get that happiness.”
My eyes focus on the plastic bin.
“Kinley,” he presses.
Hands going to my hair, I pull it out of the ponytail and redo it into a messy bun so it’s out of my face. “A lot of reasons. I wanted to give people hope that you could still find that person meant for you even after the trials you face together. I wanted to show that relationships aren’t some clear, clean thing. Sometimes you do bad things to get what you want and end with the person you’re determined to have. And…”
His brows raise.
“And I wanted to live out the ending I’d dreamt for us in any form I could,” I add in an audible tone.
Moving the book off his lap, he reaches forward and pulls me into him. I nearly topple over but catch myself on his shoulders. He grins and tugs me onto his lap, so I’m sitting sideways. His lips find my jaw, peppering kisses along the edge until his teeth nip my earlobe.
I inhale sharply when he brushes his lips against my ear and whispers, “We were always meant to get there, Little Bird. It just took us some time.”
Squirming from the heat between my thighs, I lift and swing one leg over his lap to straddle him. His hands find my sides, resting on my waist, as I wrap my arms around his neck.
Gnawing on my lip for a moment, I say, “This wasn’t exactly the ending I envisioned for us, Corbin.” I look around the room before meeting his curious eyes. “Sitting on your lap in the middle of my office, four months pregnant, wondering what’s going to happen when the truth comes out. Will our parents freak? Will they judge us? Forgive us? What is Lena going to say or do? How are our careers going to be impacted by it? I have so many questions in my head that are giving me a headache.”
“We’ll figure those out together.” His fingers twitch into my sides as he draws my lips toward his. “Let me help you relax, Little Bird. No thinking. Just us.”
“Maybe I’m afraid of us.”
He hums against my lips, parting them to taste me. I don’t pull back, just tighten my hold around him and deepen the kiss. Once upon a time this intimacy wouldn’t have come with consequences, but we’re too far gone to care.
Moving everything out of the way, he lays me down and hovers over my body. One of his hands cups my cheek, his thumb brushing my bottom lip, while the other goes to the hem of my sweatshirt.
I freeze, realizing the evidence of our indiscretion would be clear as day once he strips me. Nobody has seen my belly. I can barely look at its roundness in the mirror without breaking down. “Corbin…”
He stops. “Let me make you feel good.”
We stare at each other, something burning in the air between us. My eyes glaze over with tears and unspoken emotion, causing him to lean down and kiss me the way I need him to. With love. With lust. With passion. With yearning. With Corbin, I feel every little thing and it terrifies me.
“I don’t want you seeing…” My eyes flick down to my stomach, which he reaches out and brushes over the thick cotton covering it.
“I love all of you.” His palm flattens against the bump. “Especially what’s happening right here. There’s a part of us in there, Little Bird. Someone we can teach to fly, and love, and work hard just like we did.”
My jaw quivers as my head slowly nods, giving him all the permission he needs to peel the sweatshirt and camisole underneath off me. I help him by sitting up, revealing the stretched skin beneath, curved and rounded in the slightest way it wasn’t before.
My throat closes as he stares, his hands caressing the smooth skin in such a gentle way like he’s afraid I’ll shatter. “That’s our baby in there,” he repeats, words cracking.
He looks up at me, catching me staring back with glassy eyes. Climbing over me, he claims my lips and threads his fingers through my hair to mold my mouth to his. My pelvis arches to grind against the hard cock trapped in his jeans, squirming to get friction and relieve the pressure that’s built inside me.
He works his way down my body, spending time reacquainting himself with my pebbled nipples. Rolling one between his lips rewards him with a breathy moan that feeds him to do the same with the other until I’m writhing.
“I need more,” I pant, weaving my fingers in his hair and tugging.
His tongue makes a trail between the valley of my breasts, over the bump of my belly, until he teases the waistband of my leggings. Tracing his palms down my sides slowly, he works further down my legs and spreads them wider to fit his broad body between. His finger dips underneath the elastic, moving it down and letting his tongue taste the uncovered skin. My legs try closing as I grind into him again, needing everything from him and more.
I yank his hair with impatience, causing him to relent on his torture and pull my leggings off. Helping him rid them, he guides his palms up my ankles, calves, and thighs, spreading me wide and nipping the skin as he works his way up to my pussy.
Licking a trail up the apex of my thigh has me panting, but not as much as when he shifts to brush the tip of his nose against the seams of my lips. I gasp as he blows on me, the faintest whisper of his name greeting the air in a choked plea. He groans at the taste of me
when he spreads me open and swipes his tongue from my bundle of nerves to my soaked entrance, learning just how much my body needs him right now.
He peels himself away and looks up. “I want you to come in my mouth, Little Bird.”
My head tips back and the air swallows a strangled curse as he works my clit into his mouth and sucks hard. His fingers trail up one of my thighs, kneading the skin, before finding my entrance again. He plays with my arousal, circling his finger around the wetness without entering me. My hips move forward, trying to get as much as I can, causing him to move his tongue toward where his fingers play with me.
I moan loudly when his tongue enters me as his fingers go to my clit, pinching, teasing, anything to make my noises fill the room. My fingers dig into his scalp, guiding his mouth to the rhythm I want as I ride his face to chase my building orgasm. My knees lock on either side of his head as he inserts a finger and licks his way back up to my clit.
Hooking a second finger inside me, he fucks me with his lean digits again and again as he nips my clit until I tighten around him and yell out incoherent words.
“I’m going to come,” I gasp over and over, yanking on his hair harder and pulling him away. He removes his fingers and replaces them with his mouth, wanting me to do just as he said.
My legs struggle to stay open, so he holds them as I writhe beneath him. His tongue penetrates me until I clench it with my climax.
“Please,” I whisper on repeat as my orgasm takes over my body. I spill into his mouth, his tongue not stopping until my hips stop moving and my body becomes sated on the carpet.
Pulling away, he caresses my legs and looks at my flushed face before I cover it with the crook of my arm to catch my breath. “Baby, I’m just getting started.”
He shows me just that when he slides out of his clothes and positions himself right where he’s meant to be between my legs, thrusting his cock into me over and over until I’m screaming his name in as many positions as he can bend me.
And every time he empties himself into me, he kisses my stomach and whispers sweet nothings to the baby inside, telling us both how much he loves us before making me come again.