by Meghan Quinn
Lucy threw her head back and laughed. “Little do Doctor Cuevas and Austin know that the baby will come out with a slight dent in its head from your enormous dick. Noodle is not the correct word.”
“Damn, love, you sure know how to make a man hard.” Connor thrust his pelvis at Lucy.
She pulled away, grabbed her purse and said, “Keep it in your pants, Cartwright. We have some shopping to do and, if you’re a good boy, I’ll spread my legs for you later.”
“Ah, hell. You can’t go around saying shit like that, Luce.” Connor stalked toward her and grabbed her ass in one swift movement. “Get back up on the table. I’ll fuck you here real quick.”
Lucy laughed and swatted his hands away as he continued to grope her backside. “Listen ass-man, you can feel me up all you want when we get back home. I might even wear your favorite lingerie set, if you’re good.”
“You know I’m always good, love,” Connor said with a wink.
Lucy rolled her eyes and opened the door so they could get on with their day. She had some diapers to stock up on and some neutral-colored clothing to fawn over. She grabbed Connor’s hand, linked their fingers together and looked up at the man she loved as they walked out the door. She knew it was going to be a rough road ahead of them, full of a lot of fights and, hopefully, a lot of making up, but it was all going to be worth it because she was with Connor. Connor was worth it.
**Molly**
Molly smoothed out her skirt and opened her door to find her pregnant friend smiling back at her while holding a box of donuts and a carton of strawberry milk. Molly shook her head and let Jane in her apartment.
“What have I told you about bringing your crap food over here?”
“Uh, a box of glazed donuts and strawberry milk is not crap food; it’s a gift from the food gods!”
“Who drinks strawberry milk anymore, especially at your age? Do you still have fucking unicorn posters hanging on your walls and blue glitter eye-shadow in your makeup bag?”
“Hey, baby wants strawberry milk, so baby gets strawberry milk!” Jane said, while grabbing two glasses from the cupboard.
Molly walked over and poked Jane’s stomach. “It’s been what…five months?”
“To date.” Jane beamed as she rubbed her little belly. “According to the fruit chart, my little girl is the size of a banana. Can you believe that? A banana. I have a banana in my belly.”
“You act like you’ve never had a banana in your body before. Is Brady really so small that he’s not even banana-sized? Fuck, that’s depressing,” Molly smirked.
Jane gave her a snide look as she walked with two glasses of strawberry milk and the box of donuts stuffed under her arm to the dining room table. She was the most annoyingly happy pregnant woman Molly had ever met. She was always smiling, always rubbing her belly and talking about what size fruit her baby was growing to. If Molly didn’t know it had always been Jane’s dream to have a baby, she would have been annoyed. But instead, she was overjoyed for her friend and the new adventure she was about to embark on.
“You ever going to tell your daughter that she was a guest at your wedding?”
Jane shrugged her shoulders. “She’ll probably figure it out.” She pushed the donuts toward Molly, but she refused the sugary confections. “Eat a damn donut! I distinctly remember you shoving donuts down my face when I first met Brady, so you can eat a damn donut on my behalf.”
“Whoa, settle down there, crazy pants. I’ll eat a donut.” Molly grabbed one from the box, but pushed the milk away. “But I refuse to drink that unicorn piss.”
“Fine, more for me,” Jane said, as she grabbed the glass of milk and started chugging.
Molly looked at her with one eyebrow raised, wondering where the hell her friend’s class had gone. Jane was always the poised one in their relationship, the one who could wear pearls, drink tea with her pinky out and dab her mouth daintily with a cloth napkin and get away with it, but now that she was pregnant, she had crumbs gracing her shirt, a milk mustache rivaling Tom Selleck’s and the belch of a man after he drank five beers.
“Really keeping up your standards, aren’t ya?” Molly asked as she sat back and watched her friend devour another donut.
Jane stopped mid-bite as she looked over at Molly. “You know, I didn’t come here to be chastised by the girl who used to sleep in her tube top covering one tit with the prior night’s regurgitated dinner on the floor.”
“Low blow,” Molly said, while laughing and shaking her head. “Those days are over. I’m a respected staple in the community and a beloved mother.”
“Staple?” Jane threw her head back and laughed. “Okay.”
“Well, respected, nonetheless.”
Jane heard a buzzing sound in the distance as she downed the rest of her strawberry milk. When she put her glass down, she cocked her head to the side and asked, “What’s that noise?”
Molly looked around the room and said, “I have no clue.” She leaned her chair back while still holding on to the table and looked down the hallway. “Winnie is in her room. Winnie! Come here, baby girl. Come say hi to Auntie Jane.”
“Ugh, you didn’t tell me Winnie was here. You know I love that little girl so much.”
At that moment, Winnie came tumbling down the hallway, walking like a drunken sailor who didn’t quite have her sea legs, since she was still learning how to walk. Her head was full of fine blonde curls springing from her head, her princess tutu was up around her chest and she had a long popsicle-like thing hanging out of her mouth.
“Hey, baby girl, what do you…?” Jane stopped as she eyed Winnie. At that moment, both Jane and Molly knew where the buzzing noise was coming from.
“Oh. My. God,” Jane said, as she fell to the floor and started laughing hysterically.
“Winnie!” Molly squealed as she jumped out of her seat and quickly grabbed her dildo that was shoved in her daughter’s mouth. “No, no, no. We don’t play with mommy’s love wand.” Molly replaced the dildo with a stuffed penguin and shooed her daughter away as her pregnant friend rolled around on the floor laughing.
“Love wand, oh my God, I’m dying,” Jane said between tears. “Please tell me that was clean.”
“Of course it was! I’m not a barbarian who fucks myself and leaves cum all over the place.” Molly placed the dildo on the dining room table and looked at her friend. “You about done down there?”
Jane continued to laugh to herself as she got up off the floor. She looked over at the dildo and her eyes widened. “Jesus, Molly. Do you think you could have gotten a longer one?”
Molly shrugged her shoulders. “I like to impale myself, so what?”
“Damn, that is so wrong. At least your daughter got a head start on learning how to give a blow job.”
Molly looked at Jane for a second before she joined in the laughter. If it was anyone else, Molly would have been humiliated, but since it was her best friend, she didn’t care.
“I’ll remember that statement when your little one comes popping out and then we’ll see how much you like inappropriate comments directed at your daughter.”
“Yeah, well she’ll never find a dildo in my room, that’s for sure. I have the real thing.” The moment Jane’s words left her mouth, Molly knew she regretted them. Jane was about to side step when Molly stopped her.
“Don’t worry about it.” Molly gathered the empty milk glasses from the dining room table and took them to the sink to rinse them out before placing them in the dishwasher. Molly felt Jane walk up behind her, but Molly refused to turn around, since tears were threatening to fall.
“Have you heard from him?” Jane delicately asked, as she placed her hand on Molly’s shoulder.
Molly just shook her head no. “It’s been four months, Jane. Four months! The only reason I know he’s alive is because Connor will occasionally text me to let me know that Luke contacted him.”
Jane wrapped her arms around Molly and gave her a tight hug. “Connor still doesn’
t know where he is?”
“No.” Molly shook her head as she released herself from Jane’s embrace and walked over to the couch. Winnie giggled in her room as princess music from her toys played in the background. “I don’t know what to do, Jane. Every day he doesn’t contact me, a little piece of my heart turns black.”
“I wish there was something I could do.”
“Me too.”
Molly thought back to the day Luke came home and showed up on her doorstep, living and breathing, as if she hadn’t buried him, said goodbye to him and finally released some of the pain she had carried around from losing him. The look on his face when he saw Austin in their apartment, of hearing he had a child, never left her mind. He was damaged, angry, shocked and hurt. He couldn’t believe that she would move on. She’d convinced herself that she was doing the right thing by moving on…like everyone told her to, but the minute she saw the look of betrayal in Luke’s eyes, she knew she should have waited; she knew she should have never tried things with Austin. She was a fool.
“Have you thought about talking to Jim and Marcia, Luke’s parents? They might know where he is.”
Molly shook her head. “They don’t, I’ve tried. They’re just as concerned as I am. Something happened to him when he was out there being held captive for so long. He changed…and when he came back, he wasn’t greeted with open arms. Instead, he saw his fiancé with another guy and learned about a daughter he had no clue about. I don’t blame him for leaving.”
“No, you can’t say that,” Jane said, while placing a warm hand on Molly’s arm. “You thought he was dead. You had a funeral for him; he’d been gone for two years, Molly. You were not expected to wait around for a man that was supposed to be dead. You did the right thing, you moved on…”
“Moving on was not the right thing,” Molly said as a sob escaped her mouth. “It wasn’t the fucking right thing to do. If it was, then why the fuck did the man I love look at me with pure hatred and take off without a word, leaving me to raise our child by myself all over again? He doesn’t even know her,” Molly exclaimed. “He doesn’t even know his own daughter…”
At that moment, Winnie came stumbling into the living room with a sand bucket on her head and her arms sticking out Frankenstein-style while bumping into every object in her way and giggling.
Molly wiped a tear as she looked down at her daughter…her daughter that she at first had a hard time accepting, connecting with and, with great shame, loving. But now that Molly had cleaned herself up, stopped drinking and was actually making something of herself, she couldn’t imagine a day without little Winnie.
Molly lifter her daughter up, took off the bucket that made her curls sick straight up because of the static, and kissed her on the cheek.
“How could he not want to get to know this little hellion?” Molly asked as she squeezed her daughter.
“I have no clue,” Jane shook her head. “Just hang in there, sweetie. Something is bound to change. He can’t stay away forever.”
Molly wanted to believe Jane. She wanted to fall for the positive hope that she was handing out, but deep down, Molly knew Jane was wrong. She hadn’t seen the way Luke looked at Molly right before he slammed the door on their relationship. She didn’t hear the hateful phone calls when she first tried to get in touch with him and she didn’t see the cold, hard freeze-out that Luke had now been giving Molly for the past four months. No one had a clue what Molly was actually going through and the sad thing was, Molly didn’t think it was ever going to change.
Chapter Two
**Parker**
The locker room was silent as Parker gathered his pile of shoes from the bottom cabinet of his locker. He was a bit of a shoe slut, now that he had some money to spend, and the guys on the team didn’t let him live down the fact that he had more shoes in his locker than they had baseballs in the stadium. That was a little farfetched, but he couldn’t lie, he had a shit-ton of shoes.
“Damn, where did all these come from?” Parker muttered to himself, as he started stuffing his Braves duffel bag with shoes to take back to his high-rise apartment.
The transition from college to the minors to the majors was huge. Baseball was the same, which he was grateful for. It was his one solace in life…being out on the field, feeling the dirt under his feet, the smell of freshly-cut grass and the boos and cheers from the crowd. It was where he felt at home. Off of the field, he felt lost. There were constant functions…fundraisers, appearances, interviews and much more that he had to go to, which were tiring at times, especially when he was playing ball almost every single day.
Now that the season was over, he was going to take a much-needed break from the field, the public, and the extremely adoring fans in Atlanta. He couldn’t be more grateful for the warm welcome he’d received, especially since fans could easily eat you alive as a rookie, but a part of him wished he could fly under the radar. He wished that he could just play ball and side-step the rest of the drama and flair that came with being the starting short stop for the Atlanta Braves.
“Hey, Kirby, didn’t know you were going to be in here,” Brady Matthews, starting first baseman said, as he walked into the locker room.
Once Parker started eating up every single ground ball that was hit in his vicinity of the field, he was awarded the name “Kirby,” as in the vacuum brand. The boys couldn’t have picked a better vacuum brand…no they had to go with the geekiest name they could think of. Not only did the boys call him Kirby, but so did the rest of the organization, the announcers and, of course, the fans. T-shirts were sold outside the stadium with his head mounted on a vacuum with the name Kirby plastered across the chest and his number, 24. It was a ridiculous shirt, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t have one himself.
“Hey, Matthews. Just cleaning out some of my shoes.”
“It’s about time. I swear to God you have more shoes than my wife and she takes up half of the closet with her come-fuck-me heels.” The way Brady talked about his wife, Jane, made Parker instantly jealous. Brady was always saying how hot she was, what an amazing woman she was, and how she was hornier than hell, now that she was pregnant. Lucky shit. Parker wanted a girl, a family, someone to spend his life with and, at the rate he was going, he was going to be retiring at forty, some washed-up baseball player with no prospects and a huge house all to his lonesome self.
“How is Jane?” Parker asked, knowing Brady was about to spout out a novel on how amazingly beautiful his wife was.
“Amazing!” Parker rolled his eyes as he geared up for a good ten minutes of Jane time. “The baby is relentless with her ribs lately. I think she has a bit of her Aunt Molly’s spunk in her which, God save us all, because that bitch is a fucking hot mess most of the time, but that’s why we love her.” Brady shook his head and continued, “Did you know that the baby is the size of a banana right now? A banana…damn it’s so weird to imagine my fucking grade A swimmers created such a beautiful thing.”
“Grade A?” Parker quirked an eyebrow.
“Hell yeah, it didn’t take us very long to get pregnant and it’s because my men are fucking titans.” Brady squeezed his balls and then leaned into his locker to grab his bat.
Parker nodded at Brady’s bat and asked, “You doing some BP? You know the season is over, right?”
“Yeah, but there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about practicing, fine tuning everything. Don’t you think you should be doing the same…Kirby?”
Parker flipped him off and said, “I hit enough singles and homeruns throughout the season to take a break.”
Brady threw his head back and laughed. “Man, awfully full of yourself for being a rookie.”
“No longer a rookie, so you fuckers can take back the pink backpack you so gracefully gave me and the light pink panties I had to wear with my white baseball pants.”
Brady barked out in laughter and sat down at his locker. “That was, by far, the best fucking initiation…and it wasn’t even planned.
Who knew you were a lady and loved wearing tight-as-fuck baseball pants? The picture of the camera zooming in on your pink-clad ass is still the screen saver of all the computers in here.”
Parker just shook his head as he zipped up his duffel bag. “Well, you all can fuck yourselves,” he said jokingly.
“You want to hit some with me?” Brady asked. Parked never got over the fact that the captain of the team, the one and only Brady Matthews, treated Parker as if they were longtime friends. The man was impossible to hate and it was moments like this, when he could joke around with the guy, talk about real things and then go eat up some baseballs that Parker saw how lucky he really was. Fuck, Parker was man-crushing on Brady.
“I wish. I have a plane to catch.”
“Yeah, where you headed?”
“Back home, San Diego. I’m going to spend some time at my friend’s beach house and just relax…away from all the crazy chaos my life has been.”
Brady walked over and clasped Parker on the shoulder. “It only gets worse,” he laughed. “Have a good time, you deserve it.”
“Thanks man.”
Parker started to walk away when Brady called out to him, “Oh and Kirby, don’t forget to send my wife a baby shower gift. We expect something really nice from our favorite rookie.”
Shaking his head and laughing, Parker just nodded and walked out of the locker room before Brady could start talking about Jane again. In a few hours, Parker would be enjoying the warm sun on his bare chest as he listened to the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing onto the beach. He was going to get his solace, his little piece of heaven, and he was going to get to see his two best friends, Jake and Lexi.
**Brady**
The crack of the bat when he made contact with the ball was a sound that would be forever ingrained in his head. Even though the Braves’ season was over and most of the guys were resting or going on vacations, he still visited the stadium for batting practice or a good workout. He believed in taking a break, but also keeping in shape. He never wanted to come back from break a different player. His fans expected a lot from him and he always swore to at least try to live up to their expectations. There was only one thing that could get in the way of that, and that was Jane and their soon-to-be baby girl.