“Good point,” she muttered. Dropping her purse into the cart, she turned to me. “Hold her for a second?”
Wait a fucking minute.
“Please,” she said. “It’ll be way easier if I have two hands.”
Without waiting for me to respond, the tiny person was pressed against my chest, and I had no choice but to hold on to her.
“Support her head. I’m going to look at the labels first,” Cecilia said as she turned away, completely ignoring the fact that the earth had just tilted on its axis, and I was standing there with what amounted to a seven pound bomb in my hands.
The baby jerked, and I fumbled to catch her little bobble head before it rolled right off the back of her neck. Jesus, she was so small. Her bald head was kind of cone shaped still, and I wondered how long it would be before it rounded out a bit. She didn’t look like Cecilia, but I couldn’t imagine she looked like anyone. Her features were so tiny, and the only distinguishable feature she had were a pair of pouty lips that I assumed must have come from her dad. She curved back against me and I could feel every vertebrate down her spine beneath the thin blanket and nightgown she had on. She smelled like Cecilia.
“I’m just going to get these ones,” CeeCee said, lifting a box of diapers from the shelf. “They’re the ones the hospital uses, so they should be a safe bet.”
I followed Cecilia around the baby department while she grabbed supplies, growing more and more confused as she filled the cart. When she’d said that she wasn’t prepared for the baby, I’d assumed she’d meant that she had some holes in her supplies. From what I was seeing, though, Cecilia must not have had a single thing. Why the hell wouldn’t she have been at least a little prepared? Didn’t women have baby showers and shit? She’d had nine months to prepare.
“Shit,” she said, coming to a stop. She glanced at full the cart. “We should’ve grabbed the car seat first.”
“Pick which one you want,” I replied, handing the baby back to her. “I’ll carry it.”
She walked down the line of strollers and car seats, stopping at each one so she could read the tags. Then she pulled out her phone and started reading something there. Finally, she pointed to the one she wanted.
“That one has the best reviews,” she said, her fingers pressed to her lower lip.
The gesture made everything inside me pause. I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing as memories flooded back. She’d always done that lip thing, for as long as I’d known her. It was a nervous habit that I wasn’t even sure she was aware of. Her Grandma Rose had done the same thing. When they were stressed or worried or thinking about something, they pulled at their lower lip.
“This one?” I asked, the words coming out gravelly.
“Yep.” She took a step back so I could grab the box. “It isn’t the fanciest one here, but it has the best ratings.”
“That’s usually a good thing,” I assured her, lifting the box. “Middle of the road is usually a safe bet. Just ’cause something’s flashy doesn’t mean it’s the best.”
“True,” she murmured as the baby started to fuss. “We better hurry. She’s getting hungry and we’re about five minutes from complete devastation.”
Balancing the car seat box in the seat of the cart, I followed her to the front of the store and unloaded the supplies while she grabbed about ten reusable bags from the end of the aisle. Blankets, towels, wash cloths, tiny baby clothes, diapers, bottles, pacifiers, some sort of baby carrier that looked like it would take an hour to put on, nursing pads, the list went on and on. She helped me unload as the baby began to really fuss, and then her eyes widened.
“Shit,” she said, bouncing up and down. “I completely forgot—I’ll be right back.”
She took off without another word.
“New babies are hard,” the checker said sympathetically. “Especially ones as fresh as yours.”
I nodded.
“She can take her time,” the woman continued with a smile as I lifted the car seat so she could scan it. “There’s no line and I’ve got nowhere to be.”
“Thanks,” I said, glancing back toward the rest of the store. I wasn’t sure if I should follow Cecilia or wait while she got whatever she’d forgotten. Deciding to wait, since I wasn’t even sure where she’d gone, I shot an uncomfortable smile at the checker.
“First baby?” she asked knowingly.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t get easier,” she said, laughing. She leaned against her station. “Just kidding. I mean, it really doesn’t get easier, but it changes. Right now, it’s all about the lack of sleep and making sure they eat and poop enough. That goes away and you’ll wish they weren’t pooping so much!” She laughed again. “But eventually, you’ll only be worrying whether they’re safe and happy.”
“Your kids grown now?” I asked.
“Picked up on that, did you?” she said with a wistful smile. “It’s cliché and hard to understand when you’re in the thick of it, but trust me on this—soak up every second of this stage because before you know it, that baby will be a toddler and then heading off to school and then graduating, and it’ll feel like you blinked and missed it.”
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, uncomfortable with the entire conversation. I wasn’t about to correct her and embarrass her for assuming, but it also felt really fucking weird acting like I was any part of the baby’s life. She was going to be gone the next day and I really was going to miss it all.
Just as I finally decided that I was going to find Cecilia and was pulling my wallet out of my back pocket to pay, the sound of the baby girl’s cries became audible and they came around the corner.
“Sorry,” Cecilia apologized, out of breath. “I forgot to get a few things.”
She threw a package of underwear, a bra, a pair of sweats and matching sweatshirt, and a big package of pads on the conveyor belt. My lips twitched.
“Postpartum bleeding is no joke,” she huffed, her cheeks a little pink.
“You could’ve just used the diapers,” I joked. “They look about the same size.”
Cecilia scoffed, but she was trying not to smile.
“You push something the size of her out the end of your penis and then you can give me shit about the size of my pads, alright?” she said, grabbing her wallet out of the cart.
My hand instinctively went to my junk and she grinned.
“I was telling your man that babies grow so fast that if he blinks, he’ll miss it,” the checker told Cecilia while she paid.
“That’s what my mom always said,” Cecilia murmured, shooting her a smile.
“Sometimes, truth is universal,” the checker said knowingly. “Have a good night.”
“You, too.”
As we walked toward the front door, Cecilia pulled a baby blanket out of the cart and ripped off the tags so she could wrap the baby in it.
“I forgot a toothbrush,” she said just as we reached the truck. She glanced behind us. “I could run back in—”
“I’ve got an extra at the house you can use,” I said, setting the car seat box on the ground and using my pocket knife to open it. “She’s going to burst the blood vessels in her face if you don’t feed her soon.”
“Good point,” she said, doing the bouncing side step thing again.
“Climb in the front,” I said, opening the door for her. “Feed her while I get this shit inside and get her seat set up.”
“Are you sure?”
“Or we can both stand out here while she screams and then listen to her the entire way back to the house,” I said over the baby’s cries.
“Right.”
The sound of the baby’s cries were muted through the window of the truck and it didn’t take long before they stopped altogether. As I pulled out the plastic and foam surrounding the car seat, I wondered how the hell Cecilia had gotten herself mixed up in a home invasion and homicide. None of it made sense. She didn’t live in the mansion we’d found her in, but she
’d been hiding in the nursery. From what I understood, and I assumed Cecilia would have mentioned it, we hadn’t left a child behind. Had she been staying there? That didn’t really make sense, either—people didn’t fully furnish a nursery for their friend’s kid. And who the hell were those people, anyway? Friends, maybe, but not the type I would have pictured Cecilia hanging out with. They were fancy wine and dinner parties, and unless things had changed a hell of a lot, Cecilia was more of a good beer and bonfires type.
I jerked my head up as she opened the door again and turned to sit sideways, her feet braced on the edge of the floorboard.
“Thank you,” she said. “Again. I swear, by the end of this, I’ll owe you so much that I’ll never be able to repay you.”
“You don’t owe me shit,” I countered as I worked on the seat. I grimaced as thoughts of just how she could repay me flashed in my mind. Jesus, I was an asshole.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you guys hadn’t shown up,” she said quietly.
“He was leavin’ when we got there,” I reminded her. “You would’ve been okay.”
“Maybe.” She was silent for a while. “I probably would’ve been trapped in that closet until my parents got there tomorrow. I wouldn’t have taken the chance to get out.”
“Yeah, you would’ve.”
“No,” she said, letting out a humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t have. I would have stayed in there like a scared little frozen rabbit, too afraid to move.”
The words were familiar, but it took me a minute to place where I’d heard them before. When I remembered, it felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
“Cec,” I said, straightening up to look at her.
“You know it’s true,” she said with a shrug.
“It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now,” I replied firmly. How many times had we had this conversation? A hundred? A thousand? How many times had I argued that she wasn’t a fucking coward for taking cover when she was being shot at? That she’d done exactly the right thing?
“Thank you,” she said again.
“Stop fuckin’ thankin’ me,” I snapped, the words sounding different after I knew where her head was at.
“None of this feels real,” she said after a moment. “I know at some point it’s going to hit me, but I don’t think it has yet.”
“That’s normal,” I replied, opening the back door so I could install the seat. “Shock’s a funny thing.”
“You think I’m in shock?” she asked.
“You’ve been through a lot tonight,” I said. Why the hell did they make these things so hard to fucking install? “Hopefully, that shit won’t sink in until you’ve got your people around you to carry some of the weight.”
“I haven’t seen them in a year, you know,” she said. “It never feels that long until I start counting the months. We talk about them visiting me here or me going up there, but then plans fall through and we put it off.”
“Bet Farrah isn’t happy about that.”
“No,” she replied. “My mom hates it. I think she was glad at first when I moved so far away, but she wants me home now.”
“Didn’t your dad get in a pretty bad car accident a while back?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “That scared the shit out of me. I swear, I didn’t breathe until I saw him with my own eyes.”
“Makes sense they’d want you home. You got the distance you needed, but maybe it’s time for you to head back.”
“You know how it was for me up there,” she said softly. “I have no interest in going back to that.”
“Maybe it’d be different,” I replied as I yanked the seat from side to side. It barely budged an inch. Good.
“I’m different,” she said as she pulled the baby up to her shoulder and started patting her back. It sounded like she was thumping her pretty hard and I winced.
“You sure that’s how you’re supposed to do it?” I asked, shutting the back door.
“It’s how the nurses showed me,” she said with a huff. “It sounds bad, right? Like a drum.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’m different,” she repeated, pulling the conversation back around as she met my eyes. “But I might not be different up there.”
“You think you act like someone else down here?” I asked curiously.
“I know I do.”
“Huh.” I turned away and stuffed all the plastic back into the box and closed it before tossing it in the back of my truck.
“Huh, what?” Cecilia asked as she climbed out of her seat.
“You seem the same to me,” I said seriously.
“Gee, thanks,” she muttered.
I wasn’t sure how to explain that I hadn’t meant it as an insult.
* * *
Later, after we’d figured out how to buckle the baby into her seat, drove home while she cried because she didn’t want to be in it, dragged all of Cecilia’s supplies in the quiet house, and settled in for the night, I laid in bed wondering how in the fuck I was going to sleep.
My bedroom door was open in case Cecilia needed something, but there was no noise coming from the guestroom. She must’ve gotten the baby to sleep. I hoped that Cecilia was sleeping, too. She looked worn the fuck out by the time we got all of her stuff unpacked from the truck.
Without conscious thought, my mind drifted to the usual memories that helped calm my mind enough to sleep.
Groaning, I reached up and fisted my hand in the pale blonde hair at the base of her neck, pulling her mouth down to mine. Her hips rolled as her mouth opened for my tongue. God, she was incredible. She hadn’t been my first, far from it, but she was by far the best. There was something about the way she smelled, the feel of her skin under my fingertips, the way she moved, that outpaced every other partner by a mile. Or maybe, it was because I loved her—the knowledge of that making my skin prickle. Yeah, I loved her, I was more certain of that than I was of anything else in my life. I hadn’t imagined love would feel like that, a mixture of possession and protectiveness and tenderness all wrapped up into this weird package that made my tongue too big for my mouth and my chest feel like it was caving in. If I could’ve stopped it, I would’ve. I would’ve never fallen in love with anyone if I’d had the choice. I couldn’t help it, though, not with her. She was a force that hit with the strength of a freight train, but instead of running into me, it was like she flowed through me, the particles that made her mixing with the particles that made me. Inevitable. Necessary.
Her nails bit into the skin of my chest as she moaned against my mouth and I hissed, rolling sideways until she was under me.
“Like that?” I whispered into her ear as she gasped. “You want my cock?”
She answered me with a whimper. I hadn’t expected anything else. She rarely said anything when we fucked, just random murmurs of my name and the whispered conviction that I was hers. But, while I normally chose my words carefully before I spoke, whenever we were like this, naked and fitted together like puzzle pieces, I couldn’t stop the words from flowing out of my mouth. Filthy words that made her tremble and arch.
“Mine,” I said into her ear, jerking my hips forward. Blindly, I reached for her legs, pulling them up around my back. “All mine.”
She nodded, her breath catching. Within seconds, her hand had found the side of my face, cupping my cheek, and I leaned up slightly, knowing what the gesture meant. Shuddering, her body strung tight as a wire, she came in pulses around me.
I refused to follow behind her as she relaxed beneath me. Instead, as her eyes found mine, I grinned. “Again,” I ordered, rolling my hips forward.
A quiet sound came from down the hall and my ears reddened in shame, but it wasn’t enough for me to stop the memory flowing through my mind. Eventually, I must have crashed because I found myself in a familiar dream, one I hadn’t had for years. I was on my back, staring through tree branches at a powder blue sky dotted with clouds. I knew that I needed to get up, but I couldn’t.
It was like I was encased in cement and the only part of my body that I had any control over was my eyes. I moaned as the sounds of chatter and laughter were drowned out by the sound of gunfire. I needed to get up. I had to help them. I jerked as the sky went blurry with tears. The sound of a baby crying made me panic and I tried to roll over onto my stomach, but none of my limbs would move. There wasn’t supposed to be a baby there.
I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart thumping so hard that I could feel it in my ears.
“I’m sorry,” Cecilia said from the doorway of my room. “I thought she might settle down if I walked around with her, but I didn’t realize your door was open.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked blearily, leaning up on my elbow.
“Nothing that I can tell,” she said. She sounded close to tears herself. “She’s just pissed. Every time I sit down, she starts back up again.” She was swaying from side to side and the baby’s cries turned to whimpers as she spoke.
“Why don’t I take her for a little bit?” I said. I wasn’t going back to sleep anyway. “You can get some rest.”
“No, that’s okay,” she said as I sat up and threw the bedding back. Her words trailed off and her eyes widened.
I realized way too late that I was sitting there in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. Thank Christ, my dream had completely obliterated any erection I’d had from my preferred method of falling asleep.
“I’ll grab some pants,” I mumbled, pushing up from the bed.
“Don’t cover up on my account,” Cecilia said jokingly, though she sounded exhausted. “Jesus, I didn’t even know you were capable of that.”
“Of what?” I asked, glancing down to double-check that I wasn’t sporting wood as I pulled a pair of sweats out of my dresser.
“That.” She waved her hand at me, her eyes focused on the tattoo of her name on my chest before she looked away. “I didn’t even know your body could make that much muscle.”
I laughed. “It couldn’t when I was nineteen.”
“Steroids?” she asked in mock understanding. “How’re your balls?”
“I don’t do steroids and my balls are fine,” I shot back, striding toward her. “Boob job?” I asked as I took the baby from her arms.
Craving Cecilia Page 5