by Nikki Ash
“Just coke for me,” I say.
“Excuse me?” Kayla cuts in. “Since when are you going sober?”
“Since I’m pregnant and I’m not sure how much the baby will enjoy Jack Daniels.”
Everybody goes silent and then cheers erupt. They all take turns congratulating and hugging me.
Ashley finishes pouring everyone’s drinks, but Kayla says she’ll remain sober with me.
Ashley raises her glass and we all follow suit. “A toast. To the new precious little miracle.”
“Here, here,” all the girls say.
“So, does Cooper know? How far along are you?” Hayley asks.
“Not far at all, only six weeks, and no, Cooper doesn’t know yet.”
“How is he going to feel?” Kayla asks. She almost seems despondent about my news. I give her a quick look, silently asking if she’s okay and she nods.
“I’m hoping he’s going to be ecstatic since it was his idea. Back in October, he told me he wants another baby and we decided I wouldn’t get the shot. I didn’t think it would happen so soon, but I’m excited. Speaking of the shot, we never ended up going together. Did you go get yours done?” Kayla nods, but something is off with her.
“So, anyway, I want to come up with a cool way to tell him. Whenever I ask him what he wants for Christmas he says he has everything he could want.”
“I got it! You can plan a family weekend away, like to Disney and say it’s the last trip before you’re a family of four.”
“Oh, I like it, Hayley! Yes, that’s what I’ll do, and it’ll be a Christmas present to Bella as well. Yay! I’m so excited! You guys can’t say anything to anybody. It would break Cooper’s heart if he found out he wasn’t the first to know.”
All the girls vow to keep silent and I’m ready to plan our trip.
Thirty-Seven
Cooper
All the guys are here, we’ve ordered pizza and wings, the pay-per-view fight is on, and Bella and her friend Tristan are running around playing. I’m thinking tonight is the night I’m going to let the guys know I’m going to be taking a break from fighting.
“So, I’ve decided something…” The guys all turn to me, but when I see Bentley, he looks like he’s a hundred miles away.
“Yo, Bentley! What’s up with you?” I ask.
“Women, bro. No, not women. One woman. One stubborn damn woman that is going to be the death of me.”
We all laugh and nod because we’ve been there.
“Kayla?” Kaden asks.
Bentley just shakes his head and we wait to see if he’s going to explain. Finally, with a deep sigh, he says, “We had sex in Boulder.”
We all congratulate him. Because really, that’s what men do… A guy gets laid and you say, Congratulations. Yep, we suck.
“So, does this mean you two are together now?” I ask, remembering he said the next time they have sex would mean they’re together.
“No, we aren’t. Not only are we not together, but she’s barely talking to me. She knew if we had sex it meant we would be together, but once it happened she said she made a mistake and left. I really care about this girl, but I don’t know what to do anymore. I think it’s time to move on. I’m already almost thirty years old. I want a family one day. I want a wife and kids, and I don’t want to wait until I am too old to enjoy all of that. There’s a girl I’ve been talking to, so we’ll see…”
Because he hasn’t been kicked down enough, Caleb adds, “She actually mentioned she might be moving out soon. I’m sorry, Bentley.”
“Well, screw her then.” And with that he gets up to clear his head.
I decide to hold off on my news for now.
A few hours later, and I can hear loud screeches and yelling from outside the house. When I look outside, I see Liz and her friends walking up the steps to the front door.
Ashley and Hayley appear to be drunk ,while Liz and Kayla are both sober.
“Hey, baby.” She gives me a soft peck on the cheek and walks in with Kayla, while everybody else stumbles in loudly. It’s actually quite amusing.
“What’s with only half of you being drunk?” Bentley asks. Kayla turns her attention to him, and if looks could kill, he would be dead and buried six feet under.
“Not that it’s your business, but I wasn’t in the mood to drink and either was Liz. Is that okay with you?”
Bentley puts his hands up in surrender and turns back to the fight.
“Sorry to ruin your little fight party,” Hayley says as she plops down next to Caleb and pats him on his leg. He blushes. The fool actually fucking blushes. Then he gets up immediately, like her hand set his leg on fire, and Hayley frowns at his reaction.
“I have to get to work,” he says, and without saying goodbye to anybody, he’s out the door.
Tristan and Bella come running down to say hi to their moms and tell them about all the Halloween candy they’ve been eating. Damn traitors.
We all find a seat and watch the fight. Liz is in my lap with Bella passed out next to us. Eventually everyone heads out. Kaden gives Ashley and Tristan a ride since her car isn’t here and she’s been drinking, and Kayla gives Hayley a ride home. Liz and I put Bella to bed and then head back to finish watching the main event.
“Are you going to miss this?” Liz asks as we sit back down on the couch.
“Miss what? The fighting?” I ask, stalling before I answer the question I know she’s really asking. She wants to know if a few years from now I’m going to resent her and Bella. I’ve thought long and hard about this and I know this is what’s right for my family and me. I would never turn around and blame Liz for my choices, but she needs to hear it so she doesn’t feel like I’m making a rash decision.
“No, baby girl. I’m not going to miss it. I’ll still be fighting. I’ll fight at the gym every day. The only difference is I won’t be fighting professionally. My contract ends in February and I’m okay with that. It’s time to move forward.”
Liz climbs into my lap, placing a leg on either side of me. I look up at the stairs out of habit and she slowly shakes her head. “She’s fast asleep.”
Taking the bottom of my shirt in her hands, she raises it over my head and throws it on the floor.
“Do you know how beautiful you are, Cooper?” Maybe she is drunk after all.
“Um, Liz, I’m not sure you should be calling a man beautiful. Do you want to emasculate me?”
She ignores my question and starts to kiss me. First, she kisses me on my lips but pulls away quickly. “You have beautiful lips. They were made for me. They kiss me with such passion and emotion, and the words that come out of them are just as beautiful.”
Next, she kisses the tops of my eyelids. “You have the most amazing eyes. When you’re happy, they are bright green, full of life, like the grass after it’s been raining for days. And when you’re angry, they go dark. I don’t like it when they go dark. Bella has the same eyes as you. Every time I would look into her eyes, it gave me butterflies because it brought back the brief time we shared together.”
She trails her lips down my neck, over to my chest, and stops right over my heart, placing multiple tender kisses there. “And your heart. It’s so full of love. Whether it was for thirty-hours in Miami or every day since we reconnected, you give me your entire heart and trust me with it. The way you instantly fell in love with Bella. Many guys might have thought I got pregnant on purpose or they might have accepted her but they wouldn’t have gone out of their way to make her feel so loved and cherished. You didn’t just give us a place to live, you made sure we felt at home.”
A lump in my throat forms. This girl is my entire fucking world. I’m going to marry her some day and she’s going to have more of my babies, and we’re going to live happily ever after.
She doesn’t stop at my heart, though. She kisses her way down to my stomach and stops at the center of my abs. She’s now kneeling on the floor between my legs. “Mmm… and this body. Cooper, do you have any id
ea how beautiful your body is? You treat it with such care only putting healthy foods in it. It’s such a turn on, and I love that this body is all mine.”
She moves on from my abs and unbuttons my jeans. Thank God because my dick is so hard it needs to be released from its confined space. I lift my ass and she pulls down my jeans, taking my boxers with her. I go to touch her and she shakes her head.
She gives my dick a kiss on the top of the crown, sucking on it lightly with her lips and then pulls back. Holy Shit, this woman is going to be the death of me.
“This is probably one of my favorites parts of your body.” I lift one of my brows up. I mean, I know it’s one of my favorite parts of my body, especially since it’s the part that goes inside of her, but I wasn’t expecting a woman to think it’s her favorite. She giggles under her breath at my reaction. “Not for the reasons you probably think… Well, actually, kind of. I remember the first time I saw your dick. I thought it was crazy to think it was beautiful. I haven’t seen any others to compare it to.”
I growl at that. “And you never fucking will.”
She giggles again, but continues. “It was so hard and thick, and when I felt it, it was smooth. Then when I tasted it, I thought it would be gross but it wasn’t. It tasted like you.” She puts her mouth back on my dick to give it another wet kiss, then she starts stroking it up and down slowly.
“But aside from its physical appearance, the reason it’s one of my favorite parts is for a few reasons.” She kisses it again, and it takes every ounce of restraint not to take her by her hair and push her beautiful mouth onto my erection.
“One, is what I feel when it’s inside of me. I feel so close to you, like we’re connected. When our bodies are skin to skin and you’re pushing it inside of me, hitting me so deep, I feel like we become one.”
This time she takes her entire mouth and covers my dick from root to tip with it then drags her mouth back up slowly. “The other reason it’s my favorite body part is because of what it’s capable of. Not only does it bring me an extreme amount of pleasure, but it’s how we created Bella.”
“That’s really fucking sweet, baby girl, but you can’t be bringing Bella up while your hands are stroking my dick.”
She laughs at that and then puts her mouth back on me. This time she doesn’t remove her mouth. Her tongue slides down with her mouth wrapped around it and she begins to move it up and down, fucking my shaft with her greedy mouth, and I can’t take it anymore. I need to touch her. It’s like she senses what I need because while keeping her mouth wrapped tightly around me, she grabs my hands with her own and moves them to her hair, giving me permission to touch her.
What started out slow and sensual, turns into rough and crazed. Her mouth starts to move faster as I entwine my fingers into her hair. I don’t push her head down, though. She doesn’t need me to. She’s deep throating me like a champion and within minutes I’m tapping her to let her know I’m about to come. Of course, it only spurs her on, and within seconds, I’m shooting my seed down her throat. She slows down but keeps licking until my dick is licked clean.
“Damn, baby. I’ve changed my mind. You can emasculate me any time you want.”
Thirty-Eight
Liz
It’s less than a week until Christmas, and I can’t believe I haven’t told Cooper that I’m pregnant yet. My next appointment isn’t until December 30th, so I’ll be able to wait until Christmas to tell him when I give him and Bella their gift together, and he’ll be able to go to my appointment with me.
Normally I keep the office door open, but I shut it today so I can finish planning our trip to California to Disneyland. I’ve figured out that we’ll go in March during Bella’s spring break, so she doesn’t miss any school. We’re going to go to all the parks and stay at a resort near Disney.
I’m making sure to put it on my personal credit card just in case Cooper decides to look at our joint account. I’m researching online the best hotels to stay at when a site pops up for the cheapest motels in the area. I go to click out of it, but of course the stupid ad opens up. So freaking annoying.
I hear a commotion outside the office, so I run out to see what’s going on. When I get out there Kayla and Bentley are in the middle of a screaming match.
“I don’t give a shit what you think. I’m moving out and you can do whatever you want,” Kayla screams at the top of her lungs. Cooper looks at me to do something. This might be a gym, but it’s still a place of business.
Bentley looks pissed as hell. His fists are at his sides, knuckles white like he has to hold himself back.
“Okay, I don’t know what is going on here, but you guys need to take this to a private area. This is a place of business.”
They both look over at me. I place my hand on Kayla to silently calm her down, and Bentley shouts, “Fuck this!” as he storms out of the room.
When I look at Kayla ,she has tears in her eyes. I brush her hair back out of her eyes and suggest we get out of here. Cooper hears me and nods his head slightly, letting me know he heard me.
We get to one of our favorite coffee shops and order ourselves each a hot peppermint mocha. It’s only a few days until Christmas and then the delicious taste of peppermint will disappear until next year.
Kayla hasn’t said a word since we left and it’s killing me inside. “Kayla, I feel like we’ve grown apart.” She attempts to argue, but I raise my hand for her to let me finish.
“I know this isn’t about us, but at the same time it is because it’s about you, and for the last eighteen years we’ve had each other’s back. So, when you have something going on, so do I.”
She slumps over and puts her hands in her hair and shakes her head. I think she’s going to tell me what’s going on, but when she raises her head, all she says is, “I’ve decided to move back to Florida. I’ve been thinking about it for a little while now, but I’ve decided for sure.”
That takes me for a loop because Kayla knows I can’t move anywhere. Bella and my home is here with Cooper, and if she moves to Florida we’ll be a long ass plane ride apart.
I choke up and try to hold it in because this isn’t about me. “Are you serious? Like your mind is made up for sure? I mean, your parents and brother are there, but you aren’t really close to them. Bella and I’ll miss you like crazy. We’ve never been apart since the day we met in Kindergarten.”
She sighs and looks absolutely defeated. “Is it something I did, Kay?” I don’t think it is, but I need to make sure.
“No, Liz. It’s nothing you did. I’m just going through some shit and feel like I need a break from it all.”
“So, take a vacation, but please don’t leave me. I need you. You know I’m pregnant. I can’t do this without you.” I know it’s selfish to say this to her, but it’s the truth. I need her so much. I can’t imagine going through this pregnancy without her.
“Liz, we aren’t eighteen anymore, and you won’t be alone this time around. You have Cooper now.”
I don’t even know what to say. “Can you at least wait until after Christmas? I’d like to have one last holiday together.” She nods, and I get up and hug my best friend. I can feel her sobbing and in turn I’m crying. I can’t help but feel like this is the end of our friendship. She wouldn’t do this unless she really felt like she needed to leave, though. All I can do is respect her decision and be there for her.
“Do me a favor, Liz. Please don’t tell anybody yet, including Cooper.” Even though I’m not okay with any of this, I agree.
“C’mon, chick, let’s go pick up Bella and have a girls’ afternoon,” I say as we walk out the door with our arms around each other.
Thirty-Nine
Cooper
After Bentley walks out of the gym and Liz takes Kayla out to let shit cool down, I take advantage of the fact that Liz’s computer is free. I’ve found Bella’s puppy on a local animal rescue shelter website. The mom is a German Shepherd-Lab mix who was found pregnant under a bridge after g
iving birth to several puppies. The puppies are now eight weeks and can be adopted out. I put in a request to adopt one and was approved several weeks ago. I’m supposed to be getting an email from the shelter today letting me know when I can pick the puppy up. Since it’s only a week until Christmas, I’m having Kaden keep the pup at his place until Christmas Eve. He’s agreed to bring the little mutt over late at night after Bella and Liz have gone to bed.
I walk around to her desk, sit, and shake the mouse to wake the computer up. There are several webpages open, but the one that catches my eye is the top page. It’s an ad for some sleazy motels in the area. I look on the desk and find Liz’s personal credit card sitting atop it. Why the hell would she be booking one of these motels? And to top it off, she’s using the credit card she keeps for emergencies. It’s the only card that we don’t have a joint account on. The only reason she would do something like this is if she doesn’t want me to know.
My mind starts wandering to the last few weeks. She’s been nervous, but nothing that would make me believe she’s cheating or wants out. When we got back from Florida, she went out that one time and never told me where she was going, but she’s been happy since then.
The last time I assumed the worst, I made her believe I didn’t trust her. I sure as hell won’t be doing that again. This time I’m going to just come out and ask her. Liz doesn’t lie, and if something is going on, she’ll tell me.
Quickly exiting out of all the windows, I pull up my email. The shelter says I can pick up the pup today, so I shut down her computer and leave to go pick up our new puppy. Once that’s taken care of, Liz and I will talk.
I get home to Bella watching a movie in the living room and Liz in the kitchen making dinner. She doesn’t make eye contact with me so I walk over to her and turn her around to face me. When I look at her, I can tell she’s been crying.
“Baby girl, what’s wrong?”