A Perfect Love

by Becca Lee

  A PERFECT LOVE

  By

  BECCA LEE

  A PERFECT LOVE

  Copyright © 2015 by BECCA LEE

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Becca Lee, except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover design by Louisa Maggio @ LM Creations

  Editing & Interior Design by Hot Tree Editing

  ISBN-13: 978-1511826709

  ISBN-10: 1511826703

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epilogue from A Perfect Moment

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Sometimes perfect can seem like a million miles away. Don’t lose faith. Don’t give up. Be sure to reach out for it, grab it with both hands and never let go.

  I have my own version of Jo’s Liam, my amazing husband. You drive me to distraction, and I love you even more for it. This one is for you – my perfect love.

  Acknowledgements

  This book seems like forever in the making. I would not have pushed through and re-found my groove without the support of the many beautiful souls around me.

  My girl Josie, without your sanity, I would have lost it many moons ago. You keep me grounded. Thank you, beautiful. Please tell Donna she’s bloody amazing, too!

  My sexy book babes, your constant pimping and unrelenting support is freaking awesome. Your ability to find super-hot pics of firefighters and surfers is like no other. Christina, my awesome admin, you rock! A special thanks to the beautiful members of my team who took a chance on APL and read APL as an ARC. Your support is amazing.

  The amazing team at Hot Tree Editing, you are such an amazing group of women. Justine, beta-reader extraordinaire, your astuteness blows me away. Thank you! Kristin, I loved your edits and supporting comments. Thank you for being wonderful. My awesome betas over at HTE, thank you for every comment and correction! You guys rock!

  Thank you to Hot Tree Promotions for the killer release support, and for all of the amazing bloggers and readers who have given my work a chance.

  Finally, my beautiful family, none of this would have happened without your support. You’ve given me your ears when I’ve vented, as well as your shoulders to help carry the weight, and most importantly, your unwavering belief I can achieve anything I set my mind to. I’m truly blessed.

  Epilogue from A Perfect Moment

  Jo

  The last few weeks since my wedding had been beyond crazy. Ella and Preston getting together, both of them nearly being killed, and me nearly destroying my husband’s penis was taking its toll. I felt like shit. My head felt like it was being used as a punching bag; it was pounding so much, and I felt like curling up in bed, giving the world my middle fingers and telling it to ‘screw you’.

  After Ella had been released from the hospital, my parents and Ella’s parents had fought over care rights. No word of a lie. Both Kate and Mum had organised an honest-to-God schedule for cooking, cleaning, and who’d be wiping her goddamn arse. It was crazy, but damn hilarious at the same time.

  Preston was still staying around Ella’s since he’d half-moved his crap in after her surfing catastrophe, and since they were both injured, Preston was still off from work while Ella was on school break. Damn that lucky bitch and her school holidays. I’d tried to stay away as much as possible during her recovery. One reason was that I was still getting used to the fact that Preston was humping Ella, and the second was because I continued to look and feel like shit.

  After the stress of the whole Ella kidnapping and attempted murder horror, I naturally assumed I’d no longer need to be lying in a foetal position, terrified I was going to lose my best friend. Instead, I felt like shit.

  I presumed it was a stupid bug or maybe a random parasite from my honeymoon, but the fifteen positive tests surrounding me on my bed would be a pretty solid argument against that. Fuck. I had no goddamn idea what to do, how I felt, or how in hell’s name I was going to tell Liam.

  It wasn’t like I was fifteen and knocked-up. I was married to an unbelievably gorgeous and infuriating guy, who I loved the arse off. It was just that me and the whole kids thing just didn’t make sense. Okay, so the idea made me want to vomit even more.

  I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t be giving this baby up, though. This baby, no doubt made during one superhot sex session, was made out of a whole heap of love and lust. But the thought of being responsible for another human life instinctively had me wanting to flee. Stupid, I know. There was no chance of fleeing from this.

  I was twenty-eight years old. I was sure that was supposed to be some sort of ‘ripe old age’ shit right there for being knocked up. Damn stupid statistics and their perfectly crappy timing. I heard the front door open and close.

  I knew I should do something. Burying my head under the cover seemed like a grand idea. I even considered climbing out the window and hiding for a little while; instead, I lay on my bed, surrounded by pee.

  Note to self: wash sheets on hot wash.

  “Jo?” I heard Liam’s footsteps getting closer. The door then opened and I was greeted with silence.

  I didn’t look, too afraid of what I may see. “Holy shit, Jo! Why the hell are there pee sticks everywhere?”

  For a virtual goddamn genius, I was sure my husband was a walking penis in a former life. He still said dumb shit sometimes, which included asking obvious bloody questions.

  I heard him step into the room and felt his legs touch the bed. “Jo?” His voice was soft. Too soft. “Are you…are we…shit…we’re having a baby.”

  A fraction of a second later, I heard a thud. I looked up to find empty space. Pulling myself toward the edge of the bed, I found Liam on the floor. My hard-arse man had fainted. Proof and point: walking penis.

  Chapter One

  Jo

  I rolled my eyes as I threw the bag of frozen peas at Liam’s head.

  “Ouch, watch it,” he complained. He was lucky I hadn’t grabbed the steak from the fridge and bitch-slapped him a few times for being a goddamned pussy. Fainting. Seriously, who did crap like that!

  “Stop complaining,” I grumbled. “Just put the bloody peas on your head. There’s a mammoth bump forming from where you hit your big noggin.” I turned away from him and reached for the bottle of vodka. “Shit,” I cursed. All I wanted to do was knock back a few shots to forget the madness of finding out I was pregnant, and that I had a dick of a husband who passed out on me.

  It was obvious I was not the maternal type. After all, I did step over Liam’s unconscious body on the floor and waited in the kitchen until he got up off his arse and followed me in. Although getting him frozen peas was sort of maternal, right? And to top things off with a bright red cherry on top, I couldn’t even drown out the
voices in my head. I was freaking the crap out.

  I heard the stool scrape across the floor and immediately felt Liam’s presence. I leaned into him, knowing he was behind me to support me. That was what he did. He was my rock, through and through, and I knew, despite the fainting incident, he would be there to catch me no matter what life threw our way.

  From the moment I’d met him at uni, he’d been my constant. Sometimes, admittedly, a constant pain in my arse, but generally the other half of my soul. Knowing he was near and knowing, without a doubt, he loved my crazy arse immediately calmed me, even in this situation.

  The dripping bag of peas was set on the countertop I was standing in front of and his strong arms wrapped around my waist. He placed a light spread of kisses against my head, and then my neck, before he rested his chin on my shoulder.

  “We’re okay.” It wasn’t a question. This was one of a million reasons I loved my man so fiercely. He never made promises he couldn’t keep. He rarely doubted us, or himself, and he knew without hesitation, we would handle every bump—in this case, quite literally—that we would come across.

  “I know.” I sighed. “It’s just…I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready.” I turned in his arms and raised my face to receive a light kiss on my lips. “And you passed out, you idiot man.”

  He huffed and gave a slight shrug. A gorgeous smile then quirked his lips and he kissed the end of my nose. He didn’t explain or defend himself, or make up ridiculous bullshit. It simply was. It happened. I knew he fainted because he’d freaked out, too. Apparently, a birthing video he’d watched at high school would do that to a fourteen-year-old. Go figure. I had no doubt watching a gloopy slippery mess the size of a watermelon be pushed out of a vagina would make any normal, rational person freak the heck out. I was one of them, too.

  I took a deep breath as I looked him in the eyes. “We’re okay,” I repeated his words. “We can do this.” I knew I sounded a little robotic; it was my weird, almost high-pitched voice I got when I was talking myself down from a reaction, which gave me away every time. I nodded firmly. We could absolutely do this. Although, I wasn’t going to start shouting and dancing in glee, or begin celebrating that Liam had managed to somehow knock me up, despite my clearly ineffective contraceptive pill. I didn’t get a maternal epiphany where all of a sudden I knew my life was complete, and all it took was a feisty disobedient swimmer to crash into my bloody egg to make me realise it. There was none of that. I was pregnant.

  We would try our hardest to be the best parents ever; that was a given. Just like I knew I would love my baby without exception. Likewise, that was all in the future—the eight month or so future, probably. This meant I still had time to be pissed off, and get accustomed to the idea.

  I snuggled into Liam’s arms and rested my head on his chest. I knew life was going to be a little different from now on, maybe even a lot. The whole thing still seemed surreal. At that moment, all I needed was to be held. That would have to be reassurance enough.

  I rarely had a meltdown. There may have been a moment at my wedding, and maybe there were a few different times in my life when I had a complete what-the-crap moment, but the weird palpitations in my heart and the churning of sickness I felt while driving to Ella’s had my palms sweating and me shitting my pants.

  The norm, when something major was happening in my life, was to race to Ella and throw my drama on her lap. However, it had been two whole days since I’d discovered I was pregnant and I’d gone radio silent. Liam was still walking around in a daze with a stupid lump on his head, but I had noticed a growing grin every time he looked at me. My reaction was to ignore the whole thing.

  I liked kids, sort of. Yes, they smelled and made weird-arse noises and created a hell of a mess, but they had moments of cuteness. In the future, I thought maybe there’d be a time when Liam would strap me down, throw away my contraception pills and we’d do the nasty. But, when the bean that was apparently growing in my stomach was not planned, I admittedly panicked.

  Ella had been growing suspicious. She knew I’d been avoiding her calls, but I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I was ready to throw my shit in her lap, and somehow, she’d magically make it all okay. That was what she did. She was a freak of nature when it came to organising and solving. I had no doubt she’d pull out her vast collection of highlighter pens and a flip chart then sort me out, or maybe open up a bloody Google Doc she was obsessed with. At least, that was what I hoped.

  Pulling up to her house, I sighed and exited the car, taking a cursory look around to make sure Preston’s car wasn’t around. I was confident he’d gone back to work a couple of days ago, but knowing Preston, he’d be dropping by unexpectedly when he had the chance to check up on Ella. No doubt, it would begin to impinge on our girl time. Fortunately, I loved my little brother enough to be able to share my bestie with him, but I couldn’t handle the both of them at that moment. I just needed Ella.

  “It’s about bloody time you showed up.” She quirked an eyebrow and beckoned me in with a slight frown as I saw her do a sweep of my body. She walked slowly toward the kitchen, still recovering from some of her injuries from the madness of the Ben incident, and then flicked on the kettle. “Coffee, or something stronger?”

  Of all the bloody questions she could ask, it had to be that shittin’ one. As soon as I answered her, I knew she’d know something was wrong. I rarely turned down caffeine—I’d read somewhere that caffeine was bad for pregnant women, which sucked—and saying no to booze would flip her world upside-down; I was sure of it. “I’ll just have water.” I was still suffering from the ridiculously entitled ‘morning sickness’. Whoever came up with that description was a dick and no doubt had one, too. Morning sickness, my arse. ‘All bloody day sickness’ was a more suitable description.

  Her hand paused on the jar of coffee as she swung her body in my direction, drawing a gasp of pain from her. “Ouch, bugger.”

  “Seriously, you stupid dork. Sit the bloody hell down. I’ve got stuff I need to talk to you about.” I sat on a stool and pulled the other out for Ella. “Do you need painkillers or something?”

  Ella shook her head, eyes wide and filled with suspicion. Once again, her eyes wandered over my body as she edged herself onto the stool. I knew her ribs were still sore from the accident, so I let her to shift in a comfortable position—or truly, used it as an excuse to buy time, trying to work out how to tell her I was pregnant.

  I had no idea why I was so goddamn nervous. It wasn’t like she’d be anything but happy and supportive. Yet, I knew actually sharing this news with someone would make it even more real. At twenty-eight, with a ring on my finger, a mortgage and a ‘grown-up’ job, I often felt anything but close to being grown-up. As soon as I shared mine and Liam’s secret, that would all change. I would become a ‘proper’ grown-up. The thought made my mouth dry. I really did need a glass of water, which Ella hadn’t managed to get me.

  I huffed slightly as I stood up and headed to the cupboard for a glass.

  “Holy shit.”

  I paused mid-stretch.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  I knew if I turned and looked at her face, it would be lit up in a huge smile. I heard it in her voice. Pulling the glass from the cupboard, I headed to the fridge and grabbed the cold jug of water. After filling up my glass, deliberately slowly and ignoring her smart-arse observation, I gulped back the drink. My shoulders relaxed as the cool water quenched my thirst. Finishing, I placed the glass to the side and turned to look at Ella.

  “Ha! I bloody well knew it. Holy shit, woman.” Her eyes were wide and the predicted grin was set in place.

  “How the hell did you know? It was the water, right?” I shook my head in amazement. Apparently, Ella had turned into some goddamn bloodhound over the last few days. I expected her to work out that something was wrong, but to immediately say I was pregnant was crazy.

  Rolling her eyes, she straightened her face, taking on what I assumed to be a look of offenc
e. “I know you. Pure and simple. No coffee or alcohol, plus your top rode up. And your stomach did not look like that a few weeks ago. Did you just swell overnight or something?”

  I knew what she meant. It was almost as if from the moment I had discovered I was officially pregnant, following the mountain of tests crammed in our bin waiting for collection, my stomach had decided to peek out and say hello. I had yet to visit the midwife for confirmation, if that was even who I was meant to see—at this point, I was still damned clueless. I was just assuming I was about six weeks pregnant.

  I touched my stomach, feeling the increased softness and slight swell. Trying to get my head around the life forming inside of me was turning my world upside-down. It was bizarre to think there were two hearts currently beating within my body. The idea made my stomach turn queasy. I immediately thought of Sigourney Weaver in Alien or Aliens or one of the damn movies when she had the alien burst out of her goddamn chest. Shit, what if this baby bursts out of me when it’s bigger or something?

  “Jo, sit down before you pass out. You’ve turned white.”

  Ella’s bemused voice penetrated my panic. My glazed eyes refocused on her and I removed my hands from the alien set to burst out of my stomach in eight months or so.

  “You okay?”

  I shook my head, clasped my mouth, and bolted to the toilet. Proof and point: morning sickness, my arse.

  I lay stretched out on Ella’s bed, her soothing hand stroking my head. Having vomited and heaved until my throat was raw, I had brushed my teeth with my toothbrush, which I had stashed at Ella’s, and dragged my arse to her bedroom. There was just a moment, before I lay on the bed, when I considered the likelihood of Ella and Preston screwing on the sheets. There was admittedly another moment of bile, but my exhaustion and self-pity won. I crashed on the bed with a heavy sigh.

  “This is good, right?”

  Ella had found me face down on her clean-smelling sheets—I sniffed and checked—and had promptly brought in a packet of cookies and a glass of water for me. She then manoeuvred herself onto her bed next to me and took the time to stroke my head without saying a word. My five minutes of peace were apparently over, though; it was time for reality.