by K. Webster
“Eve?” a growl rumbles in my chest. “Who the fuck is Eve?”
His jaw clenches. “The girl. In the shack.”
I’m surprised she’s still alive.
“You’re going to take her to town? Call Child Protective Services?” I ask.
He frowns and shakes his head. “I offered to take her to town last time. She nearly gutted me with a shiv. Demanded fruit. So, I’m bringing her fruit.”
“She’s only what twelve? Thirteen?”
“Something like that, but you know how it is out here in the wild. You get used to it. The outside world seems too big. Too loud. I just…” His features darken. “She reminds me of my little sister. And since she has no family to look after her, I feel like I ought to at least check in on her.”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “Tell her she is welcome to visit us if she wants. I know Devon would like to talk to another girl. I was too upset back then but I wouldn’t hurt her now.”
He nods as if he approves of my words. “I’ll pass it along. And Reed?”
“Yeah?”
“If you’re going to be having babies, you’re going to need something a little better constructed than your cabin. I can put together some plans to frame out a real house up top.” He points above the tree line where our original home was supposed to be. “I know you have the money and I can get the tools and supplies. It might take a year if we have help. Longer if just the two of us.”
I cut him off. “Just us. I’m all about building a safer structure for my family but I don’t want anyone on my land but you and the little brown-haired girl. I’ll put a bullet through the skull of anyone who trespasses.”
He nods and holds out his hand. “Good luck. I’ll see you soon.”
I shake his hand and then he’s off.
Once I can’t see his retreating frame any longer, I go back inside our much bigger cabin. We cut into the far wall where our bed normally is and made that the opening into the new space. Our bed has been moved to the farthest corner beside the river rock fireplace we built. We’ll still keep the RV oven fireplace for the front room but this one will work nicely for the back. It’s much larger and can hold a bigger fire.
Devon is busy organizing our cabin. She sits on the bed, that now is about two feet higher off the ground since Atticus and I built a frame for it, and folds baby clothes. A smile has her full lips turned up and she’s at peace. With my hands on my hips, I stare at her. Boxes and tubs are everywhere but she seems happy to be unloading everything.
“He’s gone?” she asks when she notices my presence. Our eyes meet and hers twinkle with love.
“Off to see Eve.”
“Eve?” Her nose scrunches up.
“The girl at the shack.”
She presses her lips together and nods. “If she’s safe, I don’t mind us looking after her.”
“I think she’s safe but she’s a loner. Atticus says she prefers to stay at the shack.”
“Okay, then. Maybe we should bring her some food or clothes. I feel bad she’s out there all alone,” she says. She abandons the clothes and eases out of the bed. Her palms clutch onto her giant stomach that is covered in her new summer maternity dress Atticus bought. She prefers being naked but since we had a visitor, she had to remain clothed. I’m dying to rip it from her ripe body and kiss her bare belly.
“We can do that,” I assure her.
We hug and I inhale her hair that smells like apples after our most recent river bath. I could devour this woman from sun up to sun down.
“I’ve been reading a lot in the book Atticus brought,” she murmurs.
I grab her jaw and tilt her head up. Her brows are furled together.
“Another incest book?” My jaw clenches in anger.
“No,” she breathes, worry flickering in her eyes briefly. “The one about at-home natural childbirth. It’s scary.”
I kiss her supple lips. “Don’t be afraid. We’ve got this. You’re strong and capable. I won’t let you die on my watch, Pip.”
Her nostrils flare and the tip of her nose turns red. “I wasn’t worried about me. I was worried about the baby.”
“The baby will be fine. People had babies in the wild all the time before modern medicine.”
She swallows. “And if it has something wrong with it…complications…from the incest…” Fat tears spill from her eyes. “Promise me you’ll put it out of its misery. I won’t be able to. I’m too selfish. You’ll need to be the one to do it.”
My chest aches. “Devon. Listen to me. Nothing will be wrong with this baby. Trust me. The incest scare is nothing but bullshit. Shouldn’t even be something for you to worry about. When have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Never.”
“I always promised I’d protect you no matter what. You have to trust that. Everything I do is for your well-being and the sake of keeping your heart intact. If there was something to worry about, I’d be the one doing all the worrying. I’m fine. Excited and slightly nervous but that’s because I haven’t held an infant in so long.”
She smiles. “Since me and Drew.”
My stomach does a flop inside me. “We’re doing this. We will continue to do this the rest of our lives. We are a team. We’ve been that way for as long as I can remember.”
A long sigh escapes her. “You’re right. I’m done worrying over it.”
“Good. Now take off your clothes and let me see your pretty pussy.”
She squeals but my good girl always obeys.
“So. Many. Boxes.” Sweat sticks to her face as she hobbles around the space trying to organize shit. From what I read in the pregnancy book, she’s nesting. It means the baby should be here soon. My heart leaps at the thought of holding our infant in my arms.
Every night I pray to a God, who has probably forsaken me, that she and our baby will be okay. I hope he loves the innocent—and she and our baby are definitely innocent—because I won’t survive if anything happens to them.
I need them to be okay.
“Tomorrow we should start tilling for the garden,” she tells me as she bends over to rummage in a box. I’m beat after a day of hard labor and am content to watch her cute ass as it jiggles each time she moves.
“We can do that. Atticus brought enough seeds for us to plant from here to Seattle,” I say with a laugh.
She turns and smirks. “I’m excited for a garden. Fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. Oh God, that sounds like heaven.”
My cock twitches at hearing her moan in delight. “You’re cute as fuck all domesticated.”
Her cheeks burn bright red and she gives me a shy smile. “You’re handsome as hell all barbaric.”
We both laugh.
Eventually, I drift off to sleep as she hums while she works.
This really is heaven.
“Nothing,” she pouts and then winces.
“It’s been four days, baby. Plants don’t grow overnight.”
She hobbles over to the bed and eases herself down. “My back is killing me.”
“Rest.”
“I need to get to the pile of boxes over there and—”
“Devon, rest.” My tone is firm and leaves no room for argument.
“Okay, Dad,” she smarts off.
It makes me want to stick my cock in her mouth.
“You know the rules,” I growl.
“Soon I’ll get to call you Daddy all the time in here,” she teases, her eyebrow arched.
God, she’s so fucking hot when she gets mouthy.
“Keep it up,” I warn.
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll shut your pretty mouth up with my dick. What do you think about that, bad girl?”
She starts laughing and her tits bounce with the movement. “If I could get down to my knees without all this pain, I’d gladly suck you off, Daddy.”
“Lie down and rest,” I bark out, my cock painfully hard in my jeans.
Obeying, she stretches out and rests her hands on her stom
ach as she watches me stalk across the cabin over to her. She bites on her bottom lip when I unzip my jeans and pull my dick into my hand. With our eyes locked, I stroke myself with my left hand. With my right, I massage her slick pussy. She whimpers and mewls and squirms. I love how wet and turned on she gets by my fingers. I know that her back hurts, so sex is out of the question, but we can both still get off.
“Oh, God, Reed,” she breathes, her eyes fluttering closed. “Yes!”
Her body jolts with a seismic orgasm just from me touching her clit. It sparks my own release and I come with a grunt. My ropy cum jets out all over her big tits, marking and claiming her as mine. It satisfies me to see her wet with me. The dirty girl runs her fingers through my spent orgasm and brings it to her plump lips. Her blue eyes blaze with lust as she sucks off the cum.
“Yum.”
I smirk. “Plenty more where that came from.”
“I can’t do this by myself, Sabrina.” My chest aches and I’m exhausted. Purely fucking exhausted. The twins are difficult as I knew they would be. Nothing prepared me for having to do it virtually alone though.
She speaks through the pillow that covers her head. Her voice is ragged and I know she’s been crying all day. “I can’t do this at all.”
With a sigh, I sit down beside her on the bed. The miscarriage—again—was not only the worst possible timing ever, but it’s only made her sink deeper into her depression. I want to help her but I fucking can’t this time. I have two little mouths in there that need feeding.
“Can you try? For me?” I beg, my own voice choked.
She rolls away so that her back is turned to me. With hot, furious tears in my eyes, I leave her all alone with her despair. I’m just headed to my office for a drink when Devon calls out to me from the nursery.
“Da.”
My heart stops beating in my chest. Drew says words all the time but Devon has yet to speak one. I storm into the bedroom, swiping away my tears as I grin at her.
“What is it?”
“Da.” She whimpers and holds her hands up. Her blonde, fuzzy hair is cute all messy from sleep. Drew sleeps like the dead but Devon wakes up in the middle of the night if she hears me up and about.
Our lives have recently developed this pattern.
She wakes up. Cries for me. And I carry her around the house while I do unimportant shit. Once she falls asleep, I tuck her back in.
“Hey, Pip.”
She beams at me, all sleepy-eyed and toothy, and my heart melts. I scoop her up and carry her to my office. Unlike her rowdy brother, Devon doesn’t run around the house and get into shit all hours of the day. She’s happy to sit in my lap and mess with whatever I’ll let her play with on my desk.
I plop down and hand her a pen and paper. Once I help her grip the pen, she scribbles on the paper, her squeals of delight a salve to my burned heart.
How can Sabrina lie in bed and ignore all of this?
How can she throw away our opportunity to finally be parents down the toilet?
Sure, she’s fucking hurting. Well, so the fuck am I. But how in the hell can she blow off these two miracles?
“Da-da-da-da!” Devon chirps as she destroys the paper. At just two years old, she’s able to climb inside my heart and latch on.
People had their advice.
How to handle our situation.
And at first, I wondered how you could love someone you barely even know.
But all that gets washed away the moment a blue-eyed, smiling toddler falls asleep on your chest. You inhale the baby shampoo and count your blessings.
I wish Sabrina would wake the fuck up.
These are our children.
We’re supposed to love them.
I sure as hell do.
Fast and sudden and unexpected.
But I do.
Fuck, how I do.
“Da!” Devon throws the pen before leaning back with a cute sigh.
Smiling, I press a kiss to her soft head and wiggle my fingers at her.
She latches onto my pinky with her tiny hand. “Da.”
I wake in the middle of the night, the old memory tugging at my heart. It makes me wonder if our baby will have blonde hair or brown. Blue eyes or brown. Either way, I know it will be beautiful and happy.
Devon sits at the table in the other room with a plastic tub at her feet. She’s flipping through papers and reading them. I stare at her for what feels like hours until I drift back to sleep.
Life is perfect.
So fucking perfect.
* * *
* * *
Reed is amused by my nesting. I’m not amused. I feel unsettled. As if I don’t get everything unpacked and put where it goes, it’ll never get done. I want everything perfect so that when the baby comes, we can relax.
Nervousness causes my stomach to rumble. We may never relax. If there’s something wrong with the baby, we may have to move back to town. What if it needs a hospital or extra care?
Another sharp, aching back pain slices through me. I read that it could be labor pains. But I also read it could be false labor. Once my water breaks, I’ll know the baby is coming. Until then, I’ll wait through the pains.
Reed’s snores are comforting. He works so hard each day. The house. Food. Everything. By the time he falls into bed, he passes out. I want him to rest more. Now that the cabin extension is finished, maybe he can.
I yelp when another pain snags me in its grip. It makes Buddy whimper in concern. I let out a swoosh of breath and pet him with my bare foot. “Shhhh.”
He settles and I flip through pictures Mom had saved. One of Dad holding me at two years old has my heart warming. He looks so young and terrified. It melts my heart. I hunt through the pictures searching for ones when we were infants. I come up short. With a frown, I dig deeper into the box. At the very bottom, I find a sealed yellow envelope that says: Private. Do Not Open.
Curiosity gets the better of me. My eyes flicker to Dad and he still sleeps soundly. Dragging my eyes back to the envelope, I quietly tear it open. Inside is a manila envelope filled with court documents. Clipped to the front, I find a picture of a pretty blonde young teen—no older than fourteen or so—holding two baby twins.
She has my eyes.
The thought hits me hard and my heart stills in my chest.
I pluck the picture off and set it on the table. Tears well in my eyes as the betrayal sinks in. He lied to me. He lied about everything.
Adoption papers.
Loads of them.
All mumbo jumbo but in a nutshell, Abigail Hunter, gave away her rights to us to my parents.
I’m going to be sick.
Bile rises up and I quickly swallow it down.
This can’t be true.
Every single worry about what incest does to babies didn’t matter. Reed isn’t my biological father. A pained moan rips from my chest that causes him to stir but not wake up. I feel as though my heart has been torn from me. Tears travel down my cheeks and drip down onto the papers.
No wonder Mom didn’t like us.
We weren’t hers.
My body trembles as I throw on my dress and stuff my feet into my boots. The pains that keep slicing across my lower back and wrapping around to my stomach are nothing in comparison to the searing, hollowing, soul-crushing pain in my heart.
I don’t know where I am going.
I don’t care.
But I can’t stay here with him.
He’s not even…we’re not even…
I heft the lock out of place and push through the door. The night air is frigid and it cools my heated flesh. With sobs choking me, I push through the gate and run. I don’t know where I’m going but it’s far away from here and the wreckage of our lives. My boots crunch on the forest underbrush and my cries are so loud. Buddy dutifully runs ahead of me as if to kill anything that might step in my way.
I’ve been running for at least ten minutes when I hear it.
Pain.
; Sorrow.
Devastation.
Rage.
The roar is half-man, half-animal.
It echoes through the trees and haunts me.
And it’s coming for me.
It will stalk me until it captures me.
I don’t want to be captured.
I want to be free.
Hate and fury and the sickening feeling of being duped my entire life fuels me on. A sharp pain hits me so hard, I stumble and nearly fall. I have to hold onto my stomach and suppress a scream until the pain passes. Once I can move again, I trudge forward although I’m much slower than before. My body trembles with my sobs.
“Devon!”
The way he says my name is a claim. A promise. A vow to love and cherish and protect. I hate the way he says it. He has no claim to me. I don’t belong to him. I never did.
Our relationship was built on lies.
He let me think the most awful things about me, about us, about our baby.
“Devon!”
Another pain renders me immobile. I fall to my knees. The pain is unbearable and blinding. I’m lost to the absolute severity of it. He’s closer now. I can hear his grunting. Cursing. Begging. Pleading. Crying.
Closer.
And closer.
The pain subsides and I stand on shaky legs. Step after step, I move myself forward. I’ve barely made it three when the slice across my midsection strikes again. Once again, I drop to my knees. I’m sobbing and desperately clutching at the earth as I crawl away from him. Every nerve ending in my body is alive and exposed and thrashing. The pain is too intense.
I’m going to die out here.
And worse yet, he’s getting closer.
“N-No,” I choke out as I crawl. “S-Stay away from me.”
But I’m too late. Not quick enough. Like a viper, he strikes. His fist is in my hair and he’s mauling me much like that bear once did. Nothing is gentle or curious. He’s rough and territorial and demanding.
I cry out when he lands on the dirt behind me and jerks my head back. His strong arm wraps around my middle above my protruding belly in a possessive way. In his arms, I feel both safe and suffocated. My mind is warring with itself. I want him but I hate him. I love him but I can’t stand to be touched by him.