by K. D Clark
Brighton breathed heavily, bleeding from the mouth as he tried to reach for his handgun behind his back. Seeing his movement, I drew back and fired two shots into his knees. He crumpled to the floor, writhing in pain, and begging for mercy.
“Okay, okay… Urghgggh. I get the fuckin’ message. Don’t kill me,” he shouted. I stared down at him.
“I’m not a killer, but don’t push me.”
Brighton fell to the ground, bleeding profusely, squirming in excruciating pain. I tipped my head to him and grabbed his gun as I exited.
“Let’s go, fellas. I think he got the message,” I say through my earpiece.
My men and I exited the building as my driver swung into view. I peeled off my gloves. “Take me back to my plane.”
I sat back in the seat, letting the adrenaline leave my body. Brighton was easy to take care of. He was a nuisance. But what about next time? What if I got shot again? If I died right now, what would be left behind? I’d made billions of dollars, all for what? So I can leave this world alone because I was too scared of turning into my father?
My biggest regret, if I died right now, would be pushing Hazel away. I had the opportunity to live a normal life with my family. Nothing goes as planned, and neither Hazel or this baby was planned, but I couldn’t live with myself if they left. I couldn’t go on with an empty house, my business being the only thing to keep me company.
My cell vibrated. It was Hazel.
“Maverick, is everything okay?” Hazel asks in a panicky voice. My shoulders relaxed at the sound of her voice. I wanted to hear that voice every day for the rest of my life. I’d been stupid before. Hazel and I might not work out in the end, but we could always walk away from each other. No one was stuck.
“Yes, Pumpkin, we’re good. All taken care of.”
“What did you do? Is anyone dead? Are you hurt?”
I straightened myself up in the seat. “I’m good. No casualties. But my message was received loud and clear. I’m on my way back to the airport. I’ll be home soon.”
“Okay, Mav.”
***
I stand outside my house. The biggest house on the island, yet there is only value to it if Hazel is inside. Movement from the upstairs window catches my eye. Hazel drew back the curtains and searched through the window. Her wide eyes frantically sought me out. I wrench my bags from the back seat of the car. When I turn, relief is evident on her face. Maybe she’d done some thinking too when I was away. I never doubted that Hazel would be fine on her own. She doesn't need me in her life, but a part of me wants her to need me. I want to be there when our baby wakes up at two in the morning to eat. I want to support her in whatever she wants to do. It doesn't matter to me anymore if the baby is Miles’s or mine. He or she will be raised by parents that love them, and if I and Hazel, for some reason, fall out of love, we can walk away.
Although I’d be damned if I was going to let this woman walk away from me without a fight. I’d always fight for her. Walking inside, I drop my bags in the foyer. Hazel comes rushing down the stairs. She wears a bright sundress and sandals. Her dark hair falls down her back in waves.
“Maverick,” she says with a breath of air leaving her lungs.
I open my arms, hoping she’ll step into them. She hesitates only a moment before wrapping her arms around my neck. Fuck, her body is so warm, I’ve missed it.
“I was really scared. I don’t want the past to haunt us,” she says. “What did you do today?”
“This guy was a young punk trying to make a name for himself. I roughed him up quite a bit, but no one was killed. We don’t have to worry about anything else from him,” I assured her. I don't mention Brighton’s men that we killed, figuring that’s better to leave out.
“But what if someone else pops up? Will we always have to live with the possibility of someone trying to make a name for themselves?” Hazel queries in an exasperated tone. She pulls away from me. Her blue eyes bore into mine. “I just want a normal, peaceful life, Mav.”
I listen to the strain in her voice. “I can’t promise you that we will never have any problems. Hell, I didn't expect this to come up. What I can promise you is that I’m out of it completely. And I will protect you at all costs. I won’t put us in any compromising positions, and I will tell you about anything that comes up right away.”
Hazel shakes her head and clutches me tightly. “I just want us to be happy. Together. I don’t want to have to leave. If I had the power to, I'd guarantee this baby is yours.”
“Hazel...”
“Yes?”
“Come upstairs with me.”
I can’t put into words everything I have been thinking about, but I could show her. I stare at her long and hard. The ball is in her court. I’d acted like an asshole when she told me she was pregnant. I should have been her biggest cheerleader and telling her that it was okay, and we would figure things out together. Instead, I had pulled away, and I will spend the rest of my life, making that up to her if she lets me. I wanted to let her make the move.
“Come,” I encourage. She grabs my hand, and we walk to the upstairs bedroom. I grab her around the waist and fondle her breasts on the way up the stairs before picking her up on the last few steps, and she gasps. I don't set her back down to her feet until we’re in the bedroom. I want to rip her clothes off. There’s an urgency inside me to feel her naked body against mine. That’s where I feel most at home; when she’s underneath me. I have to subdue the primitive beast inside of me. I take a seat on the edge of the bed, and she raises her top over her head. I smile. The light is hitting all her slender curves in the right places.
“Lay down,” she commands. I never let a woman take control in the bedroom. Ever. It isn’t my thing, but I can tell at this moment that she needs it. She needs me to show her that everything is up to her. I can’t make her stay, and I can’t make her leave. I’d do anything for this woman.
I lay back on the bed.
“That’s better.” Her soft murmur makes my dick harden as she straddles me. She tugs at the bottom of my shirt, and I lift it so she can pull it over my head. Her lips move to my chest, kissing lightly down my body before stopping at the waistband of my jeans. I thought she was going to pull them down, but instead, she comes back up my body and locks her lips with mine. She grinds against me as we kiss. My hands grip her ass. I want to roll us over, pull her panties to the side, and bury myself inside her, but I know I have to be patient.
“You’re killing me, Pumpkin,” I groan.
She smiles against my lips. “Maybe this is my form of punishment.”
Her words cause my control to snap, and I wrap my arms around her to roll us over. She giggles as I quickly strip out of my jeans and bury myself inside her. A moan escapes her lips as I sink inside. I’ve tried to take it slow, but I can’t hold back anymore. Her nails dig into my back as I pound into her. The headboard bangs against the wall. It’s been so long since I felt her tight walls close around me.
“Fuck, Maverick,” she moans.
“Come for me, Pumpkin.”
At my words, her breathing picks up before she starts to throb around me. I love watching her pleasure. The way her face tenses up before completely relaxing again. Her eyes seem to shine brighter, and afterward, a small smile is always present on her face. I wait until she’s come down from her orgasm before finding my release. I come inside her, dumping so much cum it would leak out of her later.
“Someone is impatient,” she says as I roll off of her and we both lay on our back.
“I’ll do better next time.”
We made love twice. I had lost time to make up for. Make-up sex. The best kind. We laid in each other’s arms, finally sated. Nowhere to go and nothing to do. Just us. This was what unconditional love was. It wasn’t staying in a bad relationship for your kids or giving up your hopes and dreams for someone else. Unconditional love was me loving Hazel even though I was scared shitless. It's loving her enough to not give a fuck whose baby she was c
arrying. That was unconditional love.
“I’m starting a business,” she says after we’d both caught our breath. I turn to look at her.
“It’s still early, but I got all my money from Miles’s estate, so I’m working on getting all my licenses. It's a consulting firm. I can work from home a lot.”
“That’s amazing! Why don't you tell me before?” I ask.
“Well, we weren’t on the best of terms. I didn't know if I was going to stay here. I still don’t know.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I growl.
A small smile crosses her face, but then her lips flattened again. “Are you sure? What if the baby…”
I shake my head. “I don’t care. I want you and our baby, no matter what.”
Her eyes widen. “Why the sudden change?”
I sigh and look up at the ceiling.
“My dad used to hit my mom...a lot.”
“Oh my god, I had no idea,” she says.
“Because I didn't tell you. It’s why I felt like shit the moment I almost left you in Hawaii. Anyways, my mom stayed with my dad for years. She claimed that she wanted us to be a family. I always felt like she stayed because of me. She felt obligated not to leave because I was there. When you told me you were pregnant, it’s like all that shit came back up. I don't want either of us to feel like we have to be together. I know it’s stupid.”
She scoots closer to lay her head on my naked chest. God, she smells like home.
“It’s not stupid,” she whispers.
“I sold my first gun after I saved up enough money working at the grocery store to buy it,” I continue, “I bought it because I wanted to shoot my dad. I hated him. He was arrested and sent to prison before I got home that day.”
Hazel reaches for my hand.
“A friend of mine told me I could sell the gun for five hundred dollars retail. I only paid one-hundred-and-fifty for it. That’s when I saw there was a buy and sell market on the street for guns and ammo. I never intended to be a lifelong criminal. I just wanted to make enough money to get my mother and me out of that neighborhood and into a nice home.”
A moment of silence passes.
“I get it, but your parent's relationship…That’s not going to happen to us. It’s the same reason why I don't want to go into business with you. If this relationship doesn’t work out, we can always walk away from each other. But I love you, and I don’t think I’ll ever be walking away,” she says.
It’s the first time she’s said those three words, and I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to hear them until they left her lips. She turns her head to face me, and I bend down to place a kiss on her lips.
“I love you too, Pumpkin. And I’m done with this two-bedroom shit. I want you here every single night.”
“Every single night,” she agrees.
Chapter Fifteen: Babies
Maverick
Seven Months Later
“I want to show you something,” I say to Hazel. She sits across from me at the dining room table, working on her business. As soon as life slows down a little bit, we’ll turn one of the guest rooms into an office for her.
“Huh?” she says, looking up from her laptop.
I chuckle and stand up from the table. “Come on.”
She takes my hand, using it to help her stand up. Her belly is huge, but I’ll never tell her that. She had started to waddle as she walked, and I never missed an opportunity to run my hand over her stomach and feel our baby kick. She still isn’t due for another month, but I can’t imagine her stomach growing anymore.
“I have a lot of work to do,” she complains as we walk up the stairs.
“It will only take a minute.”
She rolls her eyes. I stop at the guest bedroom next to ours and open the door. Raising an eyebrow at me, she steps inside. She slams a hand over her mouth, and her eyes fill with tears as she looks around. She’s been buying all the things needed for the baby, but since she’s so busy with getting her business together, she hasn’t had time to set everything up.
The walls in the nursery are yellow. I had Isabella help me set up the zoo-themed room. Stuffed animals are placed throughout. Since we decided to wait to find out the gender, I couldn’t decorate it in pink or blue.
“This is amazing. I’ve been trying to get everything set up. It's just…”
I nod. “I know.”
I place my hands in my pockets as she walks around the nursery, picking things up and admiring the decorations.
“Isabella helped a lot,” I say. Once I told her my idea, she’d pretty much taken it from there, only asking for my help to put some things together.
She smiles. “How did you do all this without me knowing?”
“It wasn’t that hard. When you’re not working, you're either sleeping or eating.”
She laughs but stops abruptly and bends over in pain. I watch her clutch her stomach. I rush to her side.
“What’s happening, honey?”
“I...I think I’m having contractions.”
“Are you sure it's not one of those fake contractions you’ve been having?” I ask.
She shakes her head and grips her stomach again. “Nope, this is real. Oh my god! I think my water just broke! Why is it breaking now? It’s too early. Please, no!”
I grab my cell phone and call Mike.
“I need you to bring the car around. We’re having a baby.”
***
“It’s a boy,” I gasp.
Pride swells in my chest. Our baby is here. A new little life brought into the world. He has a nice set of lungs on him as well. He’s a screamer.
I kiss the top of Hazel’s head. Drenched in sweat, she hands the baby to a nurse who quickly attends to him. Hazel has just delivered a bundle of love into the world. I attempt to nurture her by combing my fingers through her hair. She glances at me with a mother’s glow of happiness and joy.
“We have a boy,” she gushes.
“That’s all you, Pumpkin. You did amazing.”
Minutes later, after the nurses clean up the baby and Hazel, they hand him back to her.
“He’s gorgeous. Dark hair, blue eyes, caramel skin, and healthy.” Hazel cradles our son in her arms, rocking him back and forth. “He’s so beautiful.”
I touch his little feet as they wriggle around. So tiny and sweet. I feel the water pooling in my eyes. I’m not a man for tears, but this is different. This baby is something we’ve been confused about for months, and now he’s here. All I feel is peace. Pure peace.
“Do you-”
“Yes,” I interrupt her, holding out my hands to hold him. Unconditional love opened my heart. I take the baby from her awkwardly.
“Hold the back of his head,” Hazel instructs.
I hold him properly, basking in my son’s eyes. I’m in love. Surprisingly, a tear drops onto the hospital bed. We’re parents, whether biologically or not. We’re responsible for this tiny life. For the next several minutes, we cooed and stared down at the small child in my arms.
A nurse returns, and Hazel talks to her while I stood playing with our son’s finger, “We need to administer a DNA test.”
I tense up at her words. It doesn't matter to me, but it will still be nice to know. If I don't find out, I’ll always be curious.
“No problem,” the nurse replies. “We will need a swab sample from him.” She nods her head toward me.
I hand the baby back to Hazel and pull up my sleeve.
“Come on. Stick me. Swab me. Whatever you need to do,” I say, trying to hide my flash of annoyance. I want to enjoy this moment with my child, and I hate that I have to do this stupid test.
But, ultimately, the test meant we would finally know, one way or the other. All of the uncertainty, speculation, worry, and frustration is now coming to a head. We will finally know the identity of the child’s father.
Nervousness plays across Hazel’s face. I bend to kiss her on the lips as reassurance. The one evident thin
g is that Hazel and I both love this baby. There’s no doubt this baby will be in an environment of love and support.
As I stand with my sleeves rolled up, I can’t help but wonder how I would react if the news came back that I wasn’t the father. Something happened when that boy came into the world. I felt it. I would raise the boy as my own no matter what. I would love him until the end of time. But still, I felt nervous.
A swab was rubbed vigorously against the inside of my cheek. I’d assumed the test involved drawing blood from my arm, but modern technology made it easier and more reliable to conduct the swab test.
The nurse returned to me with a cotton swab. She inserted it into my mouth using a q-tip-like instrument. She rubbed the swab firmly against the inside of my mouth and then pulled it out. Immediately, she secured the swab in a lab container and walked off with it.
I called out to her. “Ma’am, how long before we get the results?”
The nurse stopped and turned back toward us. “We should have the results in the morning.”
“Mav...it’s gonna be alright,” Hazel whispered from the hospital bed. She was still holding the baby. “Look at our child. He even looks like you.”
I walk back over to the bed and gently stroke his tiny arm. She’s right. He does look like me, although it’s hard to tell. Not all his features are in play yet.
“He does look like me a little, doesn’t he?”
Another nurse comes in. “I’m sorry, but we need to take the baby to the nursery. He’s premature, and we need to monitor him overnight.”
Hazel closes her eyes. “You mean you’re taking my baby away from me for the entire night?”
The nurse, understanding her concern, replies, “Yes, I’m sorry, but he will be in the nursery. You both can come in and check on him as often as you’d like. After we monitor him for one night, if all is well, he can come back in here with you tomorrow.”
“How long do we have to stay here?” Hazel inquires. The nurse explains it depended on how the baby progressed. Hazel’s wellbeing also had to be monitored.