by Parker, Ali
“There we go, baby.” Will managed to grit out between clenched teeth as he pumped into me deeper and faster than before. “I’m close, too, Heidi. Let go, and I’ll let go with you.”
Almost as desperate to feel, hear, and see him lose control as I was for my own release, I did what he asked. At the same time that my orgasm slammed into me, Will tensed and groaned my name, finally losing his rhythm as he buried himself as deep in me as he could go.
“How much of the money did you give back?” I asked Will when I finally got my breath back, my head lying on his chest and the rest of our limbs an entangled mess beneath his sheets.
His fingertips drew patterns on my bare skin, along my spine to the nape of my neck and back again. “Everything. I told you earlier, the house was the only thing I couldn’t give back. The money I have left now is the money I worked for.”
“You didn’t keep any of it?” I lifted my chin so he could see the smile spreading on my lips. “You should have, we could have at least gotten a makeup dinner out of all of this.”
“How about I cook you a makeup dinner instead?”
My brows lifted. “You cook?”
“Let me rephrase that.” He rolled slightly to his side, his arm reaching out and feeling around on the ground before he came back with his phone. “Let me order you a makeup dinner instead.”
Chuckling, I nodded and burrowed back into his chest. He tossed the phone on the bed behind me, then kissed the top of my head. “I didn’t need to keep any of the money, Heidi. Especially not if keeping it would have cost me you. I have everything I really need right here.”
Tears pressed at the backs of my eyes, appearing so suddenly I would have blamed them on the hormones again. Only this time, I knew that had nothing to do with it. These tears were born from genuine happiness.
“I love you, Will.”
I heard his sharp intake of breath, felt his chest rise under my cheek. His voice rumbled right into me when he replied, which somehow made me feel like the words were attaching themselves right to the insides of my veins.
“I love you, Heidi. So, so much.”
Chapter 39
Will
“Apparently, that’s his arm.” I pressed the new ultrasound of the baby to the glass partition for Rayce to see. “I don’t really see how it could be, but that’s what the doctor said.”
Rayce laughed, narrowing his eyes when he leaned forward to get a better look at the picture the doctor had given us just that morning. “It looks a little like a dick.”
“No.” I pulled back and pointed at the tiny arrow toward the corner of the ultrasound. “That’s his dick.”
“It’s definitely a boy then?” He grinned, shaking his head. “Looks like you were right constantly referring to him as a ‘him’ way back when you first found out then.”
“Looks like it.” I returned the grin, feeling some of the pressure I always felt in my chest on the way over to see him ease. Two months after the first time I’d visited him in prison, Rayce was looking much better. No one was more surprised about that fact than Rayce himself.
He’d told me that while it was no picnic being inside, his cellmate was a nice guy. They got along and had each other’s backs, which made me feel marginally better about not being there to protect him.
“I’m so fucking happy for you, bro.” Rayce held his fist up to the glass and I did the same. We mimed bumping them together, but we couldn’t actually knock on the glass. One of the guards might just think I was trying to put my fist through it instead of just against his.
“Thanks, I just wish you could’ve been there for all this, you know?” Heidi and I were slowly but surely wrapping our heads around the fact that we were going to be parents. It was still surreal, but every doctor’s visit, Onesie we bought, and kick we felt made it feel a little more real.
“I don’t think Heidi would have appreciated me coming to the doctor with you, man. I still would have only seen the pictures after.” Rayce crossed his arms, sitting back. He looked relaxed, which I would never have imagined could be possible. “Thanks for bringing the ultrasound with you.”
“I really wanted you to see it.” Showing it to Rayce gave yet another dimension to the reality of the situation. He’d always been my rock, my older brother. Sometimes even a father figure.
Every big thing to have happened to me, he’d been right there. I didn’t want that to change now. In fact, not having him around to do things like help paint the nursery and assemble the crib was downright weird.
“He started kicking a week or so ago,” I told him in a quieter voice that was more fitting for the transcendent feeling I’d had when I’d felt it for the first time. “It’s fucking incredible. I can’t even describe it. It’s like there’s a little alien living inside the woman I love, but I love the little alien too.”
Rayce tipped his head, his brows knitting together. “A little alien living inside the woman you love? That sounds terrifying.” I shrugged, and Rayce blew out a deep breath before he continued, “I hope I get to experience that someday too.”
“You will,” I said with more conviction than I felt. Rayce was awaiting trial and hadn’t been convicted yet, but the punishment he faced if he got convicted was severe. There was a possibility of him being in his sixties by the time he got out.
I didn’t want to bring any of that up, though, so I pushed the thought aside. We would deal with whatever happened when it happened. There was no point worrying about it now. Rayce’s trial started soon enough. There would be plenty of time to worry about it then.
One thing I was learning from Heidi was the beauty of living in the moment, and of worrying about the future when it happened. Within reason, of course.
Rayce shrugged his big shoulders, shaking his head. “Maybe it will happen for me, but a lot of other things have to happen first.”
“Yeah, I know. I wanted to talk to you about that, actually.” Rayce had blown me off when I’d tried to talk to him about it before, but I needed to get it out. “I owe you big time. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to feel the baby kicking, wouldn’t be there for the doctor’s appointments. I don’t even know if I would have ever gotten to meet him.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” He said it in a way that made it sound like he believed it, but I didn’t. Having come to the same conclusion, Rayce lowered his chin and leveled me with a look. “Really, Will. You don’t owe me a thing. We talked about this the first time you came around here. You don’t have to keep bringing it up.”
“Just know that I feel like I do, and whether I do or don’t isn’t really relevant anyway. The point is that I’ll do anything I can to help you get out of this mess, okay?” My heart kicked up its pace. I’d been serious when I told Heidi I was leaving that life behind, but I would never leave Rayce behind.
Thankfully, she knew and understood how I felt about him. She had her two friends who were like sisters to her, and she’d assured me that she would have moved heaven and earth to help them if they ever needed it from her.
Rayce sighed heavily but nodded. “I know, bro. I don’t want you to worry about me though, okay? There might be a time when you will have to, but I really just want you to enjoy this time with your girl. Apparently, the two of you won’t ever spend so much time alone together again.”
“I heard.” I chuckled. “Everyone who finds out she’s pregnant tells me that. Even the nurse at the doctor’s office told me the other day that the next time we would get to spend quality time together would be after the baby gets shipped off to college.”
Rayce whistled under his breath, his gray eyes sparkling with amusement. “Planning on sending the kid to college, huh? What bank are you gonna knock over to be able to afford that?”
I winced, relaxing only when I saw the humor that was still in his eyes. “It’s way too soon for those kinds of jokes, man. Like way, way too soon.”
“I was just kidding.” He threw his palms up, feigning in
nocence. “Speaking of, how’s it going at your job? You making out okay? Well, I guess you have to be since you still have your take of our last job and then some.”
“Trust you to worry about me when you’re the one in prison.”
He winked, smiling. “Old habits die hard. Why aren’t you answering my question?”
“I’m not … not.” I cursed in frustration under my breath, dragging my hands through my hair. “What I mean is that I’m not trying not to answer you, I just think we should be more concerned about you right now than about me.”
Studying me carefully, he gave his head a firm shake. “Nah, that’s not it. What’s going on?”
“Fine.” It was time to level with him anyway. “I gave the money back, bro. All of it.”
His eyes stretched so wide I could see the ring of white around them, the muscles in his biceps bulging. “You did what?”
“You told me to do everything I could to make things right with Heidi, so I did. Plus, it was the right thing to do anyway.”
There was a reason I hadn’t told him about this before, and if the vein popping on his forehead was any indication, I should have kept quiet about it longer. Strangely, the furious fire I’d expected to see in his eyes didn’t flare up.
Instead, after a long few minutes of just looking at me, he shrugged. “Yeah, I guess it was the right thing to do. I’ve told you before, Will, I only want what’s best for you. If giving it all back is what was best, then that’s the way it is.”
“I think it was the right thing to do for all of us.” My gut told me that there were more good things to come after I’d paid the money back than Heidi coming back to me. That was the absolute best thing that could ever have come from it, the best thing that had ever happened to me, but I had a feeling there would be more. “You’ll see. I have a good feeling about it.”
Rayce just shook his head, but there was a small smile tugging at his lips. “If you say so.”
A loud buzzer sounded from somewhere in the prison and Rayce sighed, his eyes drifting to the clock mounted on the wall behind me. “Fuck, I hate to cut this short, but I gotta go. That was my cue that visiting hours are over.”
“Okay.” The ache in my chest over Rayce being kept in this cage came back with a vengeance. He gave me a quick salute and was about to put his phone back in its cradle when I stopped him. “Hey, Rayce?”
“Yeah?” He paused with his butt halfway off the seat already.
“I’ll bring the baby by to see you, okay?”
Flashing me his trademark smirk, he kissed the tips of the two fingers he’d just pulled away from his forehead after his salute and pointed them at me. “You’d better. Give my love to that little peanut of yours, okay. You tell him his uncle Rayce is excited to meet him.”
“Will do.” I waited until Rayce had been escorted back into the prison before standing up, as had become my habit. I tended to stretch out my visits with him, even that was the first time I’d heard the official visiting hours actually come to an end.
Heidi was waiting for me in the truck when I finally made my way back to the parking lot. Blinking a few times at the bright sunlight after the dreary gray interior of the building, the gravel crunched under my feet in a way that was becoming familiar.
She smiled when she saw me approaching, leaning over to kiss me when I slid into my seat. “How did it go?”
Lifting my hands to the back of her head, I slipped them into her soft hair and pulled her mouth back to mine. I kissed her long and hard, relishing the freedom I had to do it. And all because between Rayce and Heidi, they’d saved my fucking life.
Heidi gasped at the intensity of my kiss, but then she moaned and leaned into it. These days I barely had to look at her before her engine got started. It hadn’t been my intention when I kissed her, but knowing the effect every touch had on her kind of had the same effect on me.
Too soon, we were full-on making out in the car. In the parking lot of a prison. Slowing down the kiss until it came to a natural end, I grinned at her. “He’s doing okay. That’s good enough for me for now.”
“You ready to go home?” Her cheeks were flushed and her thighs were pressed together, a small bump now obscuring the very apex of them. Despite all that, she still looked worried about me. “I can wait longer if you want to go back inside. You haven’t been here for a while.”
“I’m okay, visiting hours are over anyway. I didn’t really want to leave you here too much longer either.” I reached for her hand, closing mine over it on the gear lever after starting the truck. “Besides, I’m more than ready to get you home.”
Home. I released a contented sigh because aside from finding out that we were definitely having a son today and that he was perfectly healthy, it was also the day Heidi was moving in with me.
Between that, the way she was looking at me like she wanted to devour me, and the knowledge that the roundness in her belly was my child, I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. And as soon as we got home, I planned on showing her exactly how lucky I felt.
The pang of guilt as I drove away from the prison was still there, but it was less than it used to be. Having Heidi around definitely helped, which was why she had volunteered to come with me today. She referred to herself as my emotional support blimp, even though I thought she looked more beautiful now than she ever had before.
“So.” She twisted in her seat to face me, wincing before readjusting the seat belt. “Damn, I really need to start remembering how big I’m getting.”
“Our baby’s getting big, you’re just getting more gorgeous.” I lifted her hand and kissed it, watching as a slow smile spread across her face.
“Sweet talker. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve already got me. You don’t have to turn on the charm so much anymore.”
“It just comes naturally with you. Besides, I’m never going to stop trying to be the guy who deserves you.”
Heidi laughed, but tears jumped into her eyes too. That was also happening a lot these days.
The moment between us changed, turning into something more serious as I saw Heidi’s teary eyes look up into the rearview mirror to watch the prison grow smaller behind us.
“You think he got the file in the cake?”
“I think it got delivered to the wrong cell,” I replied without missing a beat, giving her hand a squeeze. “One of these days, though, they’ll get the address right.”
Epilogue
HEIDI
“I’ve always thought newborn babies were hideous, but this little guy has to be the most handsome thing I’ve ever seen,” Will cooed, holding a fluffy blue bundle of blankets that contained our son. “Aren’t you, gorgeous?”
Despite the bone-weary exhaustion that threatened to close my eyes no matter how much I just wanted to keep staring at the love of my life holding our first child, there was a wide smile on my face. As wide as I could muster, anyway.
It had been there from the first second they’d laid my son on my chest and told me congratulations on the birth of my son. I didn’t know if I was ever going to stop smiling after that moment.
Will’s eyes were glued to Adam, the name we’d finally decided on—after hours of debating—before my contractions had started. For real this time. We’d had a false alarm about a week before, but it had been a good practice drill.
Adam William Campton. A namesake of both his maternal grandfather and his own father. I might have been exhausted, but he was so worth every contraction, every second of pain and uncertainty that I was almost starting to believe I really would forget how intense those had been someday.
Someday though, not today. It had been both the best and the worst day of my life, but its ending was definitely the best. It had also been a long-ass day, but before my eyelids finally won the fight and allowed me to drift off into sleep, I heard Will speaking to Adam again.
“You sure scared Daddy today, buddy.” Will looked up at me then, his red-rimmed eyes watery and happy. “D
addy, now that’s going to take some getting used to.”
“I know, so is Mommy.” I tried sitting up just a little, but quickly abandoned that idea. Instead of sitting up, I just awkwardly turned until I was facing Will more than the ceiling. “Do you think that means we’re old?”
“Oh, definitely.” He shot me a grin before noticing the awkward position I was now stuck in. “Shit, you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I tried waving him off, but he wouldn’t hear anything of it. Stepping away from my hospital bed briefly, he set Adam down in his bassinet before coming back to me.
Gently looping his arms around me, he helped me into a seated position on the bed before bending over to find my pink bunny slippers hiding under the bed. After sliding them onto my feet, he inclined his head at the glider. “Up for sitting over there for a little bit?”
I nodded. “Yeah, the nurse said I need to start moving around about now. Let’s do it.”
With his arms around me again, Will did most of the work in getting me to the chair. I wasn’t complaining about it, though. Just holding on seemed like a great idea to me for the time being. I’d done more than my share of the work today.
Not that Will had had an easy day, as was evident from his red eyes and crumpled clothes. My poor boyfriend had run himself ragged getting whatever I needed, endured random bouts of verbal attacks during labor, and had stuck to my side like glue.
We’d gotten through it together, the same way we’d done everything for the past seven months. After making up, we were pretty much only ever apart when we were at work. It sounded like a lot of time apart, but considering that my shifts lasted only a couple of hours and the same with Will’s jobs, we were together more than we were apart.
Before I’d officially moved in with him, which I hadn’t made too easy on him, I’d spend most of my time at his house anyway. Or he would come stay at the beach house with us.