Always Yours

by Grace Owens

  Thankfully, he didn’t argue about it and grabbed it from me. I listened as he called the 24-hour nurse line and was surprised that he didn’t need to ask me any questions even though I could hear the nurse on the other line firing off different ones. I was impressed that he had listened enough to know the answers.

  “Yes, she’s six months pregnant and this is the first time this has happened,” he said as if to confirm the information he had just given. “Thank you.”

  “What did she say?” I laid down on the bed. It somehow felt as if I could keep Isobel safer in this position.

  “She made us an appointment with Dr. Blackburn first thing in the morning,” he answered and came to sit next to me, a hand placed protectively on my belly. “If the bleeding starts to get worse or if you start to experience pain, we need to go to the hospital right away.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled. While the possibility of things getting worse made fear creep up my spine, I was somewhat relieved that they hadn’t told us to rush to the hospital right away. Maybe if I laid still, the bleeding would go away and everything would go back to normal.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  I shook my head in answer. “Maybe just… hold me?”

  Even after all this time, it was hard to admit when I needed his comfort, but I desperately needed it now so my pride had to take a step back. And when he climbed in behind me and wrapped his strong arms around me, everything melted away. I still had a hard time falling asleep and the lack of soft snores behind me told me that Cailean had the same problem. Still, we didn’t talk. Maybe we should have, but at that moment, there was nothing that could be said to make things better.

  ↞ ♥ ↠

  “Have you been doing any exercising? Walking more than normal? Have you experienced pain during intimacy?” Dr. Blackburn rambled off the questions so fast, I almost couldn’t keep up with her.

  “No exercising and no pain, but we did go shopping so I walked a bit more than my pregnant body wanted me to,” I answered as Cailean squeezed my hand in reassurance.

  “Okay, that is most likely it,” she said and took out my ultrasound pictures. “You see, you have something called Placenta Previa. I didn’t mention anything because it normally goes away long before you’re due. It’s a condition where the placenta is blocking your cervix; that means the baby has no way out. The pressure she was putting on it while you were walking around is most likely what caused the spotting when you got home.”

  “So how does she come out?” Cailean asked before I got to it.

  “If the placenta hasn’t moved by the time you’ve reached 30 weeks, we’ll have to schedule a C-section.”

  C-section? But that would mean surgery!

  “What if I don’t want surgery?” I asked before I could even stop myself. Of course I had no choice. Isobel needed to come out one way or another and my vagina was not an option. I knew labor would be painful and I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to it, but surgery was just downright scary.

  “I’m afraid that would be your only option,” Dr. Blackburn said with pity in her eyes. “The placenta contains a lot of blood so we can’t have you go into labor since the contractions could be fatal to both you and the baby.”

  “What does that mean?” Cailean asked and by now I could tell that he was worried.

  “It means we’ll have to deliver your baby girl before she’s due. It’s a risk because her lungs might not be fully developed, but if we wait too long, the risk is even greater. I usually recommend delivering the baby around 35-36 weeks.”

  “But that’s only two months away,” I whispered, putting a protective arm around my belly.

  “Two and a half, yes,” she corrected. “But remember, it’s only if the placenta is still blocking the cervix in a few weeks.”

  “So that means another ultrasound?” Cailean asked.

  “Yes, I’m inputting the referral right now and they will give you a call back like they’ve done the other two times. It also means light bed rest, more frequent appointments and no sex.”

  “Can I still work?” I asked at the same time Cailean asked, “No sex?”

  She looked at me first and answered, “You can work as long as it’s mostly sitting down. No walking around, bending too much and absolutely no heavy carrying. I will write you a note if you need one.” Then she turned to Cailean and answered his questions with, “No penetration and no orgasms; it could set off contractions. What you do with that information is up to you.”

  Since my job was mostly done sitting by a desk, the light duty wouldn’t bother me much but I had to admit that I was a little bummed out about the no sex-rule as well.

  Okay, maybe a little bit more than bummed out, if I was being honest.

  Dr. Blackburn gave me all the regular after-care instructions and sent us on our way as if everything was normal. I had barely wrapped my head around the fact that I was going to become a mom, but now I had to accept the fact that my pregnancy wouldn’t be one of those smooth and breezy ones; not that it had been great to begin with, but this was still another complication to add to the rest of the list.

  “It’ll be okay, babe,” Cailean said as he wrapped me up in a tight hug. I loved his tight hugs. I hadn’t even realized we’d reached the car until then. “We’ll get through it.”

  “I know,” I mumbled into his chest as I wrapped my arms around his waist.

  “Come on, let’s get some breakfast,” he said, releasing me way too soon for my liking.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said just as my traitorous stomach growled.

  “Uh-uh,” he said, opening my door with a big smirk on his face.

  It didn’t feel right to go out to eat with Cailean anymore. A big part of our relationship, besides Isobel, involved sex. Now that sex was out of the equation, going out to breakfast seemed more like a date and less like the ‘I just screwed your brains out so now I need to feed you so we can keep going’ situation we had going on before.

  It scared the crap out of me.

  “It’s just breakfast, Gertie,” Cailean said as he got into the driver’s seat. “Relax.”

  “We both know it’s not just breakfast anymore, Cailean.”

  “I know.”

  And that was that. He didn’t make a cocky declaration about his marital rights to go on a date and I didn’t retort back that said rights were only on paper. I let him take me to a diner and I let him pay for the food.

  Chapter 21

  ◆◆◆

  “HERE,” ALLIE SAID, handing me a beautiful pink maxi-dress and I looked at it in confusion.

  She and Hanna had surprised me this morning by showing up at Cailean’s apartment with Starbucks and breakfast. They both knew I was struggling with Cailean, my condition, and what that meant for us, so I had just thought they were here to make me feel better. Which they had succeeded with. Cailean had been working pretty much all night so I had been frustrated and sleep-deprived. Not a good combination.

  “I wasn’t aware that I needed a new dress,” I said and looked at the two of them. Now that our breakfast was over with, I could see that they were dressed way too nicely for so early in the morning - they were both wearing dresses, similar to the one in my hands, and make-up.

  “You do for today,” Hanna said cryptically and ushered me toward my bathroom. “Now get dressed so I can fix your hair.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about it, but if it makes you feel any better, Cailean had nothing to do with it,” she responded and shut the door, leaving me alone in the bathroom.

  It did make me feel a bit better, but I was still anxious about what they had planned. A warm shower helped a bit and as I stepped into the gorgeous baby-pink dress that hung perfectly over my belly, there was even some excitement that shown in my eyes. Whatever they had planned, it felt good to dress up.

  “You look happy,” Allie commented as she applied my makeup. Hanna was doing my hair, but she paused at Allie’
s words.

  “I am,” I answered truthfully. I was happy… for now. It still felt as if the other shoe was about to drop.

  “You deserve to be happy, Gertie. Even if that means you stay with Cailean when Isobel gets here,” Hanna chimned in.

  I wasn’t going to lie, the same thing had occurred to me and sometimes I found myself thinking about staying the way we were - long term. But that was all it was. Wishful thinking.

  “I know,” I whispered quietly, but instead of talking more about it, which I probably should have given the opportunity, the girls finished making me pretty while talking about Christmas.

  As soon as we stepped into Allie’s house, I was met by Cait, Cailean’s mom. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was happening today and why I was dressed up.

  Baby shower.

  “Oh, look at you!” Cait gushed and hugged me. When she released me, her hands immediately went to my belly and while touching made me uncomfortable, I knew I had to suck it up today. Besides, she was Isobel’s grandmother. “You look absolutely beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a shy smile.

  I wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked as well with an elegant green dress and her hair perfectly styled, but before my awkward mouth could muster up a response, she was ushering me toward the living room. The women sure had been busy - there were pink and white decorations everywhere along with a bunch of balloons.

  “I hope it’s not too much, but there were too many options to just choose a couple,” Cait said apologetically.

  “It looks great.” Which it did. It was just a bit over the top for my taste, but I didn’t dare tell her that.

  “You just sit down and relax. The guests should be arriving pretty soon,” was the last thing she said before she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me standing alone in the room.

  I wondered what guests she was talking about since I barely knew anyone. I wanted to help, but when I offered, I was gently turned down.

  “It’s your party, Gertie,” Allie explained, but that was exactly why I wanted to help. They had done so much for me already. “Now, shoo. Cailean and the boys will be here soon. You can go wait for them or go sit your butt down. Light duty, remember?”

  As if I can forget, I thought as I reluctantly sat down on one of the barstools.

  Cailean found me in the decked out living room a while later. He looked good in his standard outfit of jeans and a shirt, but the way the black Henley was hugging him made my eyes linger just a tad bit more than what was appropriate.

  “I had nothing to do with this, I swear,” he said, encircling me in his strong arms. He seemed so worried that I would blame him that it made me smile.

  “I know.”

  He bent down and gave me an intimate kiss that I never wanted to end. But of course we eventually had to pull away from each other. He gave my lips a quick peck before he said, “You look bloody gorgeous by the way.”

  “I could say the same about you,” I admitted.

  He gave me a radiant smile just as his mom walked over to us, so he never got the chance to give me crap for complimenting him. He should have known that I found him good-looking by now anyway.

  “Really, Cailean; jeans?” Cait asked as she looked him over before hugging him. “You couldn’t dress up?”

  “My wife seems to appreciate my outfit fine enough,” he said and pulled me to his side.

  “Oh, very well,” she said with a sigh, letting it go. “Come on, you can help me hang up the last of the balloons.”

  Did we really need more balloons?

  Apparently we did.

  ↞ ♥ ↠

  There were people who came to my baby show that I had never met before. Sure, a handful of the guests were people that I considered friends. But mostly it was friends of Allie or Cait. Cailean seemed to know everyone, though, which was good. At least one of us would look as if we knew what we were doing. I would just follow his lead.

  Even though I was starving and wanted nothing more than to dig into the delicious-looking brownies Cait had made, we were playing games before eating. And not just any game, but the same one Cailean had dreaded. It made me feel a bit better and kept me from thinking about the food that was waiting.

  He was sitting next to me on the couch. When he looked over at me, I couldn’t help but laugh at his expression.

  “I might have mentioned how much you looked forward to the diaper game,” I admitted.

  “I’ll get back at you for that one,” he promised, but still sniffed the diaper so he couldn’t have been too mad. “This is fucking disgusting. I’ll never be able to enjoy a chocolate bar again.”

  “Like you eat a lot of those anyway,” I said with a scoff and poked his hard abs.

  “Hey, I’ve got to keep these hard somehow since you like them so much.” He even went as far as lifting his shirt lightly and flexed, showcasing those lickable abs of his.

  “Tease,” I muttered but still leaned in to give his jaw a kiss.

  “Cailean,” Cait scolded, “put your shirt back on.”

  His expression as he did what she said - as if he had been a little boy - made me laugh. It started out as a small giggle, but it quickly escalated to the point where I had to squeeze my legs together to keep from peeing myself.

  “You okay there, babe?” he asked amused.

  “Sure, yeah,” I answered trying to calm down. “Now stop making me laugh or I’m going to pee my pants.”

  “You’re not wearing any pants and if you need to go use the toilet, then use the toilet. No one is going to judge you for it.”

  I shot him a glare for taking my statement so literally, but it didn’t last long. It seemed as if any annoyance I felt toward him these days never lasted long. Instead I surprised us both by leaning over and placing a kiss on his lips.

  I pulled away from him, but he put a possessive arm around me and kept me close.

  My stomach growled loudly, urging people to get up and start eating in its own way even though no one heard it. Sure, I could have been the first person to get up, but I felt awkward enough with all the attention aimed at me. No one needed to see me huff and puff while trying to get off the couch.

  “One more game and one more prize,” Allie announced and I groaned inwardly. We had already played three games and surely I couldn’t be the only one who was hungry.

  Cailean chuckled beside me so maybe my groan hadn’t been as quiet as I had thought. While the game in itself was fun because it required me to use my mess of a brain to unscramble words, I was getting to the point where my mood went from happy to hangry.

  “You hungry?” Cailean asked when someone finally won the last game. I shot him a look that told him he knew very well how hungry I was. He held up his hands as if he was defending himself against my wrath. “Okay, okay. I’ll go get you something.”

  “Don’t forget a brownie,” I said as he stood to leave and then added, “Please.”

  “I value my balls too much to forget your brownie.”

  With that he left me sitting there on the couch feeling a bit helpless. I should have heaved my heavy body off the couch and gotten my own food. Too bad said heavy body had its own ideas about what we were doing.

  Almost right after Cailean had gotten up, Sebastian flopped down in his seat, scaring me enough to jump a bit. The way he was looking at me as if he wanted to tell me something made me squirm. Our relationship over the last few weeks had gotten a lot better and a lot less awkward, but we were nowhere near as close as I was to his wife. Heart-to-heart was not something we did. At all.

  “He loves you, you know,” he said, gesturing toward Cailean. “You can see it from a mile away.”

  And there it was. Now it wasn’t just the girls who put their noses where they didn’t belong. I looked over to where Cailean was standing. Brooke, the little girl who belonged to one of Allie’s friends, had him invested in what looked like a very serious conversation. He must have sensed my eyes on him
because he looked up and met my eyes. As soon as he saw me looking, he flashed me a big smile before turning his attention back to Brooke.

  “He likes the idea of me,” I said to Sebastian, not taking my eyes off Cailean.

  “If that’s what you want to tell yourself so that you can sleep better at night, then that is fine by me,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “But I think you guys were made for each other, and that’s coming from a guy who only does romance to please his wife.”

  Wow.

  I was no longer afraid to admit that we did work well together despite our differences. Or maybe that was why we worked. He was forward and outgoing and I counteracted that with my need to be alone and quiet. I was organized, he was not. He had no problems expressing his feelings by actions, and I would rather think about them than to do anything about them.

  Somehow, we just worked well together.

  “Thank you,” I said. All he did was give me a nod before he got up to join his wife.

  I didn’t get to sit there and mull over what Sebastian had just said for very long before Cailean made his way over with Brooke, on his shoulders.

  “For you, my queen,” he said and leaned forward, handing me my plate.

  “I’m a princess,” Brooke said proudly from her spot on his shoulders.

  “Well, then, thank you, kind sir,” I said with a giggle.

  “He’s a pony, silly,” she corrected me.

  There was no containing the laughter that left me, but he seemed okay with being a pony and if that didn’t demonstrate what kind of father he would be, then I didn’t know what would. He leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss before Brooke demanded him to move on.

  Sebastian’s words lingered in my mind, but even the fear they brought couldn’t ruin my mood today. Sure, I couldn’t deny how scary it was when I realized, sitting there with my plate of food in my lap and Isobel gently moving inside me, how truly happy I was. It almost felt too good to be true, but there was no denying who was responsible for it.