by Vivian Ward
Harley’s a good man. He took care of Shay’s family like his own. While she was out gambling and drinking the money away, he was picking them up from school or the sitter’s house, and taking them home to feed them dinner and help with homework. My heart went out to him when their dad found out how absent their mother was in their life and filed for custody of the kids.
Jules and I told him he’d have nothing to worry about because the courts usually want the children with their mother but their biological father was able to prove her unfit as she had no job, was never home, and did nothing to contribute to them. In fact, the man used Harley against the kids’ mom, saying how much care the children received from ‘the mom’s boyfriend’.
There was nothing he could do about anything since he didn’t have any legal rights to the kids but it tore him up. He’d been taking care of those kids for the last three years before they had to go live with their dad.
I’d known for a while that he and Shay were on the rocks but those kids kept him there. They were his world and when they were ripped away from him, he put up the same invisible wall that I know too well.
We hang out quite a bit, but we don’t talk about anything of importance; just typical guy stuff. Jules is the one who told me most of what was going on because Harley would talk to her. She seemed to help him through that rough patch, and I’m grateful for that.
I just wish I could help us through our rough patch.
But it’s so damn hard. I don’t want her to be disappointed when she gets her period again this month if she doesn’t get pregnant. A man can only take so much of watching his wife cry and mourn over the baby that she never conceived.
When she comes in from work, I hear her humming the minute she walks through the door. She does that; hums songs. It’s usually a song that she’ll get stuck in her head from listening to music at the bar. Tonight she’s humming Aerosmith’s, “Walk This Way”.
It’s a catchy tune, one of my favorites, and I almost want to hum along with her but if I do that, she’ll know that I’m awake. Instead, I roll over and close my eyes, pretending to be asleep.
I know it’s wrong but if I pretend to be sleeping, she won’t try to initiate sex. Okay, that sounds bad. I love having sex with my wife, but we no longer do it for fun. We do it in hopes to get pregnant. Sometimes all I can think about is hoping one of my swimmers will find her egg. It totally kills the mood.
The fun went out the window about 10 months after we unsuccessfully started trying. Sex was spontaneous and fun at first, but then she started keeping track of her menstrual cycle so she’d know when she started ovulating—and that’s when the fun went out the window, at least for me.
We went from having daily sex, sometimes multiple times per day, to nothing for a week and a half, all so I could ‘save my swimmers’. She started reading books about fertility and one of them said that frequent ejaculation could lessen the probability of pregnancy because it’d weaken my sperm count.
We did that for a while—only using sex to procreate when her body temperature was optimal, indicating she was ovulating—but that became too frustrating. I’d walk around the house for weeks at a time with blue balls, thinking of how I’d love to bury myself inside her while her firm, round ass wiggled in my hands. As both of our frustration grew, for various reasons, everything started to feel more like a chore in the bedroom. I got tired of walking around sexually frustrated and jacked off in the shower. She’d probably kill me if she knew but a man is only human. What else was I supposed to do?
Finally, she went to her doctor for a check-up and to discuss our inability to get pregnant. Her physician suggested that I get tested or said to toss the ovulation kits out the window for a while to breathe new life back into the bedroom and to try again like we did in the beginning.
No matter how much I try not to think about it, I find myself wondering things during sex like, “Is she ovulating?” Or “Will this be it?” In the past, all I could think about was how good it felt to be inside her and how much I wanted her.
Her light footsteps quietly pad across the bedroom floor until she slips inside the master bath. Lying still, I hear use the toilet before the faucet turns on for several minutes. I know she’s in there freshening up, but I continue to keep my eyes closed and keep listening.
I hear the bathroom light switch flip off before she opens the door and she tiptoes to the bed, sliding in next to me. Her body curls up to mine and her sweet scent fills my nostrils, it’s a mix of flowers and mint.
“Babe?” She whispers. “Are you awake?”
Her tiny fingertips traipse from my wrist to my shoulder. My body involuntarily responds to her touch, goosebumps erupting all over my skin, my cock stirring to life, but my mind won’t allow me to verbalize a response.
“Babe,” her minty breath tickles my ear. “I’m home,” she hums.
Her long, wispy hair brushes my shoulder as she scoots closer to me. I can feel her bare breasts pressing against my back and it makes my cock ache to be inside her but, still, I pretend to be asleep.
Knowing that her attempts are futile, she huffs before rolling onto her side of the bed and flops back on her pillow. We silently feel each other’s disappointment but tonight isn’t the night.
I don’t know if we’ll ever make love on the right night.
A few moments go by before she wraps herself in the blankets and picks up her phone. It doesn’t take long before I hear her keypad clicking away and I know that she’s texting. It doesn’t take a genius to know who she’s texting. It’s him.
It’s always him.
Harley.
It doesn’t bother me, though. He consoles her when I can’t, or don’t know how. The two of them have grown close over the last few months. I know that they try to keep it to themselves but I can see things that they don’t think I can. I’d be an idiot not to see the connection that they have.
At first, I thought Jules was being a good wife and an even better friend. She was there for Harley when he was at his worst. Losing those kids tore him up and, somehow, even with everything we were going through, she could be there for him—to listen and talk to when things were hard.
The more time passed, the more reliant she began to grow on him, too. I suppose I have myself to blame for that. For a long time, I was emotionally unavailable to her and that’s when he stepped in. I was grateful for that.
Truly, I was.
At first.
But now I worry that the gap between them is closing up while the gap between us seems to grow further apart. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Jules, but I know that I’m not ready to find out.
About a half hour passes before she lies her phone on the stand beside the bed and it’s only minutes later that I hear a loud sigh pass through her perfect lips. Within minutes, I know she’s asleep and wrap her in my arms and hold her because I miss her.
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About the Author
Vivian Ward is a romance author from St. Louis, Missouri. She pens dark and dirty stories about alpha heroes and strong heroines with emotional HEAs. Vivian is happily married to her real-life Prince Charming who is also her best friend. One of her guilty pleasures is reading and writing smut while indulging in chocolate caramel candies.
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