My Weakness

by Alison Mello

  “Five more minutes, mom and baby will need their rest,” the nurse says as she peers round the door.

  “Okay,” I say, not looking up from the precious bundle in my arms.

  Reid and I say our goodbyes to Zoey, Brock, and baby Thea, then we head back out to the car.

  “She was so beautiful,” I say softly as we start our journey.

  “Mm-hmm,” Reid mumbles but doesn’t look my way.

  I’m not sure what has Reid so deeply lost in his own thoughts, but he’s been the same since we arrived at the hospital. Maybe it’s the fact that in a few months’ time, he’ll be doing this with Molly and their son. I don’t say anything else until we arrive back at my house. I invite him in and hand him a bottle of Bud.

  “You look like you could do with one,” I say as he takes the bottle.

  “Thanks. Just the one though. I have to drive home, remember?”

  He offers me a smile, and though it doesn’t quite light up his face like normal, it seems genuine, and I take it as a sign he’s not so wrapped up in himself.

  “We should order takeaway,” I say as I sit on the couch next to him.

  “Sure. What do you fancy?”

  We order Chinese and I’m glad, because it’s a little late and I don’t fancy cooking. It’s been quite an eventful day. A beautiful picnic in the park with the man I love dearly, followed by my goddaughter being born.

  “You’ve been very quiet today,” I observe as I plate up the takeaway.

  “Sorry.”

  “Are you okay?”

  His face drops and he doesn’t respond right away. I hand him his food and we sit at the breakfast bar in my kitchen. He pushes food around his plate rather than eating it, and I’m worried that I’ve said or done something wrong.

  “Reid,”

  “It’s not you, Kara. It’s me.”

  Oh my god, those are the words people use when they want to break up with you.

  “It’s not you, it’s me.” Or “It’s not your fault but…”

  “Are you…” I can’t swallow because of the lump in my throat. I feel the sting of tears and I put down my fork, my appetite all but gone.

  “Are you breaking up with me?” I finally manage to ask.

  As soon as the question has left my lips, the tears begin freefalling. It’s like they’re racing each other to leave their salty tracks on my cheeks.

  “What? Kara, no!” Reid exclaims as he stands up.

  He rounds the breakfast bar and draws me into his arms. I freely sob into his chest. My chest heaves as painful sobs leave me. Reid holds me tighter and allows me to cry. I don’t know why I’m crying now. He said he isn’t leaving me. So maybe it’s just relief? I really don’t know.

  When my tears subside, I look up at Reid and he offers me a small smile. He wipes the remaining tears from my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs and leans down to plant a chaste kiss on my lips.

  “I’m sorry, Kara. I didn’t mean to upset you. What gave you the impression I was breaking up with you?”

  He pulls his stool round next to mine and sits down before reaching for my hands.

  “People always say ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ when they are about to break up.”

  “Oh baby,” he says as he rubs circles on the backs of my hands, “I meant that I wasn’t being quiet or off because of you. It’s nothing you’ve done that’s made me withdrawn this afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  I sigh and lean into him. The scent of his cologne, tinged with that manly smell that is all Reid comforts me.

  “Baby look, I should tell you something. It’s about Zoey and me.”

  His eyes bore into mine and it’s as if he’s imploring me to listen. With all thoughts of food and a night in front of the telly with my man discarded, I sit up a little straighter and nod at him to continue.

  “We were going to have a baby.”

  “What?” I almost shout.

  If my best friend had been pregnant, she would have told me. Wouldn’t she?

  “It was back before we got engaged. We hadn’t been together long. You know it was all a bit fast back then. One minute we were getting to know each other and taking it slowly, then we were planning our wedding. Or at least our parents were.”

  “I remember thinking it was all a bit sudden, I mean I’ve known Zoey for years, and I never saw her as the type to marry and settle down. But that changed when she met you.”

  “That was because she found out she was pregnant.”

  I hold Reid’s hands a little tighter. It doesn’t take an educated guess to tell where his story goes, considering Thea is Zoey’s first child. I don’t say anything and wait for him to continue.

  “That’s when our parents decided we should get married. They’re the type of people that think that there’s a certain order you should do things, and according to that, we should marry before our child was born. So we got engaged and our parents took over organising everything. The truth be told, I hadn’t known Zoey for long, and what we had wasn’t love. We were a no-strings-attached kind of arrangement. Then I met you. And I started to look at you in a way I didn’t look at her. This was before the news of her pregnancy.”

  Reid gets up and pours himself a glass of water.

  “I realised I was with the wrong person and when I was about to break it off with her, that was when she told me she’d missed her period and had done a test. I thought I should do the honourable thing and stay with her. When she was just about fourteen weeks gone, she miscarried.”

  His voice breaks and I look into his eyes as the tears start to flow. My heart breaks for him and I want to erase all his pain, but I know I can’t say or do anything to make it better.

  “We didn’t even know the sex of the baby. We didn’t get to bury our child, to have a gravestone to mark him or her. We don’t know what caused the miscarriage, it was just nature’s way. I didn’t take it too well and that’s when I left to get my head together.”

  “But Zoey…”

  “She told you I left without reason and she screwed half the men in town to—and I quote—‘get over me.’ She made out it was all my fault. I know all this because she told me so.”

  Now I understand his sudden disappearance and her promiscuous ways. She was using sex as a coping mechanism and Reid was out of town to get his own head straight.

  “Zoey and I weren’t meant to be together and we both knew that. Losing the baby was our breaking point. We realised we had nothing to stay together for. The split was a mutual decision. I never knew she hadn’t told you until I got back to town and had the inevitable talk with her. We put our differences aside and I forgave her for telling people it was me that left. I realised there was no point being bitter because my bitterness only ate away at me, it didn’t affect Zoey.”

  “Oh Reid…”

  I don’t know what to say to him, so I stand and wrap my arms around him.

  “That’s why I’ve been a bit withdrawn today. Because she had a baby, something we would have done all that time ago.”

  I hug him to me and he buries his face in the crook of my neck, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me closer.

  “I’m so sorry, Reid. I would have gone on my own if I’d known. You should have just said you couldn’t come with me.”

  “That was never going to happen. She was freaking out, so you were freaking out. I wanted to be there for you. Although I was there for her in a way, I guess. Brock was out of town and I didn’t think she could wait until he got home, so yeah, I guess I just wanted to help.”

  ***

  We talked a little longer and ended up warming our food up in the microwave because we discovered we were actually starving. So we ate our Chinese and then instead of going home, I asked Reid to stay. He took a shower and then we crawled under the covers together. He’s asleep now and I’m lying here watching him. He looks at peace, all traces of the pain I saw earlier are erased in sleep.

  I know that people g
et over things in different ways and at different paces, but I can’t understand why my best friend didn’t tell me she was pregnant or that she lost the baby. I can’t be angry at her though. I guess everyone is entitled to their secrets. So long as those secrets don’t hurt anyone else.

  I snuggle up to Reid and feel him slip his arm around me as I try to get comfortable. I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know that the past plays a part in it. And I know I want to be there to comfort Reid. No matter why, how, when or where, I will always and I mean always be there for him.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Reid

  I wake next to Kara, and can’t help the smile that plays on my lips. I love watching her as she sleeps. She proved last night that she loves me because she didn’t recoil when I told her the truth of mine and Zoey’s relationship. It wasn’t conventional, that’s for sure, and in the end it didn’t work out. But now at least Kara knows why I left town and she’s been put straight about me just ditching Zoey.

  It felt cathartic to finally get it all off my chest and now I can just be excited about mine and Kara’s future together and my son being born in a few months’ time. I only hope that one day, Kara and I will share the same joy of our own baby being brought into this world.

  Quietly slipping my jeans on, I sneak out of the room and head downstairs to make breakfast. I’ve got to go to work, Kara does too, but we can at least have a bacon sandwich or something before we go. I look in the fridge and find the bacon, then set about getting everything ready to make breakfast in bed for my gorgeous girlfriend. God, how long I have wanted to call Kara that, and now I finally can. Nobody could make me as happy as she does right now. Her heart is nothing but pure and kind, loving and as beautiful as she is.

  Taking the tray upstairs, I slip quietly into the bedroom and place it on the nightstand before looking at my sleeping beauty. Her hair is spread across the pillow, looking almost like a golden halo. I perch on the side of the bed next to her and lean down to kiss her cheek. She mutters something I don’t quite catch before rubbing sleep from her eyes and looking up at me.

  “Good morning,” she says softly.

  “Good morning, beautiful.”

  I reach over and grab her coffee from the tray. She moves to sit up against the headboard and I hand the mug over.

  “Thank you.”

  She takes a deep gulp of her drink before noticing the tray on the nightstand.

  “What’s all this for?”

  “I just wanted to make my angel breakfast in bed. Is that okay? I can always take it away and eat it all myself if you don’t want any.”

  “No!” she says as she puts her mug down and reaches for her sandwich.

  I move to sit in bed next to her with my own breakfast and we sit and eat quietly. When we’re finished, we pile the dirty plates and mugs back on the tray before I take her face in my hands and place a gentle kiss on her lips.

  “I have work this morning,” she says before sighing loudly.

  “I do too, baby. I wish we could stay here all day.”

  “I’m not in until 10:30 though, Liam opens up today. When do you have to go?”

  “Why, what did you have in mind?”

  “This.”

  Kara moves to straddle my lap. She slept in just a t-shirt last night, so she’s naked from the waist down. She rubs herself over me and my cock twitches, begging for her touch. She notices this and smiles a shit-eating grin at me as she reaches her hand down to rub against me over the top of my jeans. Why oh why did I put them on this morning?

  Sliding my hands underneath her t-shirt, I reach up to cup her breasts. I love how her nipples pebble as I run my hands over them. Kara leans down to kiss me and I use my free hand to pull her closer so that I can deepen the kiss. She opens her mouth to accept my tongue and I groan as she rubs against me again. I break our kiss to take a much needed breath, she’s sending me dizzy.

  “Kara…”

  “Shh!” she says, putting a finger over my lips.

  Kara reaches down and unfastens my jeans. Her warm hand glides down the length of my cock, and I’m glad I didn’t bother with underwear. She grips me and jerks her hand a few times. My breathing hitches, and I reach to remove the t-shirt she has on. I discard it to one side and see her body in all its naked glory. My hands glide over the contours of her body and she gasps as I take her left nipple into my mouth. I suck it and then nip it gently. Her back arches and I can feel the warmth between her legs as she sits on me.

  I grab her ass and lift her from me. She moans at the loss, but her eyes roam over my body as I stand and discard my jeans. As soon as I’m naked, I’m back on the bed, and Kara is instantly back in my lap. She runs her hands over my chest before leaning down to kiss me. It starts off slow and sweet, but soon turns into something more. My cock is rock hard and I ache for her. Kara reaches down and guides my cock to her heat, taking me inside her inch by inch. It feels painstakingly slow as she takes her time with me, yet it’s a feeling I wouldn’t be without. A moan reverberates through her chest and out of her mouth as she rocks herself slowly against me. My hands find her hips and I grip them as she finds her rhythm. Her hands find my shoulders and she holds on tight as she ups her pace.

  I’m losing myself in her and I never want to find myself again. I want to always feel like I do right now. I feel hypnotised by Kara. She owns me, body, heart, soul and mind.

  Reaching my hands round her, I grip her ass and lift her up and down my length. I’m panting and there’s a sheen of sweat on my brow. The wicked smile on Kara’s face suggests she knows how close I already am to my climax. She moves up and down, faster and harder than before. Every movement has me paralysed, she’s in control here and I find I don’t mind at all.

  Kara’s back arches and she moans loudly. I reach down between us and start to play with her clit, teasing her closer to the brink. It’s all I can do to keep from coming too soon. Seeming to lose her rhythm, I sense she’s closer to the edge and I take over. Gripping her hips, I move inside her, hard and slow, then more gently but faster. I draw it out for a few more moments before giving into the urge to fuck her hard and fast, bringing us both crashing down in waves.

  “Reid…”

  Her breathing is rapid and I can feel her heart race as she lies against my chest.

  “I love you, baby,” I whisper as I try to regulate my own breathing.

  “I love you too.”

  We collapse onto the bed, lying side by side, facing each other. I trace lazy circles on her hip with one hand. She has never looked more beautiful than in this moment. I can’t believe how lucky I am. Kara is my best friend, my lover, my all. I would give her the world if it was mine to give. She doesn’t realise it, but she’s piecing me back together every minute I spend with her. I want to do the same for her. I know she’s dated a string of losers over the years. I’ve met and disliked most of them. Sawyer was my main competition for her hand and her heart. He was a good guy that really cared about her. I feel sorry for him that she couldn’t return his love, but ultimately I’m happy it was because of me that she couldn’t give him her heart.

  I don’t want to move to go to work, but I know I must shower and get ready. So I get up from the bed, grab Kara in my arms, and carry her to the shower. She squeals as I put her in the shower and turn the water on. Getting in with her, I kiss and caress her as the water runs over her beautiful body.

  “Reid, we won’t get to work at this rate,” she chastises me. The tone in her voice suggests she doesn’t really care about work, though.

  “I can’t help it when I’m around you, baby. I want you every minute of every day. You’re my kryptonite.”

  Wrapping her arms around my neck, Kara pulls me to her and kisses me. Her kiss is passionate and bruising. I can’t help but get aroused again. She giggles as she notices my arousal, then she turns to grab the shower head. I don’t see it coming but she aims the water at me and I am blasted with freezing cold water.


  “You’ll pay for that,” I splutter as I climb out of the shower and grab a towel.

  “Hmm, I’m sure I can think of a way to make it up to you,” she whispers seductively.

  “Now?” I ask hopefully.

  “You’re incorrigible,” she says as she laughs at me and shakes her head.

  ***

  I’m at work and all I can think of is Kara. I close my eyes, and memories of this morning play out behind my eyelids. It’s hard to get anything done when my mind is elsewhere. I wonder how I got so lucky. When I first met Kara, I had no clue this would be how things played out. If I’d known then what I know now, I would never have got with Zoey. But I guess things happen for a reason, and Kara and I got together when the time was right for us both. Luckily for me, Kara is a good woman, and when I told her what happened with Zoey and our baby, she didn’t judge me for leaving. I never really thought she would, but I didn’t want to talk about those painful memories.

  I bust my ass at work for the rest of the day, distracting myself from my thoughts. I want to try to find a way to make it up to Kara for the fact that our first night away got cut short by Molly. I know she was okay about it and I love her even more for the way she helped out and put Molly and me at ease that night.

  Jason and Liam are snuggled up on the couch watching a film when I get home.

  “Hey bro, where have you been?” Jase greets me.

  “Long story.”

  “Sit,” he orders and I comply.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks as Liam pauses the film and gets up to put the kettle on.

  “Yeah. I’ve been with Kara.”

  “We know that because you went to Blakelands together, but you seem like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Did it not go well?”

  I sigh audibly and Jase looks at me. The look in his eyes implores me to talk, but I’ve never told him about Zoey and the baby and if I plan to tell him what happened, I guess I’m going to have to tell him the whole truth.