Mr. Always & Forever

by Ashlee Price

“But you do have your own fashion line now,” I tell her. “Congratulations!”

  “Thank you.” She gives me a hug. “There’s just so much to celebrate, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, there is.” I glance at my stomach.

  Tiffany does the same. “How far along are you?”

  “Oh, not that far along yet. It’s just almost the third month.”

  “Well, good luck.” She smiles. “And let me know when the baby’s out.”

  “I will,” I promise her.

  After she leaves, I head towards a bench. “I think I need to sit down.”

  “Do you need anything?” Conner asks.

  “No. I’m fine. Go play with the kids or talk to some other guys.” I shoo him away.

  “Okay.” He kisses my cheek before he leaves.

  Just a few moments later, Janine and Astrid sit down beside me.

  “I thought he was never going to leave your side,” Janine says.

  I narrow my eyes at her. “You mean like you were never going to leave your apartment?”

  Astrid covers her mouth as she chuckles.

  When Celine was born, I chose Astrid and Janine to be her godmothers. Now they’re best friends, bonding over video games and other geeky stuff.

  “So, how are things?” I ask Astrid, squeezing her hand.

  “Everything’s fine, actually,” Astrid tells me. “My mother is really in love with the twins. Ever since they were born, she’s just stayed around and refused to leave. Of course, that poses some problems, but at least she and I get along now. And she likes Trevor now, too.”

  “Of course,” Janine says. “Grandchildren make all mothers-in-law fall in love with their sons-in-law.”

  “I loved your last book, by the way,” Astrid tells me. “When is the next one coming out?”

  “Next month, hopefully,” I answer.

  I’ve been writing non-fiction books for women for the past seven years, a vocation I’ve been enjoying immensely, especially since I get to spend a lot of time with my kids and my books have been selling so well.

  Astrid squeezes my hand. “You’re living the dream.”

  “I’m still not a princess, though,” I tease her.

  “I am not a princess,” she argues.

  “She is now,” Janine says. “In that last video game I helped make, I named the princess after her.”

  Astrid’s blue eyes widen. “You did not!”

  “I did,” Janine nods, taking a sip of her champagne. “Don’t worry. No one will know it’s you except the three of us.”

  Astrid raises her glass. “To secrets between lifelong friends.”

  “Sorry.” I shrug. “I don’t have a glass.”

  “Here. Take a sip of mine.” Janine offers me her glass.

  “No thanks.” I shake my head. “Conner will freak out if he finds out I’m drinking.”

  “What?” Janine looks horrified. “Since when does he get to make the rules?”

  “Um, since he became my husband,” I say. “Which was six years ago.”

  “Trevor doesn’t like me drinking when I’m pregnant, either,” Astrid pipes in. “Actually, he doesn’t like me drinking at all.”

  “That’s because you can’t hold your alcohol, Princess,” Janine teases.

  Astrid pouts.

  I place a hand on Janine’s shoulder. “Okay, that’s enough. You’re having too much fun.”

  “And you’re not having fun at all.” Janine stands up and pulls my arm. “Let’s dance.”

  I throw her a puzzled look. “This from someone who doesn’t like social gatherings?”

  “I like this one,” Janine says. “Come on.”

  I glance at my belly, hesitating.

  “Dancing isn’t against the pregnancy rules, is it?” Janine asks.

  Oh, what the heck. I need to have some fun with my friends once in a while.

  Smiling, I grab her arm, letting her pull me off the bench. I offer Astrid my other arm, and the three of us walk to the dance floor arm in arm.

  “Let’s party.”

  ~

  “You were partying earlier,” Conner says, wrapping his arms around me from behind as I stand on the balcony under the starry night.

  I touch his cheek. “Duh. It was a party, right?”

  “I know one thing.” He rests his head on my shoulder. “We throw better parties than Damien Shore.”

  I turn around to face him, leaning on the balustrade. “You just had to bring him up.”

  Conner shrugs. “Well, we met at his party.”

  “Like I can forget.”

  He tucks a strand of hair behind my cheek. “And now, several Valentine’s Days later, we’re still together. Who would have thought?”

  “Every day is a Valentine’s Day with you,” I tell him.

  He smiles and leans over to plant a tender kiss on my lips.

  Even after all these years, Conner’s kisses make my heart flutter like a butterfly.

  After kissing my lips, he slides down to kiss the heart-shaped golden pendant he gave me on our first wedding anniversary. Since it’s hanging between my breasts, the kiss makes me gasp. Then he moves even further down, kissing my belly reverently.

  “I can’t wait to meet you, Clark,” he whispers.

  I snort. “We don’t even know if it’s a boy yet. What if it’s another girl?”

  Conner stands up, hands on my waist. “It’s okay. I’ll just have another girl to win over.”

  “If you ask me, you’re the one at the mercy of those girls.” I glance inside the room, where Alexa and Celine are seated on the couch.

  He nods. “You may be right.”

  I chuckle.

  “But you’ll always be my first girl.” He rubs my arms.

  “Really?” I arch my eyebrows.

  “And my best.” He strokes my cheek. “You’re like this perfect red wine that once I had a taste of, I couldn’t get enough, and nothing else could ever get me drunk.”

  I bunch up my eyebrows. “You’re comparing me to wine?”

  “I’m comparing you to a taste of heaven.” He kisses my hand.

  “Well, you are right.” I wrap my hands behind his neck. “Ever since that first night, I’ve been your captive in more ways than one.”

  Conner pulls me close.

  “I’ll never let you go,” he whispers against my forehead.

  I smile as I press my cheek against his. “I never want you to.”

  It may have begun unexpectedly, and I don’t know how it will end, but I know ours is the best love story of all.

  All because we’re in it.

  The End

  More from Ashlee Price

  Bad Boy’s Little Secret

  I’m at the bar one evening, trying not to think about my current circumstances. I’ve always been told that dating is supposed to be fun, but it’s pure misery as I sit there in solitude, waiting for someone to flirt with me or make a move. No one seems to show any interest in me, and I’m left to reflect on my most recent failed relationship, the discovery that my ex was cheating on me, etc. However, just when I’m ready to give up, a stranger buys me a drink. He’s a handsome man, a little bit older – and unmistakably a bad boy… He invites me back to his room with him, almost without preamble, and the two of us enjoy a night of rough, passionate lovemaking. The next morning, however, he tells me he doesn’t want to take things too far. I try to live with that decision, thinking that just this one night of ecstasy should be enough for me. However, that’s when I discover I’m pregnant with his baby, and I end up learning a dirty little secret he’s kept from me…

  Chapter 1

  I thought dating was supposed to be fun… Although, admittedly, I don’t know exactly why I thought that… Nothing in my experience really seemed to indicate that that was the case, but it was what I’d always intuited from other people, and to some extent, I guess I sort of internalized it myself, thinking that, surely, sooner or later, the fun would come.

&n
bsp; Maybe I just wasn’t the right type of girl to have fun dating… Maybe I took everything too seriously, too gravely. Maybe there was fun to be had there, but I just didn’t let myself experience it. It was getting hard to tell, anymore…

  For me personally, though, it was beginning to feel increasingly more like work than enjoyment. Ideally, a young girl like myself, mid-twenties, decent looking, should have gone to the bar after work to unwind, to make herself available, and men should have flocked to her, until just the right guy picked her up and made her evening. Not all girls are like that, sure, but the ones I associated with tended to be, and that led to a sort of expectation in me that I could enjoy that same sort of success, that same sort of thrill.

  It didn’t really happen that way at all, to be honest… The whole ordeal, more often than not, just made me feel more awkward and tense than anything. It was unnerving to me, rather than flattering, to feel that the men all around me were checking me out, sizing me up, mentally undressing me from head to toe and trying to decide whether they approved of what they saw underneath in their heads – or at the very least, enough to want to go home and stick themselves inside of it for the evening…

  And how the hell was that anyone’s idea of fun?

  More than anything, it made me insecure. Not only because of how unnerving that all inherently is, but also because I already had quite a few doubts about myself in terms of dateability. There were so many other attractive girls at the bar… Thin and sexy, with perfect tits and firm asses, painted lips and sizzling features, all combined to paint a picture of irresistible beauty, designed specifically to lure men into their embrace like sirens leading sailors to their graves.

  And what the hell was I by comparison?

  I was readily aware of the fact that this description didn’t describe me at all. I was shy, unassuming. I didn’t crave attention; I just wanted to find a decent guy for at least the night, maybe longer. I didn’t like flirting, or trying to impress the people around me, or playing any of those dumb games people play to avoid outright coming out and saying they want to fuck you.

  And appearance wise, I felt certain that I didn’t stand anywhere near these other women by comparison, and that further enhanced my misery as I sat there at the bar, sipping on my drink every few minutes or so.

  Now, granted, I wasn’t an unattractive girl… Quite the opposite, really, when you got right down to it. I’d always been curvier, thicker, and to some extent I guess that occasionally bothered me. But if I could look past trying to compare myself to the people around me, I could actually be pretty sexy when the mood struck me. My curves were voluptuous, falling in all the right places, and I carried my weight daintily, making me seem substantive and sexy. With my wide hips, my substantial thighs… My plump, cushioned buttocks, my supple breasts, and my angelic face. I had dazzling blue eyes, crystal clear and hypnotic, a button nose, and tight red lips – talented at whatever endeavors they chose to undertake, if you catch my drift… And finally, I had silky, shimmering dark brown hair, flowing and sumptuous, completing a picture of ideal femininity in my book that I could largely be proud and confident of.

  In isolation, that is…

  When it came to competing with other women for men’s attention, I folded like a tent. For all the sway I could hold over a guy when it was just the two of us in the bedroom, one on one, I found that it wasn’t at all difficult to keep his attention with reasonable success. I didn’t even have to think about it – it was completely natural to me, and I felt no inhibition in my seductions in any way.

  But when it got down to trying to beat other women to the punch, so to speak, and to be the one to command the most attention from a guy, well… I just felt like my confidence was always shaky and unstable, and I felt as though I was lesser, unworthy, not able to succeed and the effort, therefore, not worth making.

  Recent experience, frankly, hadn’t really helped me all that much in this regard, either…

  Truth be told, I was out here tonight at the bar, forcing myself into socialization, because I’d recently come out of a long-term relationship with a boyfriend of mine, who I’d been dating for two years now.

  The relationship ended, you see, because I found out that he’d been cheating on me for the previous two months, with a thinner, arguably more attractive girl.

  And God, it devastated me…

  Matthew was my boyfriend’s name, and at one point I’d felt so damn lucky to have him. I’d been looking for someone steady for a while at the time, because, like I said, I wasn’t too big on the dating scene. As far as I was concerned, settling down with someone nice, even for just a while, was preferable to going around trying to find someone new all the time, and Matthew, initially, had fit the bill. He was smart, funny, attractive, athletic, and he loved me for who I was, most importantly of all. He seemed not to want to change a single damn thing about me, and accepted me flaws and all, without expectations. And my only expectation for him was that he be honest with me, which he did, for months and months on end.

  God, they’d been some of the happiest times of my life… He’d always had a way of picking me up when I was down, knowing just what to say, encouraging me… It had been so gratifying, so sweet, and it seemed strange that there had ever been a time in life when I’d been plagued by my numerous insecurities at all, because everything had at last seemed so perfect. I hadn’t been able to conceive an end to it until at last the end came, and I realized that a large part of what I’d loved about Matthew had all been an illusion.

  He was really, in truth, quite the douchebag…

  When I at last found out about his piece of ass on the side, I felt completely stupid and gullible about it, like I’d completely had the wool pulled over my eyes, going on blindly thinking everything was fine, and naturally I got quite indignant about it trying to confront him about his actions.

  And the crazy thing was, he acted like he hadn’t even done anything wrong… He shrugged me off, acted like I was being too dramatic… And maybe I was – I’d just been betrayed in an awfully huge way as far as I was concerned, and I was admittedly pissed at him, trying to wrap my head around the whole thing and to find some sort of vindication.

  But somehow, he ended up turning it around on me. He said that I’d started boring him, that maybe if I’d done a better job of making sure his needs were met, he wouldn’t have done what he did. Which, to me, was peculiar, because as far as I’d known we’d had a pretty active sex life, and he’d never once tried to convey to me any dissatisfaction or want of anything. So for him to accuse me of being the reason our relationship had fallen apart seemed, frankly, as absurd as it was insulting.

  I ended up yelling at him, and our relationship basically crumbled with the fateful words that I’d never find anyone as good as himself to love me.

  And God, what a blow that had been…

  I was just now only beginning to recover from it, putting myself back out there dangerously once more at the request of a friend, who’d been worried about me and wanted me to at least to try to get back on my feet in that regard.

  And so, I’d given it a go. I sat, now, shifting around at the bar, trying not to look to nervous, and to pretend like I was at least capable of making dating fun like I was supposed to. But I’m pretty sure I was about as transparent as could be in my discomfort, squeezing my shoulders together, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Any guy that might have tried looking at me flirtatiously, sizing me up, seemed to be instantly dissuaded by my uptight and withdrawn manner, and passed along without a word, not even bothering to try and make small talk with me in my obvious state of introversion.

  God, this was hopeless… I needed to get a hold of myself. I needed to do my best to try and at least make eye contact with someone, because if I went home alone tonight, without company, I would end up feeling even more lonely and like a failure than I was already thanks to Matthew.

  I sat up in my seat, brushing aside my blues as best as I could man
age, and slowly I tilted around the room, trying to scope out my prospects.

  It didn’t take long for my enthusiasm to droop downward however – it seemed as though I’d waited just a tad bit too long, and now a lot of the decent looking guys were gone for the evening, left with the aforementioned beautiful women, and leaving me to pick from, essentially, the leftovers.

  That was very, very depressing to me…

  I turned back to my glass, took a long last sip, and then stared into it, as though hoping it might magically refill itself.

  And then surprisingly, something very close to the next best thing happened – possibly even better…

  As though reading my mind, the bartender set a new glass, full past the halfway mark in front of me. I stared at it for a moment, honestly perplexed, and I looked at him inquisitively, trying to understand.

  “From the fella across the bar,” he said, and something fluttered inside my chest.

  This, of course, got me on edge. Not wholly in a bad way, just in an attentive way. As subtly as I could manage I tried to straighten myself back up again, as though I’d not been moping around like I had been in the first place. And very carefully I peered over in the man’s direction from the corner of my eye, trying to decide whether this was going to be worth the song and dance I was prepared to put up for him. At first, all I could see was a figure in shadow. I had to say that, at least, what I did see of him wasn’t bad looking at all, but granted I still had very little idea as to whether I wanted this to progress any further.

  And then he stood up… My heart fluttered, as the man in shadow began to drift his way through the bar like a phantom, moving with measured footsteps, making me dizzy with anticipation. My hand actually began to tremble around the drink he’d bought for me, so that I had to set it down, to avoid looking so damn anxious in his presence.

  Slowly, the blackness shrining him receded and I was given my first real view of him…

  And my first, immediate impression was that God, he was older than I was… Not like, way older, but… Well, enough for me to notice it.

  And I’m not saying it in a creepy way, either… I was immediately turned on, aroused as hell at the notion that an older guy was making advances toward me, flirting shamelessly, and I felt suddenly very naughty, very ready to participate in whatever he might happen to have to offer me.