Thrown for a Curve

by Sugar Jamison

  He stumbled into the kitchen, still groggy from the nighttime medicine she had given him. He needed food before he got ready to work, and after four days of living on just soup and crackers his stomach was finally protesting from the lack of sustenance.

  He spotted Cherri standing in front of the pantry, her forehead adorably scrunched in deep concentration. He still had no idea what to say to her. They hadn’t gotten the chance to talk much during his confinement. He could barely recall most of his days in bed, only vaguely remembering her wiping his brow with a cool cloth or shoving orange juice in his mouth.

  “I need to go grocery shopping,” she mumbled. He stood there watching her for a moment. She still wore her night-clothes but she looked better than she had in weeks. Her hair had regained her natural shine. Her skin was dewy. Her eyes didn’t look like they were holding on to sadness with a deadly grip. She turned suddenly as if she’d sensed him near her and gave him a shy smile. “Hi.”

  “Hello.”

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Neither of them knew what to say.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  He nodded and opened the refrigerator. She was by him in an instant, her warm hand on his bare shoulder. “I could make you something to eat. We don’t have much.” She blushed. “I’m planning on behaving like an actual wife and going shopping later today, but we have oatmeal and fruit. Or if you want I could go out and get you something.”

  “Oat—” He cleared his throat, his voice coming out more like a croak. “Oatmeal is fine.”

  * * *

  She sat him down on the stool and began to boil the water for the oatmeal. Her eyes kept wandering to him. He wore no shirt, only a pair of blue flannel pants. He was just getting over the flu. The last thing he needed was to sit around bare-chested in a drafty house, but she couldn’t bring herself to order him to re-dress. He was so damn beautiful, and sculpted; his body was something she wanted to run her hands over, just to memorize the feel of it. She realized in that moment how much she missed him. He was her husband … Planned or not, this was her life now. She loved him. She had to find a way to be happy with him.

  “Do you want coffee?” She set the bowl in front of him.

  “No thank you.” He shook his head, not looking up at her.

  “Oh.” Her cheeks burned. “Maybe some milk?”

  He grunted no and continued to eat. “Orange juice? Water? Tea? Whiskey? Bathwater?”

  He looked at her for a brief moment and then back down at his bowl. “I’ll get it myself.”

  “Okay.” She turned away from him, escaping in the sink full of dirty dishes. He was mad at her. She should just accept it. She deserved it.

  He came over to deposit his empty bowl in the sink. Yes, she deserved his anger, but she hated when people were mad at her. The need to tease him snuck up on her. She needed to get some of their old relationship back. Things had changed between them; they were going to be bonded together by their baby, by their marriage. They were friends once. They needed to be friends again.

  She missed him.

  And so she took the hose from the sink and sprayed him directly in the face.

  “What the hell!”

  Before he could react she sprayed him again, this time all over his hard body. He lunged for her and she took off through the dining room into the living room. He wasn’t far behind her, despite her head start. His fingertips brushed her arm. She ran faster, trying to dodge him, but he was too quick for her. He grabbed the back of her nightgown but as soon as his hand came in contact with the fabric he lost his footing and so did she. They tumbled to the floor, the rug breaking their fall. He landed on top of her, his wet body pinning her, both of them laughing so hard they lost their breath. It had been so long since they had been able to do it together, but in a moment it was over. He sobered.

  “Are you okay, love?” He moved to roll off her but she looped her arms around his neck, unwilling to let him go. “I don’t want to squash you.”

  “Trust me, I’m fine. Just stay with me like this for a few moments.” She ran her fingers through his damp hair, studying every nuance of his face, loving the way his eyes crinkled in the corners. “I hope he looks like you.”

  He stiffened. “The baby?”

  “Yes.” She nodded and slowly traced the edge of his jaw with the tips of her fingers. “We could get a hundred thousand dollars for him on the black market and use that money to go to Tahiti.”

  He scowled at her, but his body relaxed slightly on top of hers. “You can’t sell our baby, daft girl.”

  “No?” She cupped his slightly bearded cheek in her hand. “Oh. Well, I guess we’ll have to keep him then. Come with me to my doctor’s appointment tomorrow?”

  He nodded.

  “It may be a bit soon but I think we need to start thinking about the nursery. I want it to be special. I want to paint the furniture. Do you think that would be okay?”

  “I don’t care,” he said quietly. “It’s your baby. Remember?”

  His words stung but she chose to brush them aside because she knew he didn’t mean them. “Yes, but only when he’s well behaved and perfect. The rest of the time he can be yours. Do you think we should put the nursery next to our bedroom? I think the room down the hall would be better, but I don’t know if I want to be that far from the baby.”

  “We could—” His face softened a tiny bit, but then hardened again. “I started to make a cradle. You could keep it wherever you sleep for a while.”

  Was it over between them? No, she couldn’t accept that. He was just mad at her.

  She lifted her head off the rug to kiss him. It was like their first kiss all over. She was the one doing all the kissing. He was holding back, not even giving an inch of himself to her. She wouldn’t accept it. So she kissed him a little longer, letting her tongue sweep deep inside his mouth. His body finally relaxed on hers. The contact heated her insides and made her even hungrier for him, but he still didn’t kiss her back.

  She broke away and looked up at him to find him staring at her, his face unreadable. “Kiss me back,” she breathed. When he said nothing she tried again and for a long time got nothing in return. Just when she was about to give up, when she was about to walk away, he reciprocated and gave her a long hard kiss.

  “Will you make love to me tonight, Colin?”

  He froze and shook his head.

  “Oh.” Her cheeks burned. “It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

  “Why wait for tonight?” He pulled up her nightgown, not removing it, just pushing it far enough up so that her breasts were bared to him. He stared down at her body, but unlike all the other times they made love there was no warmth in his eyes, just lust. It was almost more than she could handle, and she could feel the tears begin to burn the back of her throat. Part of her wanted to run away. To hide from the world. Half the time she didn’t know which way was up. How the hell was she supposed to know how to be married? But she knew she couldn’t run away. This didn’t just happen to her. She’d made this choice. To be a wife. To be a mother. Plus she loved him. That trumped everything. It had to.

  He took her nipple into his mouth with a hard suck. She cried out. It hurt but it felt so damn good at the same time. His hot wet mouth on her chilled skin. Goose bumps ran up her torso. He noticed and ran his tongue over them, making them worse with each lick. “Colin…” She begged him to stop, to keep going, she didn’t know. But all too soon her panties were stripped from her body, her legs spread open before him. He touched her there, testing her wetness, preparing her for what was about to come. She moved against his touch, but when she started to get that warm tingly burn, he removed his hand and freed himself from his pants. He pushed inside her with one hard thrust. She saw stars for a moment, shocked by how the invasion felt. It wasn’t like the last time. No slow caresses, no sweet touches or pretty words. There were no words at all. Just him pumping in and out of her and because he was her husband and because she loved him, she soon g
rew accustomed to his size. Her body began to enjoy the sensation of him sliding in and out of her even if her brain wasn’t there yet. She grew slicker; an involuntary moan escaped from her lips, and it caused him to pump harder. She wanted to move against him but his heavy body kept her motionless. She could only experience their sex, not participate.

  He placed her hand between them and rubbed her enflamed nub, over and over, all while looking at her with that same intense gaze. “Come,” he ordered and she did, the shocks of her orgasm causing her entire body to tremble.

  He came, too, with a roar and slumped on top of her. It was then she started to cry. She couldn’t help it anymore. She had ruined her marriage. Her husband hated her.

  CHAPTER 19

  Breaking up is hard to do …

  “Shh, beauty. Please don’t cry.”

  He was shit. A stupid selfish piece of shit.

  “I’m so sorry, Colin.”

  A big stupid, evil bag of shit. He had roughly taken Cherri on the floor. No. He had roughly consummated his marriage to his young, pregnant, grieving wife on the rug in their living room after she had spent the last week nursing him. He hadn’t even waited until she was fully ready to accept him.

  “I’m a pig.” His stomach ached with guilt, not only over what had just taken place but over everything that concerned her. This wasn’t the life she wanted. He did this to her. He robbed her of her choices. She should hate him for that.

  “I’m pigshit.” He had no right to be angry with her. But part of him was.

  I wish I’d never married you.

  The words had played over and over in his head for the past two weeks and he couldn’t get over them, couldn’t get over the feeling that he was never good enough to stick around for. The rational part of him knew that that wasn’t what was rolling around in her head. She was grieving. She was confused. She’d never had a boyfriend before; how could he expect her to know how to be married? Hell, he didn’t even know how to be married. But he wanted to try. He wanted to try with her, not because she was going to have his baby but because she was the only woman he could ever get a chance to glimpse happiness with. With her he could see a chance to create the kind of family he’d always craved as a kid.

  “I’m sorry,” she wept. “I didn’t mean what I said. I—”

  “No.” His kissed her wet face. “Don’t apologize to me. I don’t deserve it.”

  He pulled her up off the floor and hauled her into his lap, trying to search his messed-up mind for an explanation, a way to explain to her what he was feeling. But words, sentences, and coherent thoughts failed him. So he did the only thing he could do. He held her, rocked her, said soft nonsense words, whatever he could think of to soothe her.

  * * *

  Cherri shut her eyes and took a deep breath as the sonographer squirted the cold goopy gel on her belly. She had been taking slow deep breaths since she’d walked into the room. Her heart was racing. Her hands were sweaty. She felt queasy, and jumpy and … everything.

  “Beauty,” Colin whispered as he kissed her forehead. “I feel like jumping out of my damn skin.”

  Cherri opened her eyes to look at her husband. She could see the anxiety on his face, because it probably mirrored hers. They were going to see their baby for the first time. She thought she would feel different being here today. Happy or overjoyed or something that new mothers should feel, but she felt guilty. When she’d found out she was pregnant, her first thoughts were about her life being over. She was almost angry at her tiny unborn child. And she felt like shit about it. She wasn’t sure what had happened, why things had changed, but they had. She was beginning to think of the possibilities. She was going to make the family she never had.

  “You’re going to jump out of your skin?” she asked her husband, smiling up at him. “I’m surprised my skeleton hasn’t made a mad dash for the door.”

  “There’s your baby,” the sonographer said to them.

  Both of their eyes snapped to the screen and there he was, this little unformed life they had created.

  “Do you see where your baby is?” the technician asked as she moved the transducer over her skin.

  “He looks like a bean,” Colin said in wonder.

  Cherri took her eyes off the screen and looked at her husband. His eyes were wide, and they shone with something she had never seen before. It looked like joy. Colin was overjoyed about their child. She hadn’t thought about him or his feelings much. She had been stuck in her own world. It was wrong. This was their baby. Something they should be experiencing together, and she had said some horrible things to him. She had hurt him. Even if he could forgive her, she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.

  “Yes, right now your baby is forming all their organs. If you could really peek inside your womb you would see tiny little fingernails forming and all of their toes.”

  “It’s a bloody miracle,” he breathed.

  Cherri couldn’t take her eyes off Colin. She wanted to see his face, to capture this moment in her mind and keep it there for the rest of her life.

  He took his eyes off the screen and looked at her. “That’s our baby,” she said. His eyes watered, shocking her, and he buried his face in her neck as the tears spilled over.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, how to accept his gratitude. She had done nothing but make his life harder and yet he was thanking her.

  “I’m so sorry, Charlotte. For yesterday. I’m so sorry.”

  And now he was apologizing and adding to her guilt. He’d apologized yesterday afternoon, and last night and this morning, but she couldn’t forgive him because she had hurt him and she didn’t know how to make up for it.

  CHAPTER 20

  I’ll get you, my pretty …

  Colin tossed and turned for nearly an hour before he threw the covers back and got out of bed.

  You’re a fucking idiot.

  He had a beautiful, soft, willing young wife and he was in bed alone. Why the hell had he gotten married if he wasn’t going to sleep with his wife?

  He knew why. Guilt still rolled around in him for the way he had treated her. He had been an asshole, and what had made it worse was that she didn’t seem to think so. She wasn’t mad at him. Or upset. Or anything he would have felt if someone had treated him that way. Instead she had gone out of her way to be sweet, trying to make up for something that wasn’t her fault. It made him ashamed to call himself a man.

  And then there was yesterday, when he saw his baby. Their baby. He lost it. Him. He cried like a bloody woman. The sight of their baby was overwhelming. He was finally going to have his family, the one he’d always wanted as a boy. He had to make things right with Cherri. He had to make her happy. He refused to be like his pop. He had to keep them together. No matter what it took.

  He stepped into the dark, chilly hallway ready to scoop her out of bed and bring her back to his. Husbands and wives should sleep together. It was meant to be that way.

  He was halfway to her bedroom when he spotted her creeping down the hall. She jumped when she saw him. Suddenly he was second-guessing his plan to reclaim his wife.

  “Hi,” she said shyly. He cursed silently. He hated that she was so shy around him now. She had never been shy around him before. That’s why he’d married her. She was his friend, somebody he could be comfortable around.

  “I was just going to get some water,” he lied.

  “Oh?” She stepped in front of him. “I was just going to crawl in to your bed and do naughty things to you.”

  “What?”

  She grinned at him, that little naughty smile that made him fall in the first place, and unknotted her robe, revealing her soft nude body. He stared at her for a while, mesmerized by it. She was still early into her pregnancy but he could still see the little changes to her body. Her breasts had grown a little larger. Her belly looked different, a little rounder than before. He hardened. The sight of her naked body
never failed to produce a reaction from him. Taking his hand in both of hers, she placed it on her breast. It felt different, too. His groin tightened painfully.

  His wife. His baby inside her.

  She brushed her nipples with his fingertips and then brought them to her mouth, leaving a soft wet kiss behind. Then she took his hands and ran them down her torso, her sides, her hips. Pretty soon she didn’t have to do the controlling. His hands had found a mind of their own and stroked the curve of her back, ran over her perfect behind, then cupped it, squeezing it as he brought her closer. She moved against his hardness, rubbing it with her lush body, making it too painful not to be inside her.

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” she whispered, taking his earlobe between her teeth. “I’m yours.”

  He opened his mouth over hers. He had no words for her. All he wanted her to do was be who she was and do exactly what she was doing.

  He was so lost in their kiss it took a moment for him to realize that she was tugging at his pants.

  “What are you doing to me, lass?” He broke away from her panting.

  “It’s a little hard to have sex with one’s pants on, don’t you think?”

  “It is and trust me, we’ll both be naked when it happens in the bedroom.”

  “I thought you might like to try it here.” She traced his tattoo with her fingertips. “Don’t men like to have sex in all sorts of places?”

  “No.” It was true that he had done it in his fair share of bar bathrooms, and parking lots, and even at an amusement park. That had been fun but that was then. Right now he wanted to make love to his wife in their bedroom, not against a wall. “I’m getting old, love.” He gave her a lingering kiss. “It’s beds for me.”