by Brook Wilder
“I’m an undercover cop.”
He felt the floor fall out from underneath him. It was like the world’s worst case of vertigo. He blinked, rapidly, like the fluttering of his eyelashes might somehow make what she said disappear, not real, or the image of her altogether would vanish and he would awake to find it all had been a lengthy dream. His mouth and throat went dry.
“What?” he coughed out.
He was pretty sure a part of him knew. How could that thought not have crossed his mind, even in the subconscious or in dreams? It was the perfect answer to why she was acting so strange. Why he had an inherent mistrust of her, why he felt on edge whenever she was near. Some part of him knew or guessed or feared it all along. And now here they were, cards on the table.
He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to throw the coffee table through the wall and ask how she could do this to him, how she could lead him to trust her for so long, enter into a relationship with him, decide to carry his child, and not tell him this. What was her real name? He wanted to ask. He wanted to scream it at her, get in her face and shake her until she told him every last bit of truth. She’d lied to him. She lied every single time they were together, every single time they were alone. She was carrying a child that had been conceived under entirely false pretenses.
He could kill her for all this.
But then he thought of those nights together, the soft and slow ones where they weren’t trying to rush to orgasm or tease each other as much as possible. Those nights had been about the two of them and their eyes watching each other as their faces and muscles said things they never said out loud to other people. She had been so honest then and he didn’t care what she called herself, in those quiet dim moments. That same woman was sitting here now. That same woman wanted to help still, cared for a child growing inside her, cared enough about him to be angry with him.
His anger left.
“Okay,” he said.
And for the first time since they met, he felt like he knew her completely. He was looking at her eyes without a filter, without a shield. He realized now, that’s what he had trouble trusting in her. He could sense the guard that she constantly had up, the way she was always ready to strike and protect herself. This was why. Could he blame her for it? She was doing her job, her job was originally to spy on him, cause him harm. But he didn’t even need to ask if she had been reporting on him, if it had been a lie. He knew her better than that already, he had his answer.
She dropped her anger, she dropped her hard stare. She was looking at him with sadness, with apology. Her eyes were glassy and soft.
“Okay,” he repeated, with more sureness. “Okay.”
Chapter 29
Two hours ago, she wouldn’t even have considered getting into a bed with him. She wanted nothing but to call in some anonymous tip and get him locked up and then head for the hills and to a new future.
Now she was looking at a different man. He was stripped down completely, more so than he had ever been, despite the amount of time she’d seen every inch of him, stark naked in the low light as he hovered over top of her or lay beside her or woke up with himself wrapped around her. She’d seen glimpses of that man then, the one hiding underneath it all.
And now here he was, so complete and real. Roarke’s soul seemed to have carefully laid itself over the surface of his skin like a thin blanket over the body. It was beautiful to look at. She never wanted to go back to that time, that place where they were two separate people. They both shared something growing inside her and that was something they could never let themselves forget.
His bareness made her bare too. It made her want to be truthful. Had she gone first, she might not have been able to tell him the truth. Now she felt the utter relief of telling him the truth like a cold wave washing over a burn on the skin. They were open and one, the last barrier removed and no one was yelling, no one was glaring.
She’d moved in on him slowly, in staccato movements. She took a few brief, quick steps towards him, inching at him like a zookeeper approaching a lion. He didn’t move, he just watched her come towards him until they were breathing the same air. She could feel the heat from his breath, the shudder there. She could almost hear his heartbeat from there, sense it distorting the air around it, reaching out for her. He missed her just as much as she missed him.
She brought her hands up to cup either side of his face, feeling the softness of his cheeks under the pads of her thumbs. It was in such a contrast to the rest of him. He had callouses on his hands and burns all over his arms, grease stains that never seemed to come out. But this was soft and warm. This was where the realness was waiting, where it sat patiently underneath the hard exterior.
She moved in closer. He didn’t stop her. Their lips met for the first time in over a week. They were even softer than his cheeks and just as she remembered them. He kissed her back, though the rest of him did not move, his hands remaining at his sides.
“You’re okay with it?” she asked.
“Well, you know the answer to that question,” he said. “But I trust you. I trust what you make me feel, I trust your mind and your choices. However this started, whoever we both were at the beginning of this, those people are gone. I am okay with the ones who took their places.”
She smiled so wide even she could feel out radiant she must have looked. She felt her cheeks heat up in a way that had nothing to do with nervousness or blush but the color returning to her because she was so happy to finally be here, that place she hoped to be with him from the beginning. She allowed her thumbs to explore more of his face and she watched his eyes flutter shut.
“We’re a work in progress,” he said. “But hopefully we’ll be where we need to be by the time our kid gets here.”
Their child. Their kid. They were going to share this together.
She couldn’t stop herself from launching across the gap between them and making their lips one, their hands one, their bodies flush together so close that where one ended and the other began was a mystery. She didn’t want to know a time before him and certainly didn’t want to know who she was, what life was like, without him near. It was probably too soon for thoughts like that, but she was having a baby. Even if it somehow all ended in disaster and divorce and messy anger at the end, they would always be linked by that.
He accepted her energy, her body, and he gave it back in full force. She didn’t know how they’d both managed to be stripped of clothes. She vaguely remembered buttons being popped free, pants being opened, shirts being pushed off shoulders with force and no time for delay. She remembered stumbling, feet as one, into the bedroom because they both wanted to do this right. They didn’t want quick make up sex on the couch where crumbs from snacks were still hiding and they might sit on the TV remote. They needed isolation, a world of just them, a place where they could be together with only each other’s eyes to light up the world around them.
Her bedroom wasn’t exactly this magical fairy place she imagined in her head, but it was the best she had and so far the best they had seemed to be working fine for them.
They tumbled down together, she on top of him, hips straddling his own, moving already. Feeling him harden underneath her was the most beautiful thing to her, in that moment. There was nothing about it that was about teasing or pure pleasure or whispering dirty words in each other’s ears. It was all about how she could make him feel, what she could do to him, how she affected him. He wanted her in every way possible and that caused something warm to buzz inside her. She returned the favor with her own growing wetness between her legs. He did the same things to her, and she wanted to show him all night.
They were moaning together as their hips picked up the pace, her folds finding purchase as they moved so fluidly along his hard shaft. Eventually it stood very nearly at full attention and she knew she didn’t want to come unless he could feel it completely, from the source.
She grabbed him and lowered herself into him, relishing every single feeling, e
very bump, every curve, every place where it hurt or brushed and felt incredible. She wanted to commit it all to memory like a fingerprint on her brain that she could revisit in the night or in her dreams. She just sat there for a moment, once their hips were one, him inside of her. They felt it together, breathing together.
And then she moved and it was a moment of infinity that they repeated again and again during the night.
***
“You need to get more food,” Roarke said, his naked behind sticking out from where he was bent into the fridge, rummaging around.
“I have plenty of food,” she said.
“It’s all green shit. Get some Cheetos and soda or something,” he said, shutting the door and walking over to her.
“You don’t keep Cheetos in the fridge, even if I did have them,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Besides, you want me to keep this hot bod? Cheetos aren’t the way to do that.”
“Your hot bod is going to disappear regardless of what I want, hate to break it to you, sweetheart,” he said, walking back with an apple in his hand, a massive bite taken out of it.
“That’s how babies work.”
“Gee, thanks for explaining that to me. I would have no idea otherwise.”
He had goosebumps coated over his skin like a second layer, just above his skin. He sat down next to her on the couch. She’d wrapped herself up in a wool blanket, covering her breasts. He preferred to walk around freely. He liked the air hitting him, the skin that she claimed, the skin she touched, and licked and bit. Every inch of him belonged to her now. It was far from their first time together but it felt like the only time that truly mattered. Everything before this had been rehearsal. He would remember this time as the true conception of his child.
They grew quiet together, bodies touching, sitting in the quiet. He wanted so many things with her, for her. He wasn’t going to get down on one knee in the next few days or anything but he did want her to know that he was going to, soon, one day.
She sighed and leaned down into him, sucking in a deep breath through her nose. She liked to smell him. He found that odd since he always smelled off gasoline and dirt but she said it was the smell that made him, him. It let her know he was nearby. She tried explaining that the olfactory sense was the strongest sense linked to memory and went on some anecdote about how it’s a strong piece of evidence in court when you can get someone to identify something by smell and all sorts of other things. He smiled and nodded because she got excited about talking about these things and it was adorable to watch.
That wasn’t a word he thought he’d ever use. She’d turned him domestic. He didn’t mind it one bit. Rick would make of him, Amber would be shocked, Robert would talk about how he always knew he could be the family man. He didn’t care what anyone else thought, what they expected out of him. All that mattered was her and the child between them.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, brushing some stray hair that was threatening to fall into his eyes.
“How one day I want everyone to know you’re mine,” he said.
“Oh, I think they’ll know,” she said, pointing to the blooming hickies on her neck.
“You know what I mean.”
There was softness in her eyes. Of course she knew what he meant. He could tell from her small smile that she wanted it too.
“Do you think it’ll be a boy or a girl?” she asked.
“I know you want a girl,” he said.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because women always want girls.”
“And men always want boys.”
“Hell, no. A boy would be an idiot, especially if he was mine. I want a girl. She’ll actually know how to have some common sense in this world.”
Right now it was dangerous, their steps were being followed, they were dodging danger at virtually every corner. But one day, when things were the way they were supposed to be, they’d be a proper family with their child. They made that promise to each other, silently, that night.
Chapter 30
The bar had never been livelier since Isabelle’s birthday when Hanna first walked into it and looked into Roarke’s eyes. James’s release from the hospital might as well have been a bar mitzvah. She knew he was doing it because she knew who he was to her now, understood the importance of him. This was his way of trying to suck up to her father and she couldn’t help but turn a little red in the face over it. She liked the idea of him wanting to make a good impression on her family for incredibly selfish reasons. It made her feel a little bit like a high schooler again.
“Alright, alright, can the invincible man have a drink or is that against hospital advice?” Rick asked, pouring out large, overflowing shots of whiskey.
“As if it would stop me, even if they did,” he laughed, taking a glass.
His laugh was still wheezy and there was still pain on his face when he moved around just a little too much. It hurt Hanna to see, the times when he cringed and attempted to hide it. But she was happy to see the smile that was on his face, through it all. He’d always been that way, the one to smile even when her birthday party was soaked in the pouring rain or she fell off her bike three times in a row the first time they took the training wheels off.
Hanna watched him carefully. She loved his smile, she loved seeing it back on his face. But she was also wary. She needed him to be careful. He wasn’t invincible, despite what Rick had said. She learned just how incredibly breakable he was and she never wanted to experience something like that again. She patted his back and rubbed his shoulder and he turned to give her a wink and a smile, a way to say he was alright and everything would be okay.
Rick, however, wasn’t done. He came over on wobbly feet and put an arm around Roarke, nudging Hanna and giving her a wink as well. He held up what was left of his drink, preparing for another speech.
“A toast, as well,” Rick said. “To the happy couple who finally sorted their crap out and we can all collect on our bets for this soap opera drama.”
There was a round of laughs. Hanna didn’t care. She tucked in closer to Roarke and he didn’t shy or away or try to brush her off in a tough guy show like he might have done only weeks ago. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her back just as hard and just warm. Even James had a warm face for them. He hadn’t exactly been entirely happy about the turn of events as far as her relationship with Roarke was concerned, but for now he seemed to be content. He was happy to see her happy.
Roarke took a shot and Hanna took a discrete sip of her Coke. Despite James knowing and her and Roarke putting all their cards on the table, they still hadn’t broken the news to the gang. Now it was less to do with them respecting Hanna and more to do with the fear that if they told too many people, then it might get out to the Caracals. Roarke fumed and seemed to go red behind the eyes at the thought of Hanna or the baby being put in danger when she brought it up to him.
There was something else bothering her too, something she kept to herself for a while now. She’d done some research on the Withers family. She could have just asked Roarke or Amber, but she didn’t want to arouse suspicion in either of them. She couldn’t get Isabelle’s words out of her head, however. She talked about bringing up a child and for days after, Hanna was certain she was referring to Hanna’s own, that she had somehow found out about the baby. While that wasn’t exactly off the table either, she was becoming more and more certain, remembering how her eyes had looked, how serious.
She realized, one night when she couldn’t sleep, that Isabelle was talking about a child of her own. She had to be. There was no other explanation. But then the question became…was she talking about her child in the present or as a hypothetical in the future? That’s the part that bothered Hanna the most. Was Isabelle pregnant? If she was she was certainly taking a great number of risks for a woman with child that Hanna couldn’t even imagine with her own child. It might also explain the erratic behavior. A mother would do anything for their child.
His face turned almost immediately, sensing her tone. He walked to the edge of the bar with her, ushering her to sit on a stool.
“Are you okay?” he asked, placing his hands on her stomach, ignoring the discrete nature of her condition. “The baby is okay, right?”
“Yes, yeah. It has nothing to do with us,” she said and watched him relax so completely from head to toe that she almost felt bad and at the same time nearly swooned for the amount of care he had for their child. “I was thinking about something and it sounds ridiculous but I also need to know if there’s a chance it’s a possibility.”
“Okay. Hit me.”
“Is there a chance Isabelle was pregnant?”
A lot of things went across his face in the first few seconds after she asked that question. Confusion in the form of a furrowed brow, shock, anger, fear. He settled on pensive.