by R. R. Banks
She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “You do.”
I take her plate and put it on the table so I can kiss her properly. I feel fucking giddy. No other word can describe it. It’s like a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders and destroyed, never to weigh me down again.
“But how is this going to work?” I ask when I break the kiss, thinking about the one last issue in the back of my mind. “You live in the city and I live up here.”
“I’ll move,” she says readily, as if it’s no big deal. “I think I’m done with the city life. But I’m not sure how it’ll work with my job, though… We need the insurance. Having a baby is expensive.”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” I squeeze her hand. She tilts her head to the side, confused. “I didn’t mention that my parents re-inherited me — I didn’t know until after they passed. They left me a pretty hefty chunk of change.”
“What?” Her mouth drops open in shock. “What do you mean? What is a hefty chunk of change?”
“I mean that money’s not a problem. They left me several million dollars. And over the years, I’ve invested it, and I guess, technically, I’m a billionaire,” I say, with a shrug that hopefully doesn’t come across as smug. “So we could have a lot of babies on that money. If that’s what you want.”
Her mouth stays open. “But… What… Why the hell didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
“I don’t like to publicize it. It’s nice to know people are friends with me just because of who I am and not because of what I can give them.”
“Oh my God, Jay.” She cups my jaw, clearly so shocked that she can’t say anything more.
I pull her close and lay kisses all over her face and neck. A leaf falls out of her hair and onto her collarbone in the process. I hold it up to her and she snorts, putting it on the table.
“I’m sorry. I’m really smelly,” she chuckles, pulling away a little bit. “I haven’t had a proper shower in a little while.”
“Eat, and we’ll go shower.” I hand her the plate again. “And eat the whole thing. And you’ve been held hostage for days, so I’m not expecting you to smell like roses.”
She does as I tell her and wolfs down the sandwich in record time. I put the plate away and guide her to my shower — our shower. I peel off her clothes, then mine, and turn the water on. She doesn’t have any bruises, but her wrists and hands are all scratched up. It rains warm water down from the shower head above, and she sighs. Dirt comes streaming off of her, making the water below turn brown.
“I don’t have any of your fancy stuff.” I grab the shampoo and put some on my hand. “So you’re gonna smell like a dude for a little bit.”
“I don’t mind. You smell nice.” She groans with pleasure when I shampoo her hair, massaging her scalp. I wash it twice to get it extra clean and put conditioner on it. While it sits, I soap up her body. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her naked, and goddamn, did I miss this. Her tits are definitely bigger. My cock twitches and I haven’t even had the chance to touch her. I lightly soap them up, taking care when she flinches. Sensitive. I’ll come back for them. I’ll have lots of time.
“Can I?” I hold my hand over her stomach, and she nods. I slide my hand over the little bump there. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” She looks up at me. “I’m a little worried that I’m showing already.”
“You know I was a ten-pound baby, right?” I position her underneath the water to rinse out her hair.
“I could guess. You’ve always been big.” She groans. “Not looking forward to that. It’s like baby Hagrid.”
I burst out laughing, “Baby Hagrid?”
She giggles, and that turns into full-blown laughter. I’m so happy to see her happy that I feel moments from bursting. “Yes.”
“I hope I’m sexier than him.” I massage her head.
“Oh, you’re a hot, sexy Hagrid,” she says as she grins up at me.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’ve been calling me this in your head for a while?”
“Shh.” She slips her hand up and around the back of my neck, then pulls me down into a kiss. “Don’t worry about it.”
I missed kissing her so much. The kiss intensifies and I press her against the wall, dwarfing her. She’s safe, especially here with me. I want to be a wall against any fucker who wants to hurt her. I want to protect her more than anything. And I will keep her — and our baby — safe, no matter what.
I wrap my arm around her back and trail kisses down her neck. Her breasts are pressed against my chest, and my cock is against her stomach. Her skin brushes it, making my cock harden.
We haven’t had sex in a long time. I need her now. I pick her up and line my cock up to go inside her, but I stop.
“Wait, is it okay if we have sex right now?” I ask, looking down at her belly.
She blinks. “I didn’t really think to ask. We weren’t together when I went to the doctor.”
“I need to Google it.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.” I slip out of the shower and reach for my phone, quickly Googling. “The shower is in the top three of my favorite places to fuck.”
“You surprise me with the depths of your masculinity, you know that?” she snorts.
“Found the answer. We’re good.” I throw my phone back down and hop back into the shower, picking her up and pressing her against the wall. I slide my cock into her slowly and her eyes flutter closed. “Just gently.”
“Good. I think that’s all I can handle right now.” She digs her nails into my shoulders as I thrust slowly, our eyes locking. The intensity of it, after this wild day, is strangely cathartic. We’re working through something without speaking words. God, it feels so fucking good.
“I love you,” I blurt as I go over the edge of my climax, gasping and resting my forehead on her shoulder.
It takes me a moment before I realize what I’ve said. “Um…”
“I love you, too,” she says with a smile, looking up at me through her wet lashes.
I’m so happy that I’m scared I’ll drop her in my excitement. So I put her down and lay another kiss on her, then kiss her little belly. She laughs, and it echoes through the bathroom. I’m excited to hear it echo through my whole house.
Chapter Nineteen
Simone
Four months later
“Jay?” I call from our bedroom. “Babe?”
“What?” he shouts back. He’s down the hall in the nursery, doing God knows what. I’m curled up in bed with my sketchbook. Well, as curled up as I can be when I’m as big as a city block. I can’t believe I still have two more months of this bullshit left and I’m already so damn pregnant. I don’t know how much more space this baby can take up inside my body. He’s already fist fighting my bladder every other second. Is he going to start punching my lungs next?
“Do you want to go into town to buy ice cream or something?” I slide out of bed and waddle down the hall.
I’ve been sketching some designs for my own collection for the past few hours, but now my stomach’s rumbling. I have a lot of free time now that I’ve left Katya. She’s happy for me and wants to stay in touch to see where my work lands, which is all I can ask for. I don’t feel the same anxious rush to put out a collection as I did before I moved up here. Of course, part of it is the baby’s impending arrival, but another part of it is just acceptance. Sure, it might take me a while to reach my dream, but there’s no need to rush it.
For now, I’ve been working part time at the yarn and fabric store with Maya, just to stay busy. Jay keeps telling me that I don’t have to work at all, but I can’t do that. I need to do something with my hands. I’ve been doing a lot of knitting and making baby clothes. Our little boy is going to be the best dressed baby Gray’s Point has ever seen.
Jay’s kneeling next to the crib he made by hand, his tool kit next to him. Despite being pretty unable to do a lot of sexy stuff comfortably, my libido is still good to go. It’s proba
bly because Jay is hot as fuck doing literally anything, especially working with his hands. And he does that quite a lot. Watching him make our baby’s crib, all sweaty, his muscles shifting under his summer-tanned skin as he puts the pieces together… I need to fan myself.
“Hm? You hungry?” He stands up. I see him every single day, but I still can’t get over how tall he is.
“Yeah, but that stupid kind of hungry.” I rest my hand on my belly, feeling the baby shifting around. I’m really hungry all the time, but there’s not enough space for my stomach to expand. I just end up eating all day in little bits.
“Okay. Can’t let you get hangry, or you’ll rip my head off.” He rests his hand on top of mine and gives me a kiss on the top of the head. “Give me a second to get dressed.”
I follow him back to the bedroom and watch him change. I’m already dressed in my usual vaguely chic maternity caftan, which I wear everywhere. It’s technically fall but it’s still warm, hence my ice cream craving. I’d do anything to cool off, especially with this extra weight on me. He guides us out of the house and down to the truck, where he opens the door for me. He treats me like a princess, and I’ve finally let myself be okay with it.
Once I’m buckled in, I start fiddling with the music. He raises an eyebrow at me.
“What kind of music are you feeling?” I ask, scrolling through his phone’s music library.
“Something nostalgic.” He pulls to a stop next to an open field. “Oh hey, were these signs here yesterday?”
I look at where he’s looking, and I see that there’s a “For Sale” sign.
“Nope, that definitely wasn’t there before.” I take in the details as he drives past it. “Isn’t that some of the land Edgar bought?”
“Yeah, it is.” His brows furrow in concentration. “So the rumors must be true.”
“He’s officially given up on the resort?” I settle on a playlist I made. It’s an exact replica of a CD that Jay burned me when we were teenagers.
“He must have.” Jay smiles when the first song starts to play — it’s “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana. Not exactly something that matches the upbeat mood we have going on, but I’m always in the mood for Nirvana.
“Wow, so the resort is officially dead.” I drum my fingers on my belly to the bass line. “Who would’ve thought?”
“Edgar went bankrupt, apparently. Or at least that’s what Andrew said. There was a class action lawsuit against him for all of the fucked up shit his company did to its employees. That must have drained his bank accounts.” Jay turns onto the main drag and drives toward the grocery store. “At least that’s over.”
“Yeah.” I look out the window. People are out and about, but it’s not too busy. It’s never truly busy here, and I like it like that. “He probably would have had a field day if he hadn’t, considering what happened after Harrison and Max got arrested. He could have bought a ton of land by making people paranoid over the other kinds of people who could be living here.”
As it turns out, Harrison was part of the uptick in crime that the town initially saw, the one Edgar mentioned at the last meeting he had. He was responsible for the arson and had some of his buddies who were also in dire straits go on a burglary spree for things to sell. He thought that if the town had more crime, then Edgar would be put off putting the resort here.
That backfired, of course, which is why he went the desperate route of accepting Max’s money to help him stalk me. The crime rate in town only went up a tiny bit without his influence, so the police department isn’t too overwhelmed anymore. It helps that Jay made a large, anonymous donation to the town to install security cameras in certain places.
Both Max and Harrison are in jail now, though Max is in for much longer. Harrison’s confession gave him a shorter sentence for all of his crimes and the ones he helped with. I’m pissed at him for what he did to me, but in a weird way, he helped my life. I hope he does okay.
“Well, it all worked out.” He parks and hops out to open the door for me. He helps me down from the truck, since I can’t see my feet, and takes my hand.
We walk into the grocery store and steer straight to the ice cream aisle. We’ve gotten very familiar with it over the past few months, since it’s basically all I want to eat. He makes sure I get some veggies in for the baby’s sake, but still — there’s a lot of ice cream going on in our house.
“Do we have sprinkles and stuff?” He holds up some.
“Nope, let’s get more.” I put a bunch into the cart, along with a pint of chocolate, plus a pint with a core of cookie dough. He puts in his favorite flavors and we go to check out.
We walk hand-in-hand, swinging them back and forth like kids. I look up at him, his face warm and happy. Even though I’m tired and weighed down, I’m feeling just as good. The future looks so bright. I’ve got my boyfriend and our baby, and a bunch of ice cream to eat. I wouldn’t trade the past few months for anything, even though it’s been absolutely crazy. If they hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here now.
We drive home, listening to music and singing along. Well, I’m singing, at least. Jay hums since he’s aware that he’s not the best singer. When we get inside, Jay makes us bowls of ice cream and loads them up with toppings. Today’s his day to pick a movie, and he chooses some superhero movie that neither of us have seen before. The ice cream is gone before we know it, much to my dismay.
“You want that pedicure?” he offers, out of the blue.
“What? Uh, sure, I guess. Is this a subtle hint that my feet look really bad?” I ask.
“No, no.” He gets up and goes down the hall.
Weird.
He comes back a few moments later with a small caddy of stuff. He’s learned how to give actual pedicures and gets a weird satisfaction from pampering me this way. Probably because it usually ends up in us boning like rabbits, but also because it truly makes me happy. He looks serious, like he’s about to go into work rather than to give his girl a good pampering and massage. I wiggle my toes. My feet are swollen, and the massage is going to feel so good.
“You okay?” I ask, trying to peer at him around my belly.
He nods and takes my foot into his lap. His hands are sweating. His hands only sweat when he’s nervous.
“You’re hiding something from me. Is there a raccoon in the house again?” I look toward the window. One got in a couple weeks back, and it scared the shit out of me. I don’t want to get rabies shots again.
“Simone, do you want to marry me?” he blurts out. He digs into his pockets and pulls out a velvet box. The last time I saw one, I was scared for my life. Now, I’m just dumbstruck. I instantly flash back to when we were teenagers, and he finally asked me out after months of me wondering if he had a crush on me or not. Despite the difference in his body, that look in his eyes hits me somewhere deep in my subconscious.
“What?” I blink in confusion. “Are you proposing?”
“Yeah.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Fuck, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it for the longest time, and I just want to do it so I stop worrying about it being perfect. Because I love you and doing little simple things like this — going to get ice cream, watching shitty movies, listening to music — reminds me of how much better my life is with you in it. It feels so right that I don’t want it to end. I don’t know what else to even say besides that. So there we go. That’s my proposal.”
I immediately burst into tears. “Oh, Jay.”
“I fucked it up.” He fists his hand in his hair. “You deserve a better proposal than this. I should have gotten some flowers or —”
“Shut up and come here. I can’t reach you.” I extend my arms. He stands up and I grab him by the shirt. I yank him downward so he can kiss me. He’s so surprised that he nearly topples onto me but braces himself on his hands on either side of my body. I kiss him softly. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
“Really?” He leans back, looking completely surprised. “You do
n’t mind that I decided to go for this about fifteen minutes ago?”
“No, because you’re asking me to marry you, and that’s all I care about.” I eye the velvet box. “And you clearly aren’t doing it without thinking about it first, since you have this box. Let me see the ring.”
He opens it and I gasp. Now this is the perfect ring. It’s hefty, but not so big that I can’t do stuff with my hands. The center diamond is oval cut on two thin bands, with emeralds surrounding it. Even though he could buy the gaudiest, most outrageous ring, I appreciate the restraint he had.
“Jay, it’s so perfect.” I let him slide it on my finger and admire it. Thankfully it fits, even with my slightly swollen fingers.
“Oh thank God. I had Gigi help me pick it out, since she knows you the best.” He sits down next to me.
“Really?” That makes so much sense. I thought she was hiding something from me when we video-chatted the other day, but she refused to spill. I thought she was pregnant this time or that Jack had proposed. I need to call her. Well, her and basically everyone I freaking know, because holy shit, Jay and I are getting married.
“Yeah.” He kisses me again, long and hard. I’m still crying, but I don’t care. I’m shaking a little bit by the time we stop kissing. We both look at my ringed hand.
It looks like it’s a part of me already. This time, the ring feels right.
Chapter Twenty
Jay
A year later
“Come on, bud. It’s time to nap.” I pick up my son, Gray, from the ground, where he’s surrounded by his favorite toys. I’m sitting a few feet away from him on the floor, too, sketching some potential furniture for his room as he grows. It’s nice to see how he plays so I can create something functional and safe. He’s fearless and likes to take tumbles, so something safe with a lot of rounded edges should work.
He lets out a squeal of protest, but it doesn’t last when I tickle him a little bit. His laugh is the best thing I’ve ever heard. I want to record it on my phone and play it whenever shit gets rough. I never thought I’d ever feel this intensely or enjoy being a father as much as I do. Yeah, a lot of it is exhausting, and I’ve touched more bodily fluids that aren’t mine in the past year or so than I have in my entire life. But those giggles get me. It feels like they fill the whole house with warmth.