The Baby: The Bride Series Read online

  “It’s just that… I want to make sure you’re happy. In that area.”

  “Jake, I’m ecstatic in that area. Orgasms galore. I haven’t been feeling… right these past few nights. You know what I mean? Probably a cold coming on or something.”

  Or something.

  “You promise me you would talk to me, if you were ever not happy. Because it’s just you and me for the rest of our time on this planet together. You get that, right?”

  She nodded, then settled back down into bed.

  I reached over to turn the light out on my side of the bed and settled down too. Trying not to think about the erection I was still sporting, which hadn’t been helped by her talking about toys.

  I mean, she did have that vibrator….

  “Nipple clips?” she asked, still after what I considered kinky, I imagine.

  I groaned at that mental image and turned away from her. “Stop talking and go to sleep.”

  She giggled and then I felt her turn toward me again, her body pressed against my back. It made me feel better. More centered.

  As if all was right again in my world.

  Until it happened again the next night. When she still didn’t feel it.

  * * *

  Ellie

  I left Dr. Jenkins’ office with my bottle of prenatal vitamins stuffed into my purse, and a wave of guilt rushed over me. Three people in this world knew I was pregnant, and Jake Talley wasn’t one of them.

  When I came into the clinic, the only medical facility in the town of Riverbend, Mary had greeted me with a smile. When I told her what was up, I could see it there in her face. She wasn’t all giddy and happy times. She knew what I had been through. She and Dr. Jenkins had been in the room when it happened.

  So instead of congratulations and smiles, she’d nodded and gotten serious with me. I took an official test, it was confirmed, and Dr. Jenkins told me that I shouldn’t worry but keep an eye on things if I started spotting.

  I really didn’t want any spotting. What I wanted was some good old-fashioned morning sickness. I had been reading about pregnancy… way too much… but one of the things that was considered a good sign of a healthy pregnancy was the whole puking thing. There had been a few times in the last week when I had felt funny, but I had attributed that sick feeling in my gut to fear about being pregnant and guilt for lying to Jake about it. More so than morning sickness anyway.

  I told myself I wanted the doctor to check me out before I told Jake. I told myself I wanted to make sure things were good before I told Jake.

  I told myself a lot of things.

  You know what I didn’t do… I didn’t tell Jake.

  Now it had been over a week, I was freaking out about having sex because I didn’t want to disturb anything down there… and Jake was starting to think I didn’t want him anymore.

  Which wasn’t true at all.

  A little known fact about me… well, a fact only Jake knew… I liked sex. A LOT. I liked sex with Jake. A LOT. Since he was the only person I had ever had sex with, and was going to be the only person I ever would have sex with, I considered myself a very lucky person.

  I wanted him. I wanted the holding and the touching. The kissing. I didn’t feel like I could kiss him, kiss him since that might make him think I wanted to start other things. So I hadn’t kissed him in a week and he was obviously worried about that. Suddenly there was this wall between us, which was my truth and his concern that I wasn’t attracted to him anymore, and it sucked.

  I missed the feeling of him inside me. I missed that harsh sound he always made when he came inside me.

  Dr. Jenkins said there was absolutely no reason to curtail sex as long as I wasn’t spotting.

  I understood my fears weren’t logical. What kind of fear is?

  I needed to tell him. I needed to let him know I was pregnant and I was afraid. Then he would understand everything, and the wall between us would go away. Except then I would have to tell him I couldn’t have sex with him for nine months.

  Yeah, that was probably going to detract from the whole good news about the baby thing.

  Regardless, he needed to know. I couldn’t have other people knowing and him not knowing. That wasn’t right. I thought about heading home and finding him and doing it right away. No special dinner or candles or anything stupid. Just ripping the Band-Aid off.

  Wait, that wasn’t right. I shouldn’t think telling my husband, who I loved, that he was about to become a father as something painful. Okay, so maybe I would go the cute route. Like buy a bag of diapers and leave it on the kitchen table for him to find.

  Except scratch that. I couldn’t buy diapers at Nash’s grocery store, just like I couldn’t buy a pregnancy test. Mr. Nash would think I was pregnant then, and that would mean four people knew about the baby before Jake did.

  No, I needed to keep this news from the town for as long as humanly possible. The last time, after it happened, I could see people looking at me with that pitiful expression in their faces. Like I used to see from them right after my dad died.

  It was a reminder of the miscarriage every time someone gave me the look. Forget the fact I hated the idea I was someone to be pitied. No, if I had it my way the people of Riverbend would not know I was pregnant until the baby popped out and was squawking up a storm.

  I glanced down at my stomach. Still flat underneath my work jeans. No reason for anyone to know anything.

  Except of course Jake.

  Yes, it was time get on that.

  * * *

  Jake

  Ellie was sitting at the kitchen table when I came into house. I don’t know why, but I always considered this a bad sign. It was because most of our important moments always seemed to happen in the kitchen.

  When she tried to kiss me that first time, and I pushed her away. When she found me with Carol. When she told me she was divorcing me.

  When she told me she was pregnant but I could see she wasn’t happy about it.

  The worst moment of my life. When she told me she was leaving me.

  All of that went down in the kitchen.

  Now there she was again. I had come in through the back door, nearly tripped over her boots and was about to get on her about it, when I stopped. Because Ellie was sitting at the kitchen table as if she was waiting for me.

  My gut dropped. This was it. She was finally going to tell me why she had been putting me off in bed for the last week. A hundred awful thoughts rattled through my brain. Had she stopped loving me? Was there someone else… Cody! Could something have happened between them?

  I remarried Ellie on her twentieth birthday. My biggest fear back then was that she’d been so young. That there had been no one else before me.

  But I loved her and she said she loved me, and I thought that was enough.

  That we were enough. What if we weren’t?

  I swallowed and walked into the kitchen slowly, as if I was heading for my own execution.

  She looked so beautiful sitting there. Her soft honey-brown hair falling down all around her shoulders. She was smiling, but I could tell it wasn’t her full-on killer smile.

  Still, it couldn’t be bad news if she was smiling. Right?

  All those crazy thoughts in my head I could see were ridiculous. This was Ellie. We’d been blissfully happy for three years. One week of no sex was not going to change that.

  Which meant I just needed to sit down and listen to what she had to say.

  I pulled the chair out and sat. “Lay it on me,” I said.

  Then she got out of her chair and came around the table to sit on my lap.

  Hookay. This was good. This was fine. Ellie was sitting on my lap, her arm around my shoulder. This was us and we were fine. Whatever she said next, I knew we had this.

  “Babe,” she whispered. I’m not sure why she was whispering. We were alone in the house. “We did it.”

  “Did what?” I whispered back. Again, not sure why I was doing that, but somehow it seemed appr
opriate. That in this moment we should be hushed and reverent.

  She reached for my hand and placed it on her belly. Her lower belly. I didn’t get what she meant at first...

  Then I got it.

  Conceptually, I knew what we had been doing. We had made a choice. She had gone off birth control… six months ago? Only we didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about it because of what had happened last time. I didn’t talk about it because I didn’t want her to feel any pressure. She didn’t talk about it for a whole bunch of reasons I’m sure. And for the most part nothing had changed. We had the same amount of sex before she stopped using birth control as we did after.

  Until this past week.

  I stared down at my hand, resting on her belly, and then I looked up at her.

  She smiled and nodded.

  I nodded too.

  I didn’t say a word. I simply reached up to capture her face in my hands, I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against hers. As if I could share all the things I was feeling in this moment with her telepathically.

  Although I didn’t think we really needed telepathy. I think she knew everything I was feeling right then.

  I pulled back and opened my eyes.

  I could see tears in hers, but I knew they were happy ones.

  “Can I kiss you again?”

  She nodded and then I was pulling my wife against me and kissing her like it had been years and not one stupid week.

  That’s when it occurred to me she’d known for a week. A whole week and hadn’t told me.

  That’s when I got pissed.

  Well, as pissed as a man can be when he’s just been given the greatest gift ever.

  Because, yeah… my wife was having my baby.

  3

  Ellie

  “You knew this whole time and didn’t tell me?”

  I winced. I knew this was coming. My husband was not a dumb man. It took him about five minutes to get over the shock of the news, another five to kiss me into oblivion—which I knew had a pretty amazing effect on him as I was sitting on his raging boner.

  Raging boners aside though, he realized I had been keeping something from him. I knew he wasn’t going to like that.

  “I…did.” I wasn’t sure where else to go with that.

  “Ellie? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You know why.”

  “No, I obviously don’t or I wouldn’t be asking.”

  “Because of… last time,” I stuttered.

  He frowned. “Ellie just because you had a misc—”

  “Stop!” I said, interrupting him by putting my palm over his mouth. “That word is banned from here on out. No jinxing us.”

  He scowled at me. “You know that’s ridiculous.”

  “I do and I don’t care. In fact, let’s add some more banned words to the list right now. No saying the ‘p’ word, the ‘b’ word, or the ‘n’ word.”

  “The ‘n’ word?”

  “Names… I don’t want to talk about that kind of stuff. Not until we know for sure everything is going to be okay.”

  “Babe…”

  “No, I mean it. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid something might happen. I know how excited you were the last time and then how devastated you were. I knew you were going to be just as excited this time, and the truth is it all scares me. That something might happen again, then you’ll be crushed again, and I… I don’t know. I just wasn’t ready to say anything. To make it real yet.”

  “Okay, that’s fair. I’ll respect your crazy jinx words if you think that will help with the fear.”

  I doubted it, but I was happy he was willing to comply.

  “Thank you.”

  “You should see Dr. Jenkins right away,” he told me.

  Another wince. “I sort of already did.”

  “Ellie! You’re saying Dr. Jenkins knew about my… b word before I did?”

  “And Mary. But just today. I promise. I came right home to tell you once they confirmed everything.”

  He grumbled but didn’t kick me off his lap, which I figured was a good thing.

  “I don’t want to tell anyone, Jake. Absolutely no one until… well, we have to.”

  He ran his hand down my hair. He did that when he knew I was super stressed because it always calmed me.

  “You’re really that scared?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. Can I ask how you’re feeling? Is that allowed? Have you been sick? Is that why you haven’t wanted sex?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. Although sometimes I do get queasy. I wasn’t sure if that was the fear or the guilt from not telling you. We’ll see now I suppose. The sex thing… well that’s because I didn’t want to… you know… chance anything. We had sex the last time and then I started to spot and…”

  “Okay,” Jake said with more hair stroking. “We’ll wait until you’re comfortable.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Yes, of course. If you’re not comfortable with what we’re doing, then you’re not going to enjoy it. And if you don’t enjoy it, I won’t either.”

  Did I mention I had the best, most amazing husband in the world? I knew people still talked about us. About how strange it was that we had gotten married the first time when I was only sixteen and seven months old. That I was too young to know he was going to be the one for me. Forever.

  What people didn’t understand, what Lin Manuel tried to tell everybody at the Tony Awards… that love is love is love is love is love… It didn’t matter that I was young when I fell in love with Jake. It only mattered that it was real.

  “I’m going to give you the best blow job tonight,” I told him. Then I watched his ears turn red, which they always did when I talked about sex so frankly.

  It truly was the cutest thing about him.

  “Ellie… stop.”

  “No, I mean it. Now that you know and you understand, I can take care of you in other ways.”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of, Ellie.”

  “Oh,” I pouted. “So you’re saying you don’t like my blow jobs.”

  “No, I’m not saying that. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  I slid off his lap and got on my knees. The floor was hard, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t played with Jake’s dick in a week, and I was sort of missing little Jake. Actually not-so-little Jake.

  “I don’t know. I think you might have to prove that to me right now. I know how important sucking dick is to you,” I said slyly even as I reached for his jeans. I undid the first two buttons. He didn’t try to stop me. I ran my hand along the outside of his jeans, where I could see the raging boner from our makeout session was still there. He groaned and shifted his hips toward the edge of the chair.

  “Ellie…”

  Yeah, I missed that. My name on his lips when he was aroused.

  “Are you going to help me or what?” I asked him, trying to tug at his pants. Then he pushed the chair back and stood in front of me. “Now we’re talking. Drop your pants, Jake Talley, and be prepared to be blown away. Get it? Blown?”

  Except he reached down and lifted me to my feet. It never failed to amaze me how strong he was. I was no lightweight at five foot nine.

  “No. The floor is not comfortable for you and I’m not having my wife, who is carrying my… b word,” he said it even as he rolled his eyes, “uncomfortable in any way.”

  “Good point. Let’s go to the couch.”

  “Ellie,” he groaned. “You’re making this harder.”

  “Jake, I’m trying to make you harder.”

  “I’m trying to be noble.”

  “You once told me that sometimes sex is about giving, sometimes it’s about taking, and sometimes it’s about sharing. Let me give this to you. I really want to.”

  “You mean that?”

  I nodded. “Frankly, I can’t believe I have to work this hard to convince you I want to give you a blowy.”

  “Okay,” he said, tugging my hand. He pulled me in
to the living room and lay down on the couch. He shifted his jeans down over his hips and his cock sprang up.

  I thought he looked very noble.

  I was just about to lean over and gobble him up when it happened. A swell of nausea so overwhelming I gagged. I knew I had about two seconds to find the downstairs bathroom or I was going to lose it all over Jake’s erection.

  That was not a mental image that I could have in my head.

  I sprinted from the living room, ran into the downstairs bathroom, lifted the lid and puked my guts out.

  Sexy times.

  Then sure enough Jake was there, pants back on, pulling my hair back and putting his palm on my forehead to steady me. It was just like on our honeymoon, when I had gotten too drunk the first night and was sick all the next day.

  Finally it passed, and for a time I just sat there in his lap while he held me.

  Then he leaned down and whispered in my ear.

  “So I’m guessing this means no on the blow job.”

  He laughed and I swatted his arm. Then he helped me to my feet and made me some caffeine-free tea.

  I learned that wishing for morning sickness because it was a “good sign” was actually a horrible idea.

  * * *

  July

  Jake

  I got back into bed after what had been round three of Ellie’s puke fest today. Hopefully the last.

  It had pretty much been like this for weeks since she told me about the baby. I know they called it morning sickness, but for her it was pretty much an all-day thing. The biggest concern was dehydration.

  At one point it got so bad I took her into town, and Dr. Jenkins hooked her up to an IV just to get her levels normalized. Now it was a constant battle of Gatorade and crackers versus vomiting.

  I wanted this baby. Yes, I thought the words, I just didn’t say them out loud because my wife was a nut job. I was excited about the baby, but seeing up close what being pregnant was doing to Ellie was not fun.

  When I was home and it was happening, I held her. She said I didn’t have to do it anymore. That it was probably getting old for me. As if helping my wife while she was sick was something to get old.