by Megan Hart
Did I have a choice? I positioned myself at the foot of the table with Marcy’s knee lodged firmly in the stirrup of my hands as I kept it pulled back to help her push. She screamed. Wayne looked up, face pale but determined, and got to his feet. They slapped a gown and gloves on him as fast as a pit crew changing the tires on a racecar. The midwife cooed soothing phrases I didn’t hear.
And Marcy’s baby was born.
I saw the head, crowning, the sleek dark hair wet and the skull pulsing. She pushed again, in silence this time. The baby slid forth in a gush of blood and liquid, the smell of it ripe and indescribable. Wayne held out his hands and his son slid into the welcoming cradle of his arms. He was crying. So was the baby, and Marcy.
So was I.
Ten minutes later she held him, dried and buffed and wrapped in a blanket, to her breast. She didn’t care who saw her nakedness, or that strangers were wiping her body clean, or that she needed three stitches to repair a tear.
“Look, oh look,” she said in a voice full of wonder. “How beautiful he is.”
And he was.
Chapter 8
My phone buzzed in my pocket as I washed my hands at the sink of the main restroom on the labor and delivery floor. I’d left Marcy and Wayne to share their son without witness. They hadn’t even noticed me leaving.
“Elle?” Dan’s voice sounded strained. “Where are you?”
“I’m at Harrisburg Hospital.” Elation made my voice shake. “Marcy just had her baby. Where are you?”
He was silent so long I thought we’d lost the connection. When he spoke again, he didn’t sound like my Dan, the man who always made everything all right for me.
“I’m at the hospital, too,” he said. “My dad just had a stroke.”
* * *
* * *
* * *
Dotty Stewart wrung her handkerchief in her hands over and over until the fabric twisted. Then she’d let it unwind, only to twist it again. She didn’t hold herself the way my mother would have. Dotty didn’t care how she looked to anyone else just then.
“Have you called your brother?” She asked. “Did you call Sam?”
“I tried. I left a message.” Dan’s voice was still strained, but he’d pulled himself together for his mom.
“Oh, I wish Sam were here,” his mother said before she went to sit again by her husband’s side.
I don’t think she meant it to be hurtful. If Dotty had favorites I’d never seen evidence of it. Then again, I’d only met his brother very briefly at our wedding. Dan and his brother got along fine with distance between them. Though they’d never said it, I got the impression Sam’s moving to New York hadn’t exactly made him the favorite son.
Dan paced in the waiting room and drank cup after cup of black coffee. His mother kept up her vigil by Morty’s side. I would have held Dan’s hand, if he’d wanted, but instead I sat and watched him traverse the linoleum floor. I’d have gone in his father’s room with him, too, when they came to get him, but he shook his head a little.
“You don’t have to come.”
“If you need me, Dan, I’ll be there.” He’d been there for me when my father died. I’d needed him to be. I reached for him and pulled him close for a kiss, both of us ignoring the nurse sent to fetch him.
“It might be uncomfortable for you.” He spoke in a low voice against the side of my neck. His arms tightened.
I thought what he meant was that it might be uncomfortable for him to have me there. To see him upset, maybe even crying. I held him a little closer.
“If you need me, I’m here.”
He nodded and gripped my hands. He looked into my eyes. “I know you are.”
I’d never had to be strong for him before. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. Together we went to listen to what the doctors had to say.
It wasn’t entirely good, but it wasn’t all bad. His dad had suffered a stroke, but a mild one. He was expected to regain consciousness within a few hours, and they didn’t think there’d been much damage to his brain. It meant another few hours of waiting, though, in which we visited the cafeteria and Dan tried calling his brother again. We waited another hour in the small hospital room before Marty opened his eyes. Dotty had stepped out to use the bathroom. Dan had heard from his brother and was even now out in the corridor talking to him.
“Heya,” Morty said and licked his lips. He gestured at me to come closer. “Heya, girlie.”
“Hi, Morty.” I took his hand. The skin felt like onionskin. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so good, not so good.” He coughed a little, but the monitors didn’t beep erratically and I didn’t think I needed to holler for a nurse. “How’re you?”
I hadn’t known Morty that long, really. A couple years. But he’d been more of a father to me than my own had been for a long time. My throat closed as I squeezed his hand ever-so-gently. I didn’t want to lose him, and yet my grief would be so much less than Dan’s.
“I’m okay, Morty. I should go get Dotty.”
He shook his head a bit. I’d always seen a lot of Morty in Dan, but now I saw a bit of Dan in Morty. “Not yet. Sit here with me for a minute.”
I did, without letting go of his hand. We didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Morty looked as though he wanted to say something important, and my heart beat faster as I anticipated some sort of last words. It wasn’t my place to hear them, if this were his final speech.
“You’re good for my boy.”
“He’s good for me.”
Morty smiled. His fingers twitched in mine, not quite a squeeze but a valiant effort. “Me and Dot, we always wanted a girl. She couldn’t have another, you know. After Sam. We tried, but she lost ’em. Finally, the doctor just said, no more. You’ll kill yourself. So that was that.”
I hadn’t known. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Morty shook his head a little again. His grin was a ghost of its normal brightness, but still there. I could so easily see how Dan would look in another thirty years. “We got our daughter, didn’t we?”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“Our Sam, now, he might not ever settle down. But Danny, he’s a smart one.” Morty shifted in the bed and looked a little pained. Alarmed, I made to move, but he shook his head again. “Now, it’s not my way to push.”
Not compared to my mother, that was for sure.
“But it surely would make me happy…me and Dotty both, you know….”
“If we had a baby?” I said quietly, leaning forward though there was nobody to overhear us.
“Yes.” Morty’s eyes gleamed.
I leaned even closer, conspiring. “I think we’re working on it.”
He laughed and the laugh trailed away into a weak cough. “Good. Does Danny know that?”
“He was there,” I said, which wasn’t quite the right answer but made him laugh again. I’d never have said such a ribald thing to my mother, but Dan’s dad was different.
“Good,” he said again and closed his eyes for so long I was afraid he wouldn’t open them. Then, “good.”
Chapter 9
“C’mon. You’ve had a very long day.” I bent over the bath and turned on the faucets. We had a nice, big bathtub put in by the previous owners. They’d obviously been obsessed with the bathroom, since it was the only room in the house to have been completely renovated. I added some lavender-scented oil. “You need this.”
“I need to get to bed….” but he was only protesting for show as I unbuckled his belt and helped him out of his clothes.
I put him into the bath and scrubbed him with some body wash and a loofah. Water splashed over the edges of the tub and wet my clothes, but I kept at it, washing and kneading him until he closed his eyes and gave himself up to my ministrations. When I was done, I helped him out, dried him off, and took him to bed.
I slid in naked beside him. He was warm from the hot water and my skin a little cool, but he didn’t object when I put my arm over his che
st and my leg over his thighs. I kissed his shoulder.
Sometimes we said more with silence than with all our words.
When I kissed my way down his arm and across to his belly, he sighed. When I kissed lower, Dan’s belly vibrated under my lips. My hand found his cock and I stroked him erect in a minute. He put his hand on top of my head, though, when I went to move lower.
“Elle.”
I looked up at him. “Shh. I love you. Let me do this.”
He smiled a little. “I need this, too?”
I nodded. “You want me to do this.”
He’d said those same words to me, in the past, and he’d been right. The way I was right now. Sex has many uses I would never pretend to know or want to know, but I did know the comfort losing oneself in pleasure could bring.
I made love to him with my hands and tongue for a while until he shivered. Then I climbed on top of him. He groaned as he slid inside me; that simple sound sent a pulse of arousal through me. I always got turned on at the sounds he made.
I’d meant to do this for him, not for me, but he slid a hand between us and I wasn’t going to complain. We moved together, slow at first then faster. I thought he might come right away, and that would have been fine, but Dan looked at me, watching my face as he used his thumb to provide steady pressure on my clit. When I gasped, he smiled.
“I want to watch you come,” he whispered. “Let me see it.”
I did a minute after that.
He thrust inside me a few more times before his face tightened and he gasped out my name. Then he gathered me to him and held me tight. He kissed me.
“I love you,” he said. “God, I love you so much.”
“I love you too,” I whispered, holding him as hard as I could. I didn’t want to let go, not when he needed me to hold on.
I thought he might cry, but he didn’t. His breathing slowed. Our bodies cooled. I pulled the blankets over us and snuggled into his side. I didn’t sleep, but I listened to him sleeping.
I knew I should get up, take a shower. Brush my teeth.
Take my pill.
Instead I lay there listening to the sound of my husband breathing, and I held onto him with all I had inside me. I’d worried I didn’t have enough for him, but time had shown me I was wrong.
I didn’t get out of bed.
It wasn’t my conversation with Morty that had changed my mind about having a child, or watching my mother with my niece, or my niece herself. It wasn’t watching the miracle of Marcy’s son being born, either.
All of those were reasons. Good reasons. But it was the man beside me who’d proven to me that love was worth everything. That my life, my heart, had room in it for more love than I ever thought possible.
There were dozens of reasons to agree to have a child, but as far as I was concerned, just then, with his breath on my face and the warmth of his skin on mine, there was only one that mattered. Love.
That was reason enough.
Also by Megan Hart
Absolute Solace
All Fall Down
All the Hardest Choices
All the Lies We Tell
All the Secrets We Keep
A Heart Full of Stars
Always You
Broken
Beg For It
By the Sea of Sand
Castle in the Sand
Clearwater
Crossing the Line
Hold Me Close
Hurt the One You Love
In the House of Broken Glass
Letting Go
Passion Model
Precious and Fragile Things
The Resurrected
Ride with the Devil
Shattered
Stumble into Love
The Favor
Womb
Unforgivable
Pleasure and Purpose
No Greater Pleasure
Selfish Is the Heart
Virtue and Vice
Beautiful Thorns
About the Author
photo credit: Whitney Hart Photography
I was born and then I lived a while. Then I did some stuff and other things. Now, I mostly write books. Some of them use a lot of bad words, but most of the other words are okay.
If you liked this book, please tell everyone you love to buy it. If you hated it, please tell everyone you hate to buy it.
Find me here!
www.meganhart.com
[email protected]
