“Laura?” Samir called.
“Yes?”
“Permission to beat the shit out of your husband?”
Somehow, in the midst of this horrible moment, she managed to laugh. Her giggle sounded like a curse word in church, and that didn’t help her composure. Her heart fluttered as she fought to swallow her chuckles. The tension caging her eased, even as she watched a flush of fury stain Daniel’s pale skin.
Oh, she loved Samir so much. So fucking much.
“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” she managed. “He’ll call the police.”
“Seriously?” Samir’s answer dripped disdain. “Wow. That’s embarrassing.”
Oh dear. The comment, or maybe the casual distaste with which it was said, pushed Daniel’s always-precarious temper over the edge. With a strangled roar, he lunged for Samir.
Biting panic ripped through her veins at the sight of her worst nightmare, her greatest fear, swinging at the man she loved. But then something strange happened. Even as she ran forward, the world seemed to slow down. Everything moved like beads of oil floating through water—except for Samir.
So she watched with perfect clarity as he cocked his head, assessed the threat with a flicker of a glance, and stepped aside. So neatly, so simply. Then she watched as he thrust out one foot, and swept Daniel’s legs out from under him.
And then she watched as her greatest fear went down like a sack of potatoes, landing in a huge heap on the driveway.
Samir’s feet were bare. She noticed because he put his heel against Daniel’s throat, directly over his windpipe, and exerted enough pressure to have her husband writhing and gasping for air.
“When I get off you,” Samir said, “you will have thirty seconds to get up, get in your car, and get the fuck out of my town. Do you understand me?”
Strangled, wheezing screeches were accompanied by weak shudders.
Then Samir lifted his foot slightly and said, “Say yes.”
And Daniel actually choked out, “Yes.”
“Remember what I said,” Laura added. “Stay away from Hayley. Stay away from me. From us. Or I promise you, I will take everything you have. And you know your father will help me.”
That familiar green glare found her, but for once, it didn’t send a chill down her spine. Maybe because it came from the ground.
“Hey,” Samir snapped, pushing his heel into Daniel’s throat. “Don’t look at her like that. Don’t look at her at all.”
And, miracle of miracles, Daniel’s eyes slithered away.
The miracles didn’t stop there, either. They just kept coming. When Samir released Daniel? He dragged himself up and got in his car. Miracle.
He reversed out of the drive so fast his tires screeched. Miracle.
And he didn’t come back. Even though she spent hours tense and waiting for retribution, nothing happened. Samir held her, soothed her, made her eat, and spent all day and night distracting her. And nothing bad happened. Not once. Miracle.
And then, in the early hours of the next morning, after he told her for the hundredth time how brave she was, and how well she’d done, and how much he loved her, she managed to tell him the truth.
“I love you too. So much.”
Miracle.
17
Three months later, the date when Hayley should’ve arrived came and went. Hayley did not appear. But then, Laura hadn’t wanted her to.
Truthfully, Laura barely even noticed her sister’s absence, or their mother’s, and not just because Samir grew even more attentive as her due date drew near. She barely noticed because, the day after Hayley failed to arrive, Ruth came.
Laura was in the kitchen at the time, stuffing her face with bacon-wrapped dates. Samir was thinking about diversifying the menu at Bianchi’s even further—since the pizza had been so successful during the season—and she had graciously agreed to be his test subject. So there she was, nobly and selflessly ingesting her own bodyweight in bacon, when someone knocked at the front door.
Samir went to answer it while Laura continued eating—or rather, shoveling food down her throat at a dangerously high speed. Turned out, he really was a damned good cook. And God, she was always hungry now.
But a familiar voice, bold and blunt, floated into the house and captured her attention. “Ah. You must be the new man. Excuse me.”
Then came another voice, less familiar but just as welcome. “Alright, mate? Evan Miller. Nice to meet you. And this is—”
But Laura was already lumbering into the hallway, dates abandoned. She took in the scene all at once: Samir holding the door open, slightly confused but mostly amused. Evan, Ruth’s boyfriend, filling the doorway like some big, tattooed, teddy bear of a Viking.
And in front of him, looking tiny between the two men: Ruth. Her dark hair a soft halo, her face predictably unimpressed, her brown skin glowing even more than usual. She was always pretty—it was one of the reasons Laura had once hated her. But since meeting Evan, she’d become fairytale-beautiful through the power of sheer contentment.
“Ruth!” Laura cried, sounding so overjoyed she was almost embarrassed. But she hadn’t realised until that very moment how badly she needed a friend. Even if that friend was relatively new, highly unorthodox, and had once been the victim of a Laura-led, town-wide hate campaign.
Ruth wasn’t one for emotional displays, so she didn’t run into Laura’s outstretched arms or anything like that. Instead, she pursed her lips in one of her odd, almost-smiles and said, “Oh, I’ve mucked up my days again. I didn’t think you’d be that pregnant.”
And then, to Laura’s everlasting astonishment, the notoriously prickly and secretly shy Ruth Kabbah strode right into the house, past a still-blinking Samir, and gave Laura a hug. It was an awkward, one-armed, wincing hug, but it definitely counted. And it was enough to make Laura burst into tears. Not that it took much these days.
“Oh dear,” Ruth said, jerking back as if each salted drop was poisonous.
“You okay, angel?” Samir sounded more amused than concerned, but still, he asked.
“I’m fine! It’s fine! I’m just…”
“Leaking,” Ruth said grimly. “Like a faulty teapot.”
Laura snorted. “What?”
“Oh, never mind. I think some food is in order. Food always helps. Evan brought lasagne.” And then, as she dragged Laura into the kitchen: “Oh. You already have food.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Yours cooks, too, then? Excellent choice. Very wise, very wise indeed.”
Just like that, Laura knew everything from here on out would be absolutely perfect.
That night, after they’d settled Ruth and Evan into the room that should’ve been Hayley’s, Samir pulled Laura into his arms.
They didn’t sleep with blankets anymore, because Laura got too hot. She was always too hot, now—but she still needed him to hold her, and honestly, he needed it too. So they slept naked, with a window open, to combat the body heat between them.
Of course, since she was Laura, and she was naked, Samir spent every night hard as hell. And since she was now at that stage of pregnant discomfort where the idea of sex vaguely nauseated her, he was doomed to stay that way until he showered the next morning.
But tonight, he wasn’t fighting off inappropriately filthy thoughts. Tonight, he was preoccupied with something… different. Something so huge, he was struggling to drum up the courage to begin
“Ruth is nice,” he said, his fingers tracing the stretch-marks on Laura’s hips, raised like lace over the silk of her skin. He was a coward, discussing her friends instead of saying what was on his mind, but fuck. Some things were too important for confidence.
“You like her?”
“Of course. She makes you smile.” He pressed a kiss to Laura’s temple. “Evan’s great, too.”
“He is, isn’t he? I haven’t known him long. He only moved to Ravenswood this year.”
And there it was, like fate: a perfect segue into the topic
Samir was trying to broach. “So they haven’t been together long, then?”
“Not really. Since Easter, maybe.”
“Right.” He paused. “But they seem like they’ve been a couple forever. Years, at least.”
“I know. It’s funny.” Laura gave a happy little sigh. “It’s like they were made for each other.”
“Do you believe in that?” he asked quickly. “Soulmates, and that sort of thing? Do you think people can be perfect for each other?”
“Ummm…” She hummed out the word, and he winced as he waited for her response. He’d never been so nervous in his life. Which was ridiculous, because he was just feeling her out. Opening a dialogue. Having a reasonable, adult discussion about—
“Maybe,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think there’s only one person for everyone, but I do think that people can be perfectly matched. I think I believe in soulmates. Yeah.” She nodded, her hair rubbing against his chin. “I do.”
Well, that was something. That would make it easier to argue his case. “I do, too. Honestly, I… Laura, I know this might seem fast. And I know this whole thing between us is, I don’t know, unusual. But I feel like you’re it for me. I know you are.”
Slowly, she shifted until their eyes met. The motion brought their bodies even closer, but every inch of his focus was narrowed down to her cool, grey gaze.
Not so cool in this moment. Right now, it looked more like a tempest.
“What exactly are you saying?” she asked softly.
“I just…” He wet his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. “I don’t want to push you, but I can’t hide this, either. If I thought you were ready for it, I’d ask you to marry me. I’d have asked you weeks ago, to be honest. But right now, I don’t know if that would be fair to you. Then at the same time, I don’t want you to ever wonder how serious I am about you. Because I know exactly how serious I am, and I can tell you outright. I am telling you outright, because soon you’ll have the baby, and I know you planned to leave but I—I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay. Here. With me. So I thought you should know that, you know? That I’m not asking, but I will ask. Unless you tell me right now that I’m doing way too much and you feel, you know, suffocated—”
“Samir,” she said gently. He clamped his mouth shut and thanked God she’d stopped him. He’d never babbled so much in his life. His palms might be sweating, actually. “You can’t ask me to marry you right now,” she murmured.
Even though he’d known that, logically, his heart still staggered a little bit. Not that he’d show it.
But then she said, “I’m still married. Legally, I mean. And even though it means less than nothing to me, I don’t want you to propose to a married woman.”
His heart stopped staggering and started pounding, louder than a stampede of stallions. “But, to be clear,” he said, “once you aren’t a married woman…”
Her eyes danced like starlight. “Once I’m not a married woman I will go with you to the nearest registry office and become a married woman all over again.”
Even as joy suffused him in a bright, brilliant cloud, even as he smiled so hard he hurt his own damn face, Samir shook his head. “A registry office? I don’t think so, love.”
“What’s wrong with a registry office?”
“Oh, nothing. But I want to see sunlight through stained glass windows hitting a white dress…”
“I am not marrying you in a white dress!” He wasn’t particularly offended by that, since she giggled as she said it, and slid an absent foot up and down his calf, too.
Still, he feigned outrage as he demanded, “Why the hell not?” Beneath his hand, he felt the baby kick, but that wasn’t especially unusual now; the poor kid was up at all hours of the day and night, demanding attention.
“For one thing,” she said wryly, “I’m definitely not a virgin.”
He shrugged. “But you gave your virginity to me. So the virginity will be present. I have it.”
“Oh my God,” she snorted. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“What? It’s true!”
“Did that even count? It lasted, like, five seconds.”
What could he say? Fifteen-year-olds weren’t noted for their longevity. So, lacking any proper defence, Samir decided to tickle her instead.
“Stop!” she shrieked. “I’ll wet myself!”
“I’ll stop if you agree to the dress.”
“I haven’t even agreed to the church!”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have reminded me.” She squirmed beneath him, gasping out her laughter, but he didn’t let up. “The dress and the church.”
“Samir! I’m serious! I’m going to pee!”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he said gravely.
“Fine! Fine, oh my God, stop!”
Even after he let up, she couldn’t stop laughing. He started to worry that she actually would wet herself—her bladder wasn’t particularly sturdy these days. But eventually, she calmed down.
“You’re awful,” she said, in a voice that suggested he was nothing of the sort.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I’m in love.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she kissed him so hard he almost forgot to breathe.
18
A week passed uneventfully, except for that one night when they built a campfire on the beach and Ruth managed to drop her phone into it. But apparently that wasn’t unusual behaviour for her, so ‘uneventful’ was definitely the word.
They were on the beach again, in the daylight this time, when the big event finally came. Ruth and Evan were actually building sandcastles, and taking it all quite seriously, too. Evan brought out a ruler at one point, which Samir hadn’t exactly expected from a blonde behemoth of a blacksmith, but he wasn’t really one to judge. Especially since, at that very moment, he’d been feeling Laura up quite shamelessly beneath the cover of the ocean.
When she said his name the first time, he thought she was telling him off.
“Sorry,” he grinned, because he wasn’t sorry at all.
Then she clutched his arm in an iron grip and half-shrieked “Samir!” and he realised she wasn’t complaining about his hand on her arse.
“What? What is it?”
She’d looked up at him with her teeth bared in an unsettling grimace. “I’m pretty sure I’m having contractions.”
“You—your—it—” For at least three seconds, his brain plunged into uselessness as if the power had been cut.
Then, just as suddenly, his mental capacities returned.
“How sure? How does it feel? For how long? How fast?”
“Quite sure,” she said. “It hurts. They started a couple of hours ago—”
“What?”
“And now they’re maybe… every ten minutes?”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to say anything until I was certain!” she said. “I thought I might be imagining things! Or that it might be Braxton Hicks—”
“Laura, you are forty weeks pregnant. Why the hell would you think it was Braxton Hicks?!”
“It still might be!”
“Woman, I swear to God—”
She interrupted his very serious disapproval with a snort of amusement. “Oh, don’t start.” But then her face creased into that grimace again, and she huffed out a breath. “Ah. Another one. Oh dear. That was much faster.”
“Fuck.” He scooped her up into his arms and started wading out of the water. “Fuck. Evan!”
And so it began.
It was fortunate, Laura reflected later, that they’d established a plan for this sort of thing just last week. And even better that they’d executed it so well!
She turned to smile at Samir, who was looking very grim. His eyebrows were so… directional. Like angry, sharp-edged caterpillars. “We did great,” she said, “didn’t we?” But her voice sounded slightly slurred. Ah well.
“Yes, angel,” he murmured. His hand closed around hers, which was
nice—but then she realised that he was taking away her special tube, which was not nice. Laura tightened her grip.
“Get off my magic air,” she mumbled.
Finally, his lips quirked into a smile. “It’s gas and air, my love.”
“No! Magic.” To prove it, Laura brought the tube back to her lips and sucked down another breath. Oooh, that was nice. Almost nice enough to distract her from the fact that her hips were cracking right down the middle, her vagina was ripping itself in two, her arsehole might be taking the same path, and there was sweat dripping right into her eyes.
Actually, that last part was difficult to ignore. It really stung.
As if he’d read her mind, Samir brushed a cool, dry thumb over her eyelid, sweeping away the beads of moisture. He was so lovely. Lovely! That’s why she loved him. She was thinking about how very much she loved him when that pesky midwife said, “Laura, I need you to give me a nice big push now, alright?”
Laura took another gulp of magic air. “No.”
“Yes, darling, nice big push. Last one. Come on now.”
She really didn’t want to. She’d been pushing forever, and it hurt like a motherfucker, and every single time, they lied and said it was the last one, and it wasn’t. But she felt the oddest sensation down there, as if something was lodged and needed to be released—and then Samir took her hand again—not her magic air, just her hand—and murmured, “Push for me, Laura. Please.”
So she did. She squeezed his hand so tight that his bones ground together under her grip, and all she could feel was a vicious satisfaction because her own bones were grinding on a much larger scale, and something was definitely ripping her in half, and how dare he sit there comfortably asking her to push? How dare he? How dare—
“Keep going, Laura!” The midwife said, sounding rather excited. “One more! One more!”
Lie again. But even though she didn’t want to push, she kind of felt like she couldn’t stop, now. Wasn’t that strange? This whole childbirth thing was like smoking bad crack. Not that she’d ever smoked crack. But if she had, it would probably…
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