Darling, All at Once (The Fairfields Book 1)

by Piper Lennox

  He smirked and grabbed the doorframe over his head, flexing. “I’d love to dote on you. You won’t let me. Like yesterday, when you did all the laundry before I even got the chance—”

  “And good thing I did, or you wouldn’t have had any work shirts to wear today.”

  “—or tonight,” he finishes, “when I said, ‘Don’t touch those dishes, I’ll do them the second I finish the campaign.’”

  “Excuse me for not believing that. Or thinking gross dishes are more important than some dumb video game.” My tone was sharpening; I couldn’t get my volume back to a reasonable level, no matter how hard I tried. Abby had warned me pregnant rage would hit in the last few weeks, especially if I went past my due date. She was way too right.

  Still: I couldn’t stop. “I’m fucking huge right now, and you’re just sitting there playing video games while I’m killing my back trying to get the place halfway decent.” I wiped out the sink and threw the wad of paper towels at the trash can, missing by a wide margin.

  Suddenly, I wanted to cry.

  “I got it,” Cohen said quickly. He sensed my meltdowns the way people felt storms approaching in their joints. I could only watch, teary-eyed and hating myself, as he scooped up the paper and tossed it into the trash for me.

  It didn’t end there. All night, whatever he did or didn’t do, I found a way to bitch about it. In retrospect, it wasn’t all me: he had the unfortunate habit of getting in my personal bubble precisely when all I wanted was space.

  “We don’t go to bed angry,” he reminded me sweetly, too damn sweetly, as we lay in bed that night. As usual, I’d commandeered about ninety-five percent of our pillows and built myself a cocoon. Every position in existence made my back, hips, and knees ache with a deep burn my doctor dubbed “normal.”

  “I’m not angry.” I was angry. Furious. For reasons I couldn’t even articulate, just the sight of his face enraged me.

  “Bet I can help,” he whispered. The heat of his kiss on my neck melted the anger, until the only thing I could be mad about was that he wouldn’t let me stay mad.

  “I’m sorry I yelled.” I turned my head and found his mouth. He kissed me like he was hungry for it. How that was possible when I was a walking orb of fury, I had no clue. But I was grateful. No matter how much my body changed or how different I felt, Cohen never failed to show me I was still beautiful. That he still loved me.

  “It’s okay.” He broke the kiss and began to undress me. “I’m sorry I didn’t do the dishes when you asked me. And that I was so wrapped up in the game I didn’t notice you doing them.”

  “We’re getting better at the no-stupid-fights thing,” I joked.

  “Don’t know about that.” Cohen’s fingers ran up and down the taut skin of my stomach. “But we are getting better at making up after stupid fights.”

  I whimpered his name as soon as his fingers trailed between my legs, entering me without hesitation.

  “You’re always so wet for me.” I could feel that confident smirk against my neck. “I’m going to miss that. You probably won’t let me near you with a ten-foot pole, once the hormones aren’t involved.”

  “Definitely not a ten-foot pole.” I reached behind me and held his erection through his pants, stroking with the same rhythm he pulsed inside me. “This one, though? I’ll give it a pass.”

  He laughed and kissed my shoulder. I felt his teeth sink into the skin the slightest bit, when I slipped my hand past his waistband and began to pump him. His response was to work his fingers that much faster, until I was writhing. Pleading for so much more.

  The tip of him stretching my entrance was simultaneously heavenly and torturous. It gave me just a taste of what I needed, with the promise for more—but no guarantee of when it would happen.

  “All at once,” I answered, before he could ask. He always did.

  Cohen clucked. His erection eased into me with agonizing slowness. “Sorry—going with the other option tonight.”

  I groaned, mostly out of frustration, and pushed my hips against him. He knew to draw back in time.

  “Be patient.” His hand was cool on my cheek, tracing the line of my jaw until he turned my head and kissed me. “I promise, I’ll make it worth the wait.”

  My body buzzed with need, but I knew to trust him on this. When Cohen promised anything, he delivered.

  “See?” He found my clitoris and set his cadence again. “I wouldn’t make you suffer like that.”

  It still wasn’t enough. “Cohen,” I began, ready to beg as much and as loudly as needed until he obliged, but he shushed me and drove inside just a little bit more.

  “I know. You want me to fill you up completely, don’t you?”

  His hand sped up. I gripped my pillow with both hands and bucked my hips toward him.

  “You want me to fuck you like we’re animals.” His breath skated down my spine. He’d filled me halfway, finally granting me that first real bit of satisfaction. “Drive my cock into you so deep, you can’t help but scream.”

  God, I tried to deny it. I was angry all over again. As if it wasn’t enough he had to tease me like this, now he’d force me to admit how much I wanted him.

  “Yes,” I managed. My voice trembled when he pushed another half-inch into me, at best. My muscles tensed and quivered, the sensations mounting. “Cohen, please....”

  His teeth skimmed the outer edge of my ear. I felt his mouth rest there a moment, then slide to the sensitive skin behind it. It was his favorite trick. Probably because I always underestimated the effect it had on me.

  “We should savor this,” he warned, but graciously gave me a full inch of his length at once, his fingers working my clitoris so much rougher than he normally touched me. I was obsessed. Every cell in my brain spun in circles, matching the pace. “We won’t get another chance for six weeks.”

  I forced my eyes open. The room was charcoal gray: dark but soft, his silhouette tinted in moonlight. “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, straight-faced, “I’m about to make you come so hard, there’s no way you won’t go into labor.”

  “Cohen,” I said. My goal was sarcasm.

  Instead, I moaned it: finally, he’d pushed the entire length of his erection into me. Without thrusts and hips rocking, I could feel every twitch—the pulsing proof of his need, joined with mine.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked, and somehow pushed inside more. The pressure inside me doubled, feeling him stretch me like he had no doubt my body would welcome his. That it needed his.

  “No,” I panted. “Cohen...Cohen, I’m....”

  His fingertips were coated with my wetness, sliding on my clitoris effortlessly, but maintaining perfect friction and rhythm. It astounded me, always: his ability to play with my body like he knew it as well as his own. Like he’d spent hours studying me the way he studied buildings and trees and drainage pipes, memorizing the places no one else could see.

  “Come for me, Juliet,” he whispered. Just like our first night together.

  My orgasm rose like a crescendo from white noise: ready all along, waiting to surface at his command. I had to bite my pillow, just to withstand the spasms rolling through me. I wasn’t sure they’d ever end.

  “Coming,” he warned, the softest he’d ever said it, and pressed his mouth to that spot behind my ear as he released.

  “Oh, my God.” Tears seeped from my eyes, no matter how tightly I squeezed them shut. The aftershocks hit when he pulled out of me. I hated the emptiness.

  “Just watch,” he said, winking as he tucked the bed sheet in around me. “In an hour or two, you’ll be waking me up and telling me it’s time to go.”

  I shook my head at him, too weak to argue out loud. Or, maybe, knowing he was right.

  The drive to the hospital felt electric. As his new truck gripped the iced streets and snowflakes flew at the windshield like stars, I couldn’t help but think about snowstorms as a kid: this same electric feeling in your limbs, watching it blanket and change the w
orld—knowing that, by morning, everything you knew would feel so different.

  “We’re gonna be parents,” Cohen said suddenly, in the middle of a deserted intersection. It seemed to glow in all the moonlight and fresh powder. We looked at each other, laughing. “Holy shit, Juliet: we’re gonna be parents.”

  Even the joy of snow and new parenthood couldn’t stop our stupid fights, though. Cohen kept cracking jokes. My hormones kept raging. When he asked the nurse, “So if the baby doesn’t get here in thirty minutes or less, the delivery’s free, right?” I could’ve throttled him.

  “Cohen,” I said, biting off the word as I paced my breathing, “shut. Your. Mouth. Now.”

  “Okay.” He exhaled, like I’d relieved him from some at-gunpoint comedy routine. “You know that’s what I do when I’m nervous—make jokes.”

  “And when you’re happy,” I muttered, teeth clenched through another contraction, “and tired, and hungry—”

  “All seven of the dwarves, really,” he quipped, exchanging a smirk with the nurse before realizing I was not amused. “Seriously, you’ve got to stop glaring at me. That just makes the joking worse.”

  “Even children can control themselves better than you’re doing, right now.”

  He stared at me, hands braced on the bed railing. “I’m trying to distract you from the pain.”

  “Spoiler: you aren’t.”

  “Excuse me,” Cohen asked the nurse, spinning on his heel and clasping his hands in front of him, “but when the baby arrives, how long should I expect this—” He jerked his head at me. “—to continue?”

  Wisely, the nurse simply took a breath and slunk out of the room. When Cohen turned back, I shot him another death glare. And in that moment, I think I meant it.

  To his credit and mine, we forgot all about the fight as soon as things intensified. I cried into his chest when labor stalled, the baby’s heartbeat dropped, and they told us a section was our only option.

  I can recall with photographic precision the rows of fluorescent lights, sliding in and out of view as they wheeled me to surgery. They put an oxygen mask on my face and something in my IV when the words “spinal block,” for whatever reason, sent me into a panic.

  “She’s okay?” I asked Cohen, who had finally fallen silent. Right when I needed his words, serious or not, more than ever.

  “They’re getting her out,” he whispered from behind his mask. I noticed his breath quickening, grip tightening on mine. He was scared.

  “Cohen,” I mumbled, half-asleep in whatever haze they’d plied me into. I waited until he looked at me. “Bet you ten bucks she’s got brown hair, like you.”

  Slowly, his eyes changed. He laughed.

  “So I’m taking blonde, bald, and ginger?” His hand repositioned in mine, shaking it. “You’ve got yourself a bet.”

  Pressure and a strange pulling sensation began in my abdomen, but no pain. I couldn’t see anything but the lights above and Cohen’s face, his now motionless chest as he held his breath and waited.

  “Here she is,” said the doctor, and the nurse beside my head winked, adding, “Brunette as can be.”

  Marisol Beatrix Fairfield, born at the end of a snowstorm. Dark brown hair, a single tuft in the middle of her head; grayish green eyes and an instantaneous gift for gripping fingers.

  “Hell, yeah,” Cohen whispered, sliding into bed beside me and kissing the baby’s head, then mine. “This girl’s going to be a climber.”

  Parenthood wasn’t easy, which came as no surprise to me. I think Cohen still focused on the fun parts, most. Teaching her to walk, celebrating her first word (a firm and clear, “No”), and losing entire hours to the sport of staring, marveling at this thing we’d made without even meaning to.

  But even the hard parts didn’t get him down. He took more middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes than I did, actually—awake and moving before I could even register that tiny cry in the darkness. It seemed he was always waiting for the exact moment she’d need him.

  Cohen didn’t and never would prepare for life the way I did. But when it came to things that mattered and the people he loved, he was never off-guard. Never far.

  “Stella and Mei—this is the last time I’m going to tell you to leave the petals alone.” Viola kneels in front of the girls and piles their discarded rose petals back into their baskets. Marisol stumbles into Mei’s back and plops to the floor, tears at the ready.

  “And this,” I announce, my voice filling the tiny room off a hall to the courtyard, “is exactly why I said, ‘No flower girls.’” Stella is going on four, so she’s doing well—but Mei is still shy of three; Marisol, two. And all three girls will soon be in dire need of a nap. I sense it now. Like that ache in the joints before a storm.

  Viola shoots me a look and stands, brushing lint from her dress. “It’s going to be adorable, trust me.” I watch her lick her thumb and wipe one last smudge from Mei’s cheek.

  She and Marco didn’t tell anyone they were looking to adopt. As far as we knew, when the search for a surrogate was suspended indefinitely, they’d decided to put a pin in the whole thing. But last summer, during Sunday dinner at Dad’s—which now included Levi, who always took the day off; no exceptions—she announced they’d adopted a little girl from China.

  Everyone cheered and congratulated them without hesitation, but I could tell from Abby’s face I wasn’t the only one in shock. “Wow,” I told Vi. “I didn’t even know you guys were doing that.”

  “Well, it takes so long, sometimes,” she sighed, showing us the picture again, “so I didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up until...” Her voice trailed as she smiled down at the little girl’s face. Her daughter. “...until I knew she was on the way.”

  I’d found myself nodding at this, instantly understanding. Some things in life you can only accept, or prepare for, as they happen.

  Now, my sisters and I shake our heads at them as they squabble over who gets to go first and who holds which basket. Our three girls, so different, linked by thinner blood than us—but destined to be just as close. If Marisol never gets any sisters, at least she has them.

  “Ready?” Abigail shakes my shoulders, squealing in perfect harmony with Viola until I laugh.

  “I’ve been ready. Let’s go.”

  In the hall, Levi offers an arm to each of my sisters; Lupé sends each flower girl down the aisle with painstaking attention to timing, which becomes totally pointless the second Marisol sees Cohen at the end of the aisle and bolts. Abigail intercepts while the crowd cracks up.

  Dad holds out his arm. I place my hand inside and take one last breath, smiling through my nerves at Lupé and another Acre staff member, poised to open the doors as soon as the song changes.

  It’s barely dusk. The sky is that faded kind of purple, bleeding into the bit of blue still left. Just behind the rest of the skyline, the glow turns orange. Actually, I realize, it’s more of a peach.

  Cohen fidgets with his tie and smirks, the second we make eye contact. Suddenly, through the music, I hear a sound I know well.

  It’s that rush of air when a shell launches. Then the crack when it detonates.

  Everyone looks up in time to see a faint shape—a smiley face, just a little crooked—form overhead.

  “Dad,” I scold, as the walk resumes, “that’s definitely not legal here.”

  “Wasn’t my idea,” he chuckles, and kisses my cheek as we approach the altar and part.

  Cohen gives an apologetic look, totally fake, when I join him under the topiary arch. “Had to do something to distract everyone in case I bawled like a baby,” he whispers. I notice a shimmering film on his eyes, tears there but not yet fallen, and suddenly have to blink back my own.

  “Don’t cry. I’m all out of fireworks.”

  I laugh. “It’s okay. I don’t care if anyone sees me cry.” With what has to be the best timing in the world, my sisters sniffle behind me. Good thing Viola became obsessed with tracking down vintage handkerc
hiefs for the wedding party.

  “So.” He squeezes each of my hands in his. “We’re two single people at a wedding. What do we do about that?”

  “Hmm,” I muse, as the crowd settles, a thousand white lights shimmer around the courtyard like Christmas, and the smell of gunpowder begins to touch down. “I think I’ve got an idea.”

  A Note from Piper

  I don’t usually include notes in my books…actually, I never have, but I felt Darling, All at Once could use one, given some of its subject matter.

  For what it’s worth, I do not believe depression and mental illnesses are “selfish,” acquired by choice, or can be overcome by “trying harder” (I also don’t feel this way about addiction).

  So: why did I include these implications in the book, if I don’t believe them to be true? Because I felt that Juliet and Cohen—the parts of them that carry that pain from their childhoods; the parts that continue to grieve—would still believe or wonder those things, on some level.

  Please know that my intention is not to bolster misconceptions, but simply to showcase these emotions as a normal, realistic aspect of grieving loved ones with these illnesses.

  Thank you for reading.

  Piper

  Also By Piper Lennox

  The Fairfields

  Darling, All at Once

  Honey, When It Ends (Coming Soon)

  Love in Kona

  Pull Me Under | Crash Around Me | When We Break

  Standalones

  All Mine | Teach Me | The Road to You

  It’s Complicated: A Novella (Subscriber Exclusive)

  Turn the page for a preview of Piper’s upcoming novel,

  Honey, When It Ends

  (The Fairfields, Book 2)

  Sneak Peak:

  Honey, When It Ends

  Mara

  If Professional Rebound was a thing, I’d be Employee of the Month fifty times running.