Triplets Make Five

by Nicole Elliot

  She spat the last part. Like it was some dirty secret she was ashamed of.

  “You were ashamed you had slept with me, weren’t you?” I asked.

  Her hunched shoulders told me everything I needed to know.

  “Look. Women like me, we don’t get chances with men like you. Even though you serially date and brag about how you tear companies to shreds in the media, we still know what men like you bring to the table. Fantasy. Muscles. A smooth tongue and the ability to spoil us for the night. Women like me…we don’t get that. We get the desperate men too drunk at last call to see how wide our hips really are until they wake up the next morning.”

  I watched a tear run down her cheek again and I reached out for her. I wanted to comfort her. To draw her close and let her know everything was going to be okay. She was out on a ledge, exposed to the world. Like a raw nerve being battered by a scratching fingernail.

  “You don’t know how many men have woken up to me and-”

  I felt my blood boiling as my mind finished that statement with so many different things.

  “Anyway. I didn’t just leave because I was ashamed. That really wasn’t it at all. Not the majority of it. Part of it was shame for sleeping with some playboy who willingly discarded women like he did cars, but part of it was fear. Fear that you would wake up and be ashamed of me before I could be ashamed of you. That you would open your eyes and realize what you had done and…”

  “And what, Delilah? Finish that statement.”

  “And kick me out,” she said breathlessly. “I was terrified you would kick me out after making me feel so good. You have to understand, Preston. You standing by the woman you got pregnant looks noble, but I still look like the desperate accountant-slash-secretary. I can’t ruin my career over you. I’ve worked too hard at this job for too many years to lose it because I decided that one evening of unbridled passion couldn’t hurt anything.”

  “I get it,” I said. “I do.”

  “Do you really?” she asked as she turned towards me. “Do you really get it?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. And I’ll never truthfully claim to. But I do understand not wanting to ruin your career over someone. Trust me when I tell you that. So whatever decision you make on how you want to navigate this situation, I’ll support. Just know that I’m here for you, and that I’m not going anywhere. Whatever you need. Whatever I can provide for you and these kids, I will.”

  I reached out for her hand and she looked down at it. The same gesture that had gotten us into this mess seven weeks ago was now the same gesture that would bind us for fuck-knew-how long. I watched her eyes fall to my hand as she giggled, her head shaking with the irony of it all as I wiggled my fingers.

  “All you have to do is take my hand,” I said.

  “That’s what got us into the situation,” Delilah said with a grin.

  “And now, it’s what’ll help you get through it.”

  She looked up into my eyes and I lost myself in them. Their hazel tint that had followed her out here was slowly settling back into a sky blue color. Her anger was fading as I watched them change right before my eyes, mesmerizing by their appearance. That was what Delilah did to me. She mesmerized me in ways no other woman had. And now she was standing here, wrapped in my coat and carrying three fucking children at once.

  Holy hell, that was going to take awhile to choke down.

  “Okay,” she said as she slipped her hand into mine.

  Then I brought her hand up to my lips to kiss. One last gesture before I dropped her off. One last chance to taste her skin before I could no longer feel her underneath my lips. One more chance to convince her to let me take her home and give her the pleasure I knew could take her mind off all this.

  But all she did was pull her hand from mine before she handed my coat back to me.

  “Platonic,” Delilah said. “That’s my decision.”

  “Whatever you need, Miss Kent. Whatever you need.”

  Sixteen

  Preston

  It took me the entire weekend to digest what Delilah had told me over dinner. I lied awake in bed for more hours than I slept, tossing and turning as my mind filled with worry. How was she? Was she sick? Did she have someone there if she slipped and fell? Was she craving things yet? Could I get her something to eat?

  Would she even let me do something like that?

  Every time I picked up my cell phone I had to resist the urge to call her. All of this--the decision to stay platonic and to note dote on her--went against everything I felt morally. Sure, I was a promiscuous man. Yes, I enjoyed the luxury of women who threw themselves at my feet. But I had standards. I had a moral code I live by. And I told myself that if any one of these women ever got pregnant because of my escapades, I would be there for them. For our child. Just like my father had been for me. I had the financial means to be there and I had the ability to hire the best doctors in the world to take care of whoever I had gotten pregnant.

  I knew the risks going into this kind of lifestyle. I just never expected to get caught up in a woman who refused what I had to offer.

  My parents never married. I was the result of a one-night stand gone wrong. By my father took care of my mother and they always respected one another. My time was split between their households and there wasn’t a time where they were together that fighting ever ensued. The acted like adults, they co-parented me and raised me right, and that was why I knew it could be done. Delilah and I could do this, even if she still wanted things to be platonic between us.

  We could still be out in the open without having a romantic relationship.

  All of this seemed to be a trend with Delilah. This refusal streak she had in her. She seemed hell-bent on saying ‘no’ to me every step of the way. I didn't know what that was about her personality, but it was what had initially attracted me to her. She was the only woman I had ever met who turned me down. That first night at the bar when I offered her a ride home, any other woman would have said ‘yes’. But she didn't.

  Then again, when I asked her out on a date over lunch in my office. Every single woman I ever dated said ‘yes’ the first time I asked.

  But Delilah didn't.

  And now, when it was more pertinent than ever for her to say yes to me, she was saying no once again. She was turning down every service I could possibly offer her--from the best doctors in the nation to financial stability--just to preserve some sort of facade she was putting up for the world.

  The more I got to know her, the more confusing she became. At first, I thought she hid away from the world because she thought she was weird. But the more I got to know her, the more I realized she bled a confidence that rivaled even myself sometimes. She was feisty. Filled with fire and passion. She was someone who knew what she wanted out of life, even if that life was a plain and simple life.

  Then, I thought she kept herself cooped up in her little office because no one in the company cared about her. It was some sort of self-thrown pity party she could have on a regular basis. Then I talk with her and got to know her more, and I found out that she liked it. That it was her decision to settle in that office versus the comfortable one sitting right next to her on the same hallway.

  And now, that secretly confident woman who hid herself away from the world for reasons I still couldn't explain was denying the one thing she was scared of losing.

  Money.

  She was scared of losing her job. At least she had been honest about that. She couldn't be scared of her reputation, because she didn't have one. No one talked about her, no one invited her to anything, and the couple of people who did know about her didn't have any feelings toward her one way or another. They knew stories about her. They had theories about her how she lived her life and why she did the things she did. But they didn't feel one way or another about it.

  She was a neutral subject among those in the office that did know who she was.

  The only thing I could gather was that this was some sort of intern
al war for her. Like I had become a fill-in battlefield for whatever fight she thought she was still fighting. And it killed me inside. As I walked into my office Monday morning and settled into my seat, I looked up across the hallway and saw that light underneath her door. She was here, she was pregnant with my fucking triplets, and I couldn’t even knock on her door to see how she was feeling.

  I was trying to avoid eye contact with her as much as possible. I would glance up at her as she came out of her office, scanning her to see if she was okay. I noticed her skin was paler than usual. She was probably more nauseous as the days rolled by. That started a cascade of thoughts in my head. How sick was she? What was she keeping down? Was she throwing up fluids? That wasn’t a good thing if she was.

  But every time she looked towards me, I had to sink my eyes back into my paperwork. Back into my computer screen. Back into whatever pointless meeting someone had set up with me.

  It was hard for me to keep my eyes off her. She was a beautiful woman. I thought about how her curves would grow. How her breasts would fill with milk for my children. How her hips would spread, creating more room for her thighs to grow and settle. I thought about how her feet would eventually hurt, carrying around my three children within the confines of her body. I thought about how I could massage her feet. Her calves. Her thighs.

  Her pussy.

  I dipped my head back into my paperwork as she came out of her office. Just thinking about her swelling with my children was bringing my cock to life. Everything about her body would change, and just thinking about those changes made my mouth salivate. This woman had crawled into every part of me. She had cracked open my sternum, laid her beautiful body in there to rest, and sewed herself back up in it.

  I had no idea how we were going to keep this a secret. I had no idea how we were going to make this work. But I respected Delilah enough to try. I cared about her well-being enough to not push her into anything she didn’t like.

  But if I thought for once second that her and those children weren’t doing well, I would intervene at all costs.

  Because that was what Delilah deserved. She deserved someone who respected her boundaries until she was hurt. Then? She deserved someone who would swoop in and save her.

  Even if she didn’t want it.

  Seventeen

  Delilah

  I was lounging around on my couch and trying to eat ice cream. It was the only thing I was able to keep down with my rolling nausea, and I was angry at that fact. I was going to get big enough already carrying triplets, and the last thing I needed was to be stuffing my face with ice cream. I was going to be as big as a house by the time this pregnancy was over, and my anger only served to make my nausea worse.

  Beethoven was sitting on my lap, purring for bites of my ice cream. Every time I pushed him off my lap, he would jump back up, bothering me for my food. He ran his tail all along my arms and settled himself between my legs, meowing and purring for the food I had in my hands. I hated this. I hated all of this. My mind was swirling at a thousand miles a second. How was I going to take care of three children at once? I lived in a one-bedroom apartment that barely had enough room for me and my cat.

  The first thing I had to do was draw a budget. I had to go through my finances, figure out what I made during the month down to the penny, then lay out what I could afford. My first move during this pregnancy needed to be the purchasing of a house the kids and I could live in. I couldn’t raise them in a one-bedroom apartment. Even if I kept them all in the same nursery, they would each need their own living space as they got older, which meant a house with at least four bedrooms. And in Philadelphia, even a rundown home with that many rooms would run me a quarter of a million dollars.

  Then I would have to set aside a budget for all of their nursery items. Buying three cribs alone would cost me a thousand dollars, and that was money I currently didn't have. Then there was the expense of bottles and a breast pump if I wanted to breastfeed three children off two nipples. Pacifiers and crib bedding. Eventual full-sized beds and more expensive clothing as they got older.

  Currently, I was throwing all my extra money into paying off my car. I was still two months away from having it fully paid off, but now I was thinking about all the money I could've saved had I not done that. Had I not spiraled my extra money into that car. Hell, I was thinking about what I could've saved if I got a cheaper car.

  But now I needed a bigger car. I needed space to comfortably seat three children along with all their stuff if we went anywhere. I would have to trade it in, which meant another car payment. Which meant more money I had to factor into my budget.

  The numbers were rolling around in my head and they weren't helping my nausea. I set my ice cream down and watched Beethoven stick his head in the container. Even though I knew I needed to eat, I couldn't bring myself to do it. All of the money I would need during this pregnancy alone was adding up quicker than I could get it to stop. Then, I thought about the diapers I would need to buy. The clothes they would grow out of. The food they would need to eat and the medicine and doctor’s appointments they would require.

  How was I going to feed them? I only had two breasts. I had two nipples with two sources of milk and three children who were going to be hungry at the same time. How was that going to work? How was my body going to produce that much breastmilk? If I assumed I wouldn't be able to breastfeed more than one of them, that meant I would have formula to buy. Which was more money every month I didn't have that I would need to eventually spend.

  I felt tears cresting the lids of my eyes as I sank deeper into my train of thought.

  My television was droning in the background and the only thing I could think about was the electricity it was using. I reached for the remote and shut it off, then got up and turned off all the lights in my apartment. If I was going to start saving money, then I needed to start being more energy-conscious. I needed to make the most of my paychecks so I could put as much away as possible.

  Then, I started thinking about my retirement account. If I dipped into my 401k so I could pay off my car, I could take that car payment and set it aside. I could get by with the car I had until they grew out of booster seats. By then, I could have enough money saved up to buy an SUV to cart us all around comfortably. That would give me four hundred dollars every month over the course of nine months, which equated to three thousand and six hundred I would have in a savings account.

  It wasn't much, but it was a start.

  My exhaustion started to kick in and my mind started to slow down. Beethoven had finished off my ice cream and was padding back to my bedroom. I slumped down into my couch, allowing my sweatpants to ride up my crotch. I was a mess. I was so exhausted in the mornings that I wasn't showering as normally as I usually did. I was wearing clothes to work that weren't matching, not that anyone noticed in the first place. When I came home, I was living in sweatshirts, trying to make myself comfortable as nausea and exhaustion became my best friends.

  I felt my eyes closing, my body drifting back off into a luscious slumber. I could feel my dream-state coming on. A place where my life could be anything I wanted it to be. A place where I wasn’t pregnant with my boss’s children and I wasn’t carrying triplets and I wasn’t so sick that I couldn't keep down chocolate milk.

  But a knock at my door jolted me awake.

  Sighing, I pulled myself off the couch and walked over towards the door. I didn't think twice about checking to see who it was before I opened it, and my eyes widened when I saw him. Preston was standing there with a massive amount of red roses and a bag of food with a restaurant name that seemed eerily familiar.

  It was a bag of food from the restaurant we had our first date at. The restaurant where I had broken it to him that I was pregnant.

  “Mind if I come in?” he asked.

  “What is all this?” I asked.

  “Figured you could use a break from cooking,” he said.

  I stepped off to the side and let him into my apartme
nt.

  “Are those for me?” I asked.

  “Do you see any other beautiful women standing around?” he asked.

  “I think there were some on the corner, yeah.”

  “Feisty as ever,” he said with a grin.

  He leaned in to kiss me, but I backed myself away. What was going on? We had an agreement. My eyes scanned his body as he sighed, then backtracked into my kitchen and began opening my cabinets. He pulled out plates and found the silverware, plating food that smelled delicious onto the pathetic plasticware I had in my home.

  A home I couldn’t bring three infants back to.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?” Preston asked.

  “For looking so…rough.”

  “Nonsense. You look perfect,” he said.

  “You’re just saying that because I’m pregnant with your kids.”

  “No, I’m saying it because it’s true.”

  His head turned towards me, his eyes raking up and down my body. I felt my cheek taint with a flush only he could draw out of me. I felt my walls slowly crashing down. I felt them melting into a puddle at my feet. I watched Preston shrug his suit coat off and sling it over a chair, his broad shoulders tugging at the fabric of his shirt. He turned around, a smile on his face and two plates of food in his hands. There was a grin on his cheeks as he walked towards me, his arms balancing the food evenly in his hands.

  Was there anything this man could do that made him ugly?

  “Where would you like to eat?” Preston asked.

  “Um…the couch is fine,” I said.

  “Couch it is, then. What would you like to drink?” he asked.

  “I don’t have much…”

  “Doesn’t matter. What would you like?”

  “Is there a bottle of water in there?” I asked.

  “There’s peach and kiwi-infused waters,” he said.

  “I’ll have a peach one.”

  “Then I’ll take kiwi.”