The Girl Next Door

by Emma Hart

  “But that’s a long time. A long time where you could be happy with—”

  I pressed my finger to her lips. “Don’t you dare even say it,” I said in a low voice. “There is not a single person in this world who will ever make me happier than our baby.”

  “But I don’t want you to waste—”

  “Any time spent with you isn’t time wasted. There’s no other way I’d rather spend my time, okay?”

  “I—”

  “Okay?”

  She swallowed and nodded, then slowly brought her hand up to mine. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist, the soft pads of her fingertips landing on my pulse point.

  My pulse was racing, and if she didn’t know how I felt before, she definitely knew how she made me feel right now.

  “It’s okay for you to be afraid of everything. I’m scared, too. I don’t know a thing about babies. All I know is that it’s almost the size of a raspberry right now.”

  “How do you know that? Google again?”

  “No. I downloaded an app to my phone so I don’t look like a total idiot the next time we see your doctor.”

  Her lips twitched. “You downloaded an app?”

  “Yeah, it’s great. Sends me a notification to tell me how big the baby is and what it’s doing this week.”

  “What it’s doing? It’s a fetus, Kai. It’s not like it has a roaring social life in my uterus.”

  “How it’s growing,” I clarified. “And turning from a little alien blob into a baby.”

  “Go on, then. I’ll humor you.”

  “You don’t have an app on your phone that tells you that?”

  “No. I know I’m pregnant. My boobs, stomach, and bladder tell me at least twenty-five times a day. Why do I need an app?”

  I grinned and sat up, still looking down at her. “You’re basically eight weeks, so…” I thought back to the information I’d read yesterday. “It’s just over a centimeter in size and the facial features are forming. The little alien tail is almost gone, and its legs are getting longer.”

  “So it’s starting to look like a real baby?”

  “I guess so. I mean, you can’t see it yet really, but yeah. Sounds like it.”

  “Wow. No wonder I’m so tired all the time.”

  That did make sense when it was laid out like that. “Are you tired now?”

  “I’m never not tired. I get a random burst of energy where I feel like Sonic the Hedgehog, then I’m a zombie for the rest of the day.” She sat up, leaning on her hands. “And I think I’m hungry again.”

  “Something else that makes sense.” I stood up and grabbed her hands, pulling her up after me. She made an “oof” noise as she got to her feet and stumbled right into me, almost knocking the wind out of me, too.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, tugging on her dress so it fell correctly down to her knees.

  “If you’re that sorry, can you get off my foot?”

  She darted back with a snort. “Sorry. Again. Damn it.”

  “It’s fine.” I smirked and took her hand to help her down the rest of the trail. Not that she was fragile or anything, but it was getting dark in earnest now and the trail was uneven in places. She was tired, too, and I wanted to make sure she made it down and back to the truck safely.

  Thankfully, we did. Neither of us said a word as I got the truck door for her and helped her climb in.

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I knew this was hard for her, and I’d meant every word I’d said when she’d voiced her worries earlier. There was no way that any of my time spent with Ivy would be wasted, even if a relationship did go nowhere. I wasn’t going to start dating now, not when she needed me.

  Of course, that could have easily been my own feelings talking for me, but I didn’t think so.

  I was going to be there every day she needed me, for as long as she needed me.

  The idea of anyone else being there for her gutted me. Literally made me want to tear out my own eyeballs and eat them.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  Shit, if I was honest, I was falling for her.

  I had been for a while, just wrapped it up under nonsense and bullshit because it was hard to admit that I was falling in love with someone who didn’t even know.

  I rolled my shoulders as I turned toward our building. I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, but I’d said that a thousand times already. I knew her fears were real and rational, and I accepted them.

  I just wished that I wasn’t a part of any of them, even if it was her doubting her own feelings and not mine.

  The funny thing was that I didn’t doubt her feelings. I really, truly fucking believed they were real. I believed she felt the things she did, whatever they were, because they were real and honest and true, and I wasn’t going to change my mind on that.

  I wish I knew how to make her believe it.

  I pulled into the parking lot and then my space. We sat for a moment after I killed the engine. Ivy stared straight ahead, and just when I thought she was going to break the seemingly never-ending silence, she popped the door open and jumped out of the truck.

  With a sigh, I did the same and followed her into the building. The elevator was working after a few days’ maintenance, and she’d already called it by the time I joined her.

  The silver doors whirred open, revealing the empty interior, and I put my hand on the doors to let her step in first. I followed her in and hit the button for our floor, staring as the doors slid shut again.

  Still silence.

  It stretched forever between us, and the worst part was that I knew that the longer it went on, the harder it would be to break. And I didn’t mean break by just saying goodnight, I meant by actually finishing the discussion from earlier.

  Because it wasn’t finished. I knew that. She knew that. And it had to be finished at some point—sooner rather than later was my preference.

  Yet I could see how tired she was. I could see it in the small dark circles that were forming under her eyes, how the spark had diminished in them just a little. She carried her shoulders slightly hunched over, and she had her arms wrapped around her waist as if she were hugging herself for comfort.

  No matter how badly I wanted to finish it, she needed to sleep right now.

  The elevator stopped on our floor, and I once again put my hand out so Ivy could get out safely. She dug in her purse for her keys as I pulled mine from my pocket. Once she’d unlocked her door she paused and turned back to me.

  Her tired eyes met mine. “Sorry for finishing your birthday on a downer.”

  “Don’t worry. Get some sleep and text me in the morning, okay?”

  She nodded and stepped inside. All I wanted to do was wrap her in my arms and drag her to my room where I could fall asleep with her curled up next to me.

  I sighed and let myself into my apartment as soon as she was safely inside hers. It was a jolt, given that it still looked like a party store had thrown up in here.

  “Oh, you’re back.” Anna strolled into the kitchen. “How was your night?”

  “Fine.” I tossed my keys onto the coffee table and joined her, gratefully accepting the water she offered.

  “Fine? Ooh, that doesn’t sound good.” She closed the fridge and leaned over the island, toying with the bottle. “What happened?”

  I waved my hand as I uncapped my water. “It’s nothing. It’s fine.”

  “Did Ivy get hit on?”

  “No. And that doesn’t help.”

  “Then tell me what happened.”

  She wasn’t going to give this up.

  I briefly recapped the conversation I’d had with Ivy not so long ago.

  “And you’re bummed? Over that?” Anna raised an eyebrow.

  “Forget it.” I pushed off from the island and headed for my room. “Forget I said anything.”

  “You’re so dumb.”

  I stopped and dropped my head back. “Now what am I doing wrong?”

  “Why d
on’t you fight it?”

  “Fight what? Her feelings?” I turned back to her. “Her feelings are valid, Anna. I can’t force her to feel things she’s not sure about.”

  “She is sure. She knows how she feels, Kai, it’s everything else that’s muddling it for her. It’s only been two weeks since you found out she was pregnant. Just go and tell her she’s fucking insane and you know she has feelings for you.”

  “Yeah? And how would you react if someone said that to you?”

  “I’d punch them in the dick.”

  “Exactly. And I like my dick how it is, thanks.”

  “Oh, you deserve the dick punch,” Anna mused, reaching up and tying her hair in a messy knot with the hair tie from her wrist. “I just… Don’t want to see you hurt because you didn’t have the balls to fight for her.”

  “What on Earth are you talking about?”

  “I knew Kyle was cheating on me,” she said, glancing down. “I didn’t have proof or anything, but I knew. The signs were there. The relationship was over a long time, and he’d stopped fighting. If I did something that annoyed him, he ignored it, whereas before he would have told me to quit it. If something went wrong or there was a miscommunication, he wouldn’t try to fix it. There was no fight for the relationship or for me. It was only me fighting. I would have given anything for him to have told me the truth, whether that was him fighting for me or him moving on.”

  “You think Ivy wants me to fight for her?”

  “I think she wants you to fight for her feelings,” Anna clarified. “Because she’s so busy fighting her own body right now, she probably doesn’t have a lot of fight left for her heart.”

  “So I have to prove to her that what she feels for me is real?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt. I mean, if you went over there and kissed her right now and told her that you know what she feels for you is real, I bet she wouldn’t put up too much of a fight.”

  Well, that seemed as good an idea as any.

  “All right, then. I’ll do that.” I tossed the water bottle on the sofa as I grabbed my keys from it and headed for the door.

  “Wait, no—Kai! I didn’t mean do that! Kai!”

  I shut the door behind me.

  “Damn it!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – IVY

  I tied the strings of my pajama shorts and peered at myself in the mirror. A chill ran across my skin as I lifted my tank top and looked at my stomach.

  It didn’t look any different.

  Not sure why I thought it would. The baby was a raspberry, not a damn watermelon.

  My boobs, though, were another story. Blue veins painted roadmaps across my light skin, and my areolas were darkening, becoming larger by the day, it seemed.

  It was weird.

  I tugged my shirt back down.

  Tonight had been weird. Really, really weird, I thought as I grabbed a face wipe to remove my makeup. It’d started off fun, then gentle, then I’d ruined it by letting my mouth run away with me.

  The truth was that I had feelings for Kai. Crazy, intense feelings that scared me the most about all of this. They’d appeared quickly and fiercely, and my own subconscious was rapidly becoming my worst enemy.

  I was just so, so tired. All the time. Every second of the day. Loading the dishwasher was a mammoth task, not to mention carrying laundry up and down the stairs to and from the laundry room in the basement while the elevator had been out of order for maintenance.

  Fuck. That. Shit.

  I was so tired of everything else that when it came to my feelings, I really didn’t have any energy left to figure them out.

  And it was always easier to push someone away, wasn’t it? Easier to push them away than let them in. If you let them in, that meant there was no turning back. They’d always have a piece of you, and I didn’t know if I could give any more of me away right now.

  Maybe that was unfair and selfish but I was a little past caring. I was too tired. I wished someone could make the decision for me, that someone could just tell me what to do. That someone, somewhere, knew what the best choice was and could promise me it was the best thing to do right now.

  Was that weak? Maybe. Childish and pathetic? Probably.

  I wished I could untangle all the things that confused me. Lay them all out like strings in front of me, untie and untangle and straighten them until they all made sense again.

  Of course, now that I was alone in my apartment, all I really wanted was to bury myself under some warm covers in a warm bed and snuggle up against Kai’s strong body.

  You fucked that one up, Ivy, girl.

  A thump came from the living room, followed by the sound of my door being unlocked.

  What the fuck?

  I dropped the face wipe, leaving one eye still covered in makeup and grabbed the nearest heavy item which happened to be my hairdryer—thankfully unplugged for once. I held it out in front of me the way one would wield a frying pan.

  I was not nearly armed enough for someone breaking into my apartment.

  “Ivy?”

  It was Kai.

  Of course it was Kai.

  “Ivy?”

  Kai had a key.

  “Where are you?”

  Why was Kai letting himself into my apartment? This wasn’t an emergency.

  “Don’t ever do that again!” I snapped, rounding the corner into the kitchen with my weapon now at my side. “I—”

  He closed the distance between us and kissed me before I could finish my sentence. His large hands cupped the sides of my face and held me still as his lips captured mine and took control of me.

  My entire body lit on fire.

  From head to toe, I was burning.

  I leaned into his body, gripping his shirt with one hand as I tried not to drop my hairdryer with the other.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  He looked down and tugged the hairdryer from my grasp, then set it on the sofa before he came back to me. His hands rested either side of my face again, and his blue gaze bore into mine with an intensity that made my knees weak.

  “Don’t think,” he said quietly but firmly. “Don’t think about anything. Just feel, okay?”

  Before I could respond, he kissed me again. This one was deeper and hungrier than the last, and it stoked a fire deep inside me. Desire trickled through my body, spread by my racing heart, and my clit throbbed between my legs.

  His kiss was a masterclass in seduction. Long, powerful strokes of his tongue combined with gentle nibbles against my lower lip drove my body wild, and I was completely helpless.

  It was a good thing he didn’t want me to think. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to think for a week after this.

  The kiss deepened further than I thought possible, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing myself against him as firmly as my tender breasts would allow me to. As if he understood, he didn’t pull me closer when he slid his hands down my body.

  He never let up on the kiss, though. Not as I whimpered against his lips or dug my fingers into his shoulders. Not as we staggered back against the island and another whimper left my lips as déjà vu hit me hard.

  I just… I wanted to forget everything except Kai. Except the way he kissed me and the way he touched me and the way I felt when he did both of those things. Like I was more than alive, like I was flying, like I didn’t have my feet on the ground at all.

  Like nothing really mattered except this.

  “We’re good together,” he murmured between kisses. “And you know it.”

  I did know it.

  “So tell me to stop now, or I’m going to remind you just how good we are together.”

  I said nothing.

  Not a damn word.

  “Ivy?”

  “Do it,” I whispered, grabbing the collar of his shirt. “Remind me.”

  If his kiss was my kryptonite, those words were his. He wasted no time at all before he pulled off my tank top, then his t-shirt. I ran my fingers over
his body as we kissed again. His muscles were all tense and taut, meaning there were a thousand dips and crevices for my fingertips to explore.

  He moved his lips to my neck and slipped his hands down to my shorts. I dipped my head back as he hooked his thumbs inside the waistband and tugged them down over my ass to the point both the shorts and my panties fell to the floor in a puddle at my feet.

  I knew exactly what was coming next.

  “Up,” he demanded, whispering into my ear.

  I obliged, hauling myself up onto the counter, and opened my legs.

  The last time I was in this position, I’d gotten pregnant.

  On the bright side, that least that couldn’t happen again right now.

  I shoved some paperwork out of the way with a light push of my fingers. It scattered off the side and onto the floor, showering the laminate with sheets and envelopes of stuff that I’d studiously ignored for at least three weeks.

  Kai glanced down at it. “Just like in the movies.”

  I laughed, dropping my head back. He parted my thighs and stepped between my legs, silencing my laughter with one kiss to the pulse point of my neck. His breath was hot and heavy as he dragged his mouth over the curves of my breasts, dropping gentle kisses there.

  My nipples were tender as hell, but he treated them like crystal that could break with the slightest heavy touch. Every stroke of his tongue over my sensitive skin was torturous, and I was more turned on than I’d ever been from that.

  He moved down my body, leaving my nipples pebbled and so taut they almost hurt, but I didn’t have a second to think about that. Kai’s tongue was on my clit in a second, and he lowered his body so he could tug my hips forward.

  My entire pussy was exposed to him. Like the rest of me, it was tender and aching, and he used his tongue masterfully. Every lick was a tease that promised more, and I was completely at his mercy as he worked to bring me to the brink of orgasm.

  I glanced down as a moan escaped me. There was something so hot about seeing his head between my legs and his tongue teasing my clit that it pushed me over the edge. The pleasure rocketed through my body, and I cried out as he covered my pussy with his mouth and pulsed his tongue against my opening.