by Naomi West
They lay there, panting, carelessly wrapping the covers over their quickly cooling bodies. After a few moments of stillness, Felice fell asleep in his arms. Pierce was quick to follow her into dreams, his left hand lying protectively over her swollen belly.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Felice
“Hey, Pierce! The show’s on!” Felice called, settling down on her all white couch with a huge bucket of popcorn. “You’re going to miss our triumph!”
Felice was heavy with their baby; her stomach was so big that she could balance the popcorn bowl on it like a table. Pregnancy hadn’t slowed her down one bit; Steel Dom was still thriving under her care, and she even supervised and did a good part of the work putting Baby Lenny’s room together.
Life was good in the little white mansion out in the middle of the desert. The solid white kitchen was filled with the delightful scent of brewing coffee, but Felice no longer needed the scent to cheer her up. No, all she needed was her man by her side.
Pierce stepped into the TV room, a frown on his pretty face. “I am so glad you quit the show, Felice. Having all of those cameras around and seeing myself on TV is super weird. I’m not sure I ever want to do that again.”
“Eh, the producers are really riding me to do a spin off series with the two of us, did I not tell you?”
Pierce groaned. “And you told them no, right?”
“Weeeeell — ” Felice made some more noncommittal noises as Pierce groaned. “It wouldn’t be so bad; it would be better than the family show. Just a few episodes and the payoff is huge.”
Pierce made a face, and Felice felt her stomach flip over at the beauty of that clenched jaw. She curled a little closer to him as he sat down next to her on the couch, careful not to spill the popcorn all over herself. “You already have more money than anyone needs.”
“I won’t if you keep spending it all on charity, Pierce! Someone has to pay for all of those toy drives and cancer charities you keep hosting.” Felice playfully punched him in the shoulder. The theme for the Domiano show came on, drawing Felice’s attention back to the TV. She stuffed a big handful of popcorn in her mouth and watched as she and her family danced across the screen and the show started.
Felice sighed as the show progressed, showing Pierce slide in, pushing Clay out of her life and taking his spot forever. It was a joy to relive some of the moments, not so nice to relive the others. But it was always funny to watch how much the editing changed things. It looked more like a fairytale than the nightmare it actually had been.
“Ahh, Pierce. You saved me from myself. You forced me to break some rules and build the life I wanted instead of the one everyone decided for me.” Pierce actually laughed out loud as Felice punched Clay right in his face, blood spurting dramatically from his nose.
Love filled up her chest, warming her body through and through. Regardless of what happened next, she was pretty sure she’d chosen correctly.
The TV show swiped to Clay’s mugshot, his face looking horribly pale in the photo. “And Clay was sentenced to twelve years in prison.”
It seemed like a fitting punishment, though his father’s lawyers were working hard to get him out of the time. Perhaps he’d spend a year or two in jail before Daddy swooped in and saved him.
“I wonder if power and money just makes people crazy.”
She would have pondered over that thought for a little longer, but then a sharp pain pierced her body, something hot and pressing and urgent filling up her whole mind. She wasn’t sure how, but somehow Felice knew the baby was coming. “Ahh! Pierce!” It was a cry of mingled joy and pain that had Pierce turning to her urgently, his face filled with worry. “The baby!”
Felice turned to look at him, her mouth turning up in a smile, even as sweat beaded on her forehead. “He’s coming?” Pierce asked, his face filled with incredulity.
“I think so, I — ahh! Call the midwife!” Felice took a deep breath, picking up the popcorn bowl and setting it to the side. Her water broke, and she knew this was going to happen, with or without help. And soon! “Call her quick!”
Pierce picked up the phone, holding out his free hand to her and guiding her around the couch. It was difficult to stand, to walk, but she managed to inch around the couch and to the downstairs bathroom. “The baby is coming!” she could hear Pierce saying, even though the rush of her blood in her ears blocked out most of the sounds around her. “Two weeks early; is that — is it bad?” Whatever the midwife told him over the phone seemed to relax him, the worry lines between his brows smoothing out. “How fast can you get here?”
Wobbling a little on her feet, Felice sat down on the edge of the tub just as another wave of pain crashed over her, this contraction slamming hard into her body. It was way worse than anything Little Lenny had done to her so far, including all of the spine kicking, and she felt weaker with every new contraction.
“Is this how it’s supposed to feel? Oh, God, what if something is wrong?” Sweat beaded on her face as she sat there, contemplating the moving, squirming thing inside of her belly. “Baby Lenny, please be alright.”
After an eternity and three new contractions, each one worse than the last, the midwife and her team finally showed up. Martha, the head midwife, was all matter-of-fact, bringing in with her a small army and more supplies than Felice could fathom. “Good thing this bathroom’s really big.”
“Alright, young lady,” the midwife said, snapping some rubber gloves into place on her hands. “Let’s get you out of your clothing, carefully, and into the tub. Pierce? Please fill the tub with warm water.”
Feeling a little light headed from the pain, Felice held onto the woman’s hand as hard as she could while her assistants stripped Felice’s clothing from her aching body. “There’s a good girl, Felice,” the nurse’s assistant whispered, smiling at her. “The water will help to relax you and keep you from needing as much pain medication. Are you ready?”
“I think this baby is coming whether I’m ready or not,” Felice whispered back, trying to smile at the woman. All she managed was a pained grimace.
Pierce was right by her side as she was lowered into the water, his hand locked around her hand. “I’m right here,” he said, a forced smile on his beautiful, perfect face.
Felice cried out a little as the pain in her grew. “Stay right here, so I can see you,” she answered, clutching his hand so hard she could feel his bones grinding in his hand. But her brave, beautiful Pierce didn’t even wince.
No, he would always be there for her, no matter what.
# # #
Pierce
For Pierce, the whole experience was grueling and unnerving. It hurt every inch of his body not to be able to do anything whenever Felice cried out in pain. He seemed to feel echoes of her pain throughout his own body. But there was joy in her, too; he knew how excited she was to meet her son.
Pierce, although Felice had worked hard to convince him otherwise, was nervous. He had a million questions about being a father, about being ready, and no one had been able to answer any of them. “How will I know I’m ready? What happens if my son doesn’t like me? What if, what if, what if?”
But now he had no more time to wonder; this was happening, no matter if he was ready or not. So he did what he could, standing close to Felice, fetching her whatever she asked for, and waited. As the contractions came closer and closer together, Pierce got more and more nervous. Luckily for him, the midwife and her helpers were completely calm. They kept telling him that everything was going well, everything was fine. And he tried hard to believe them.
It took several hours that felt like days for the baby to make an appearance, and then several more hours before the baby was delivered.
There were no cameras to document the moment, no paparazzi, and no producers. But Pierce knew it didn’t matter; this time would be seared into his memory for the rest of his life. He didn’t need the cameras.
With a cry, Pierce’s son entered the world.
&nb
sp; After a moment, the midwife handed Pierce the tiny bundle that was his child. “Lenny?” Pierce asked, his eyes looking down at the tiny, crying, squirming little thing that was so warm and welcome in his arms. The baby seemed to fit in the cradle of his arms so perfectly. He was strong, his fingers gripping Pierce’s hard as he yawned for the first time.
The little boy had a shock of black hair on his head, making him look so much like Pierce himself that he had to smile. Something broke in him as he looked down at that perfect little face, so wrinkled and pink. This little creature was his son. It all seemed too hard to take in; none of it felt real yet. But then the boy in his arms wriggled just a little and Pierce’s heart filled with a kind of light he’d never felt before.
Felice groaned a little from her throne of pillows as the midwife checked her out. She blinked at him with exhausted green eyes, her face pale and beaded with sweat. But in spite of all of that, Felice was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“How is he?” she groaned, her body collapsed against the pillows like it was too much to try to move.
“Beautiful, just like his mom,” Pierce said, bringing Lenny closer. The little bundle wriggled and shook his arms.
“I doubt I’m very beautiful right now,” she chuckled weakly. Felice’s eyes grew wider, greener, and more filled with love as she looked upon her son — their son — for the first time. Some of the life seemed to come back to her weary limbs, and she sat up, holding out her arms for Lenny’s tiny body.
“Here you go, mama. Look at the beautiful boy you brought into the world.”
Tears slipped down the sides of Felice’s face as Lenny cradled in her arms, so perfect and so beautiful.
The midwife, Martha, smiled down on Felice, her steel-grey eyes lighting up at another safe and healthy delivery. “How is mama feeling?”
Felice nodded. “I’m just fine. I ache a little, but nothing like I thought it would be.”
“Well then, if you don’t mind, we’ll move you upstairs to your bed and get this cleaned up then. You feel up to being moved?”
Pierce could feel his heart rate skyrocketing at the thought of moving Felice so soon, but he turned to her. She would know best. And the midwife wouldn’t move her if it wasn’t okay.
“How about a few more minutes?” Felice said, her eyes locked on the lovely little boy in her arms. Laughing, the midwife patted them both on the arms and started cleaning up around Felice as best as she could.
Pierce pulled out his phone, taking about a thousand pictures of his little boy. He shot a few of them over the Dolores and some to Razor before returning all of his attention back to his son.
A text came back almost immediately from Dolores.
“Good, I’ll stop by in an hour, if you think Felice will be up to visitors yet?”
The another, just a few seconds later. “Good work, sticking by her through this. You’re all right, I suppose.”
Pierce chuckled at the texts, trying hard not to roll his eyes at Felice’s mother. He texted her back an affirmative; Felice would be up to seeing her in an hour or so.
“Excellent. I’ll bring something. I suppose you haven’t eaten.”
But that didn’t matter; he could go without food for a while longer, if it meant spending a few more, uninterrupted moments in peace with his Felice and his little Lenny.
Because for that moment, the world was a perfect place.
Epilogue
Felice
Felice stood in her office, looking down on the great city of Henderson, Nevada. Her office was on the top floor, her wall of windows behind her desk opening up into the skyline. Buildings stood like sentinels in the desert, sprawled across the huge, orange-brown space. The Black Mountain rose up in the background, towering over even the tallest of them, its beautiful, rocky slopes catching the light of the setting sun and holding it close.
There was something exceptional about her view that made Felice want to spend every sunset in her office to watch the peaches and pinks spread across the sky like a carelessly dumped paint across a canvas.
Jennifer, sitting across the office from Felice, finished off the list she was reading out loud. “And that should be all of it. Did I miss anything?” Nothing about her best friend had changed over the last year; not her long, voluminous black hair nor her fetish for weird-colored contacts. She was dressed a little better today, however, switching out her normal armfuls of bracelets for something a little more low-key. She always loved playing dress-up, even when she and Felice were kids, and now she seemed to love dressing up “like an adult,” as she put it, for work every day.
“I don’t think so. We should be alright by the time the spring fashion lines start being released in a couple of months,” Felice tapped a long nail on her lips, trying to remember if she’d forgotten anything important. “Can you call Rachel in the Manhattan office and have her go over the checklist, too? She’ll most likely have something to add after the week she’s spent covering the shows out in Italy.”
“Good thinking, Felice; I’m on it.” Jennifer got up from her seat and swished out of the office.
Felice stared out after her, her mind caught up in all of the things she had to do today. The list seemed to grow every day, stemming from the success not only of Steel Dom Couture and her tiny little family, but also of the spin off reality TV series she’d finally talked Pierce into allowing. The world seemed to love their little boy almost as much as they did, and the first season of Fugitive Seduction had been well received by fans of the original series.
Yes, things were going perfectly. Busy, yes, but busy didn’t mean bad. Not when Felice was happier now than she’d ever been in her whole life. Standing in front of her favorite window, Felice contemplated the paperwork that was currently covering up a good portion of her desk. Paperwork that would open locations for Steel Dom in Paris and Tokyo, bringing her fashion line into the international scene.
A dream come true, by anyone’s standards, but not a deal she could rush into without a lot of thought. Opening international locations would pull her away from her family several times a month, scattering all of her time all over the planet instead of only the country. But Steel Dom was growing by leaps and bounds and needed this deal to keep growing.
“Communications technology has also grown; perhaps I wouldn’t have to physically go to these places as often as I think.” She pondered the paperwork a little more closely, trying to decide which of the Steel Dom ladies would not only be willing to relocate overseas, but would be a good fit for heading the brand outside of the US.
It was a big decision, and one she couldn’t make lightly.
So caught up in her thoughts was she that she didn’t hear the door of her office open. She didn’t notice anyone had entered until the door shut loudly behind them, breaking her out of her thoughts.
But as soon as she turned around, she smiled broadly. This interruption was always welcome.
Lenny squealed in happiness at seeing his mother and held out dirty little hands that had obviously been into some mischief. Felice laughed, her eyes traveling up from her already one-year-old son to his father.
Pierce hadn’t changed much on the outside, but a year on diaper duty with his son had remade him into something softer and gentler than Felice had ever known him to be. And she was glad of it; Pierce was the best stay-at-home dad she could have asked for.
“Good afternoon, beautiful,” Pierce said, coming to kiss her on the cheek. “How’s business?”
# # #
Pierce
Pierce pushed little Lenny forward in his Harley Davidson stroller, grinning down at his little champ. Lenny was like a daily miracle to Pierce, bringing a kind of wonder to the world that he’d never experienced. Lenny found everything fascinating, from bugs to dirt to boxes and crayons. In fact, Lenny’s favorite game involved coloring the insides of boxes he sat in for hours, doodling little pictures and singing made-up songs to himself.
Never in his
life had Pierce imagined he’d end up at home all day, caring for a baby, but now that he had it, he wouldn’t trade it for the world. Love and warmth filled his chest as he pushed his son through the doors of the headquarters (soon to be international headquarters) of Steel Dom Couture.
Lenny squealed with delight at the elevator ride to the floor where Felice’s offices were. He laughed at everything, pointing and asking questions in his half-formed language of giggles, noises, and the three English words he’d managed to get down pat.
“Good afternoon, beautiful; how’s business?” Pierce asked as he stepped into the huge offices of Felice Domiano, TV star, successful businesswoman, and the perfect woman he had the luck of waking up to every day.
“Business is great! How is Razor doing now that she’s taken over the repair shop?” Felice asked, her face lighting up as soon as she saw her baby.
