by Emerson Rose
“No, babe. It’s not bad for you to want to shield him from some of this. You’ll be feeling better in a couple of days, and he will never even know. Can you drink some water, or is the nausea too bad?”
“I’m gonna wait. Will you just lie with me?”
“Turn over.”
She rolls onto her other side, and I pull up the duvet and slide in behind her to spoon. God, she feels so good, and even though she hasn’t been near coffee or anything cinnamon today, the underlying scent of both are present when I nuzzle into her neck. It’s just her. She exudes the sweetness of cinnamon and the stimulation of coffee, neither of which I will ever get enough.
“Do you have any more Dr. Seuss rhymes for me today?” she asks.
“How about a game of love quotes?”
“Okay, how do you play?” She threads her fingers through mine and tucks both under her pillow.
“I’ll say a famous author’s quote about love, and you guess the author. If you get it, you get to choose one for me.”
“Okay, who’s going first?”
“Me. I love her and that’s the beginning and the end of everything.”
“That’s easy. F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
“Shit, you’re better at this than I thought. Okay your turn.”
“Love is like the wind. You can’t see it, but you feel it.”
“Aw, easy peasy. Nicholas Sparks.”
“Okay, okay. You go, then, smarty pants.”
“Love is a serious mental disease.” She’s quiet for a moment, and just when I think I’ve stumped her, she blurts out the correct answer.
“Plato. I don’t know why I couldn’t think of that. It was on the tip of my tongue.”
“Mm, I do love the tip of your tongue.” I adjust my body around hers until there’s not a millimeter of space between us.
“I feel you back there,” she says with warning in her tone.
“I’m not asking for anything, babe. You know that.”
“I know, but I’m sorry anyway. I just don’t feel great.”
“I’m rolling my eyes so hard it hurts, just so you know. I wish you would quit apologizing for things that are totally out of your control. This shit sucks, but I’m standing by your side no matter what, so stop focusing your energy on how this is affecting me. Instead, focus it on you and how you’re going to get better. I love you. I got you. We got this.” I kiss the back of her head, and she takes a long, shuddering breath and blows it out.
“Even when my hair falls out?”
“Yeah, babe, even then.”
“Even when I’m barfing?”
“Yeah, even when you’re barfing.” She squeezes my hand and snuggles against my hard cock.
“Barfing and bald isn’t very sexy,” she says.
“I don’t care about your hair, and I’ll never ask for sex if you’re barfing, so don’t worry about it.”
“Shush . . . did you hear that?” she says. Every muscle in her body just tensed, and her head popped up off the pillow an inch.
“No, what is it?”
“I swear I heard the door open upstairs.”
“It’s probably your mom bringing Toby home.”
“No, you said they went to the movies. It’s too early for them to have seen a movie.” She’s sitting up now, with one hand protectively on her belly and the other on my shoulder.
“Then the wind, maybe. Lie down, you need to res—”
The door to Lourdes’s bedroom is shoved open so hard that it hits the wall with a loud bang. All of my uneasy feelings about Amira are confirmed when she bursts in, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“What the fuck is going on around here? I fucking fly halfway around the world to sit on my dad’s deathbed, and you’re here fucking some fake surrogate tramp in my own house? Bitch, you’d better be up and outta here before I count to five, or I’mma beat your scrawny little pregnant ass!” Amira yells and hitches her thumb toward the door with her hand on her hip—her very round hip that molds into a very round, pregnant belly. Holy fucking fuck, Amira’s gone and gotten herself pregnant. Oh, this is rich, her coming in here and accusing me of cheating with Lourdes when it’s as plain as day that she’s been fucking around on me.
“Amira, you need to leave,” I say with a lethal chill in my voice as I rise from the bed and stand between her and Lourdes.
She scrunches up her face in irritation and fury. “Oh, I’m not leaving, Liam. She is,” she says, leaning around me to point her long, sharp, manicured nail at Lourdes.
I turn to Lourdes, “Babe, just sit tight and stay here. I’ll be right back. Don’t stress, okay? Just lie back down and rest.”
She shakes her head back and forth and closes her eyes.
“No, Liam, I should go. I’ll leave so you two can work things out—”
“That’s right, bitch. You’re gonna go, and don’t ever fucking come back!”
“Amira!” I roar, and she is finally paying attention.
“Get the fuck out of this room and go upstairs, or I swear, I don’t care whose fucking baby you’re carrying, I’ll make you.” I point at the door, and a slow, nasty smile spreads across her face.
“I think you’re gonna be very interested in who my baby daddy is, Liam.”
Chapter 30
Lourdes
This is my worst nightmare. No, this is a million times worse than my worst nightmare. I know what Amira is going to say next before she says it. I’m tempted to act like a child and cover my ears so I don’t have to, but there’s no point. She’s going to sing it from the rooftops, and I’m going to puke.
“Fuck off, Amira. You know it can’t be mine. We’ve slept together a total of two times since we got married six months ago,” Liam says.
“Oh, handsome, it is yours though. You were home at the beginning of the year. Remember that hot little number I was wearing for you when you walked through the front door? I do. I remember how you tore it off me and bent me over the couch and—”
“Shut up, Amira!”
That’s my cue. I grab the barf bag they gave me at the hospital and retch into it. Acid burns its way up my esophagus, and I gasp and go again, and again. They weren’t exaggerating about staying calm and stress-free for forty-eight hours after treatment.
Liam is at my side right away, sliding his arm around my waist and speaking comforting words in my ear. Nothing he can say or do is going to make this better though. When I think I’ve got it under control, I hear Amira in the background mutter something about being a wimp because I haven’t gotten over my morning sickness yet. If it were only just morning sickness.
Liam turns to her. “Amira, you need to seriously shut the fuck up and leave. I don’t believe that baby is mine any more than I believe I married you willingly.”
I want to defend myself but I can’t speak yet. I still feel like throwing up, and I don’t want to look at her again. Once was bad enough. Her disapproving eyes, her enormous belly, her ugly, jealous snarl, and finally, her smug, wicked smile when she dropped her bomb on us. She is pure evil, and according to her, she’s carrying Liam’s baby just like I am. There is one big heart-wrenching difference though. Her baby is healthy, and she is much further along than I am. There are so many things that could go wrong with my pregnancy because of the cancer and the chemotherapy. He might be better off staying with his wife, who is obviously going to have the healthier of the two kids.
“I’m not going anywhere, Liam. You two are done playin’ house. Your real wife is home now. The tramp has to go,” she says, swiveling her neck back and forth and waving her finger in the air.
Liam is on his feet so fast it almost launches me out of the bed. He’s crossed the room, and before I can yell for him to stop, he’s raising his hand to slap her, but he freezes when he realizes what he’s about to do.
Amira is finally stunned into silence, she’s never seen Liam this angry.
“I told you to shut the fuck up, Amira, and I meant it. You don’t
get to walk in here after five months and make demands. I told you I wanted a divorce, my lawyer sent you the papers to sign, and you knew Lourdes was pregnant. I think it’s been pretty clear how I feel about you—or how much I don’t feel for you, rather. So if you don’t want any more trouble, turn your ass around and go back to wherever you came from until you sign those papers,” he says, spitting the words at her through his teeth like venom. If he spoke to me that way, I would be scared, so I look up to see what her reaction is.
She is still standing there with wide eyes and her mouth hanging open, until Liam yells, “Now!” and she jumps in her very insensible heels. She’s a bitch, but I have to admit she’s a gorgeous, sexy pregnant woman in her skintight black sweater and leather pants with five-inch strappy heels.
Turns out she isn’t as immune to Liam’s anger as I first thought. Tears brim in her eyes, and she proves to be much more sensible than her shoes when she backs out of the bedroom. Liam waits until she’s a few steps away from him to follow. I listen to her heels clack across the hardwood floors and up the stairs until the front door slams violently shut.
Liam doesn’t return, and after thirty minutes, I go looking for him. I search every room in the house. No Liam. I wonder if he went for a walk, or worse, if he went with Amira when she left. I’m on my way to find my phone to call him when I spot him standing outside. It’s another crappy day, the first since I learned I had cancer. I still think Mother Nature and I have a special connection going on. When I’m grey, so is the weather.
Liam is standing on the deck, with his hands deep in his pockets, in the rain. He’s soaking wet, facing away from me and toward the pool. I pad across the floor and watch him through the glass door for some sign of life, but he’s still as stone. I slide the door open and join him without looking at him. I just stand next to him in the downpour and wait for him to say something. It doesn’t take long.
“You should go inside.”
“So should you,” I say and lick the rain from my lips. I look at him now. He has droplets dangling from his long eyelashes and running down his face, his clothes are saturated, and it’s chilly for LA. I want him to go inside.
“Come inside, Liam. Dry off.”
“You go. I’ll be in soon.”
He sounds so far away and hollow.
“I’m not going in until you do,” I say.
He sighs and looks down at the decking under his feet, and I narrow my eyes to be sure, but I think some of those raindrops are tears. My heart hurts when I realize he’s not being stubborn or pouty. He’s suffering.
“Oh, Liam, God, I’m so sorry,” I say, stepping in front of him to wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his wet shirt. He doesn’t return the embrace at first, but when he feels me shivering, he scoops me up like I’m nothing and carries me back inside.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Lourdes. It should be me apologizing to you for bringing you into this mess. You don’t deserve to have to be in the same room as that vile woman, and yet here you are, being victimized while you fight for your life and for our baby’s life. It’s not right.” I look up at his angular jaw and see his red-rimmed eyes as he steadily makes his way to his bedroom—his and Amira’s bedroom. I’ve never stepped foot inside their room. There has never been a reason since he moved all of his things downstairs weeks ago.
He sits me on the edge of the bed and kneels between my legs, wrapping his arms around me and pressing his face against my baby bump.
“You can’t control that woman. I don’t expect you to, Liam. And she is still technically your wife, and this is her house, so I can see why she would be upset.”
He pulls away and takes my face in his hands. I lift mine and wrap my fingers around his wrists and look deeply into his tortured eyes.
“You are my wife in my heart, Lourdes. You’re my other half, my soul mate, not her. Do you know that the French don’t say I miss you? They say tu me manques. It means you are missing from me. I don’t ever want you to be missing from me. You are so essential to my survival that I would cease to exist without you. I’m so afraid of losing you, of losing our baby, but it seems like we can’t catch a break, ever. We keep getting right to the edge of happiness when another wall is built, blocking us out.”
Two huge tears stream down his cheeks, and I’m done. I’m exhausted, full of poison, empty of nutrients, and emotionally shot from everything that’s been going on in our lives. I just can’t cope another second.
I reach for the hem of Liam’s shirt and pull it up over his head and toss it on the floor in a slushy heap. I raise my arms and he does the same for me. I reach behind me and pull down the deep blue comforter and stand up. We both finish undressing and crawl in the bed, facing each other tangling our limbs like a pretzel. Liam pulls the comforter up around us, and we begin to warm each other, providing one another with what the other needs most—heat, love, understanding, and most of all, relief.
Sometimes you just have to stop the world for a while and step away to heal before going on. This is one of those times. Liam is tortured by the thought of losing me and by the possibility that Amira’s baby is his. He’s reeling inside at the thought of our baby not surviving my treatment. He rages about being stuck in a marriage with a psychotic bitch. But we’re taking a time out to refuel so we can start again tomorrow. Johnny Depp’s quote, It’s just a bad day, not a bad life, pops into my head. We are going to take this one day at a time until there are more good days than bad.
“This is our few moments of good today. You promised me we would always have at least a few moments everyday that would be good, remember?” I ask.
“I do, thank you. I wish I could give you more than a few. You deserve twenty-four hours a day of happiness.”
I snuggle against his chest. “I don’t need that many. As long as you’re by my side, I’ll take the good with the bad.”
“Even when there’s so much more bad than good?” he asks.
“Even if there’s only a shred of good,” I answer, because right now, that’s about all we have.
Chapter 31
Liam
I have never in my life put angry hands on a woman. I vowed I would never be driven to the point of violence after watching my father beat my mother. If there ever were a person who could make me break that promise, it is Amira. I came close yesterday and I never want to feel that kind of anger again.
I keep racking my brain trying to figure out if that baby could be mine. I said it couldn’t, but after thinking about it, I was home early this year and we did ‘run into each other’ once. I wish I knew exactly how pregnant she is so I could do the math, but I threw her out so fast that I didn’t get a chance to ask.
How in the hell is this going to play out if they’re both having my baby? This is a fucking publicity horror flick, and I’m the stupid bimbo walking through the house asking, ‘is anybody home?’ in the dark. I should have never slept with Amira without protection. I should have never slept with Amira at all. I’m never getting her to sign the divorce papers now. I’m so fucked. Two babies. I could potentially be fathering three kids in a matter of a few months. Amira has to be in her third trimester. She’s huge. Lourdes is in her second, and we have Toby, who I already love like a son.
After I slipped out of bed earlier, I called Lourdes’s mom, Tara, and asked her to keep Toby overnight. It’s three a.m. and she’s still fast asleep when I bring her something to eat.
“Hey there, LK,” I say, pulling the comforter away from her face. “Do you want some soup?”
She mumbles and her eyes flutter open.
“Hi.”
“Hi, did you say soup?” she asks.
“Yeah, and I brought peanut butter too.”
Now her eyes are open. She’s even sitting up. Peanut butter has been the magic bullet since day one. I think she could live on it the entire pregnancy.
I sit down next to her and place a tray over her lap. When she sits up, the comforter
inadvertently pools around her waist, exposing her breasts to the cool air of the bedroom. I’ve never known Lourdes to be self-conscious about her body, but she quickly pulls the comforter up, covering herself.
She notices me watching her, so I ask, “Why did you cover up?”
Her eyes dart away from me. I reach out and take her chin between my finger and my thumb to turn her back. I tilt my head to the side and narrow my eyes.
“Babe, what’s going on?” I ask.
She shakes her head back and forth minutely. “I don’t know. It’s just that everything that’s happening is making me a little self-conscious.”
“Self-conscious about what? You’re more beautiful than the day I met you.”
She tightens her grip on the comforter with one hand and fiddles with her necklace with the other. “Did you see Amira? She’s the poster woman for a healthy pregnancy, Liam. And I’m . . . well, I’m the poster woman for pregnant women with cancer.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“You can’t even compare the two of you. It’s not fair. You’re so honest and kind and approachable, and your body is banging, babe. Hate to tell ya, but she doesn’t have a thing on you. I love your soft curves and your sweet candy apple ass, your smooth, toffee skin and your perky, perfect breasts,” I say, reaching under the comforter to caress her breast and roll her nipple between my fingers.
Her eyes darken with desire, and I almost feel guilty for turning her on when she’s not supposed to have sex for a few days after her chemo . . . almost.
“And did I ever tell you that you have the most intoxicating scent? Even when you’ve just bathed and there is nothing on your skin, you smell like cinnamon and the faintest hint of coffee.”
“I do? I never noticed that.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t notice. That’s why you have me, to appreciate all the finest details of your body and mind. Now here, eat,” I say, placing the tray of homemade chicken noodle soup and single-serve containers of peanut butter in front of her.
