by Ann Collins
“We are going to have some wonderful times here in this place,” she whispered. “And we are going to take care of your mother, and maybe adopt another animal from the shelter, and keep going back there to help out, and to remember our first real date. We are going to build a life together, you as a great MMA fighter and me as a reliable CPA. You will go to fights and I will cheer you on, and if I can’t be there, you can rest assured I will be at home waiting for you when you return. And eventually…” She closed her eyes, dreaming of it. “Eventually we will have little ones running around, maybe a boy who looks like you and a girl who looks like me, and we will have to get a bigger place…”
“Little ones, huh?”
She heard the love in his voice and knew he had been thinking the same things. “At least two. Maybe three.”
“Well,” he said, boosting himself up on his elbow and looking at her, “I think twins would be a good start.”
“Twins!”
“Why not? Get the first batch out of the way in one fell swoop.”
“The first batch? How many are we going to have?”
He thought about that for a moment and simply said, “We’re going to need a pretty big house.”
Kayla smiled at him and ran her hand down his body, lower and lower, until she found what she sought. She wrapped her fingers around him and felt his cock begin to grow hard, preparing for another round. She let her fingers trail leisurely up and down the length of him, until he was throbbing with the need to do something more.
“We should probably start practicing for all that baby-making,” she said, and he gave her that wicked grin she loved so much.
And practicing is exactly what they did…all night long.
Epilogue
Eighteen Months Later
“It’s okay, baby,” he said to her, smoothing her hair back from her head. “I promise you it’s going to be okay. I always keep my promises, don’t I?”
Kayla glared at Dyson. Her eyes were bloodshot. She was covered in sweat. Her lips were chapped. Her whole body ached. She was barely dressed and amazingly enough, she didn’t care one bit. At this point modesty was the least of her concerns. She closed her eyes tight, then opened them again, as if hoping this was all just a dream.
“I fucking hate you,” she spat at him.
Amazingly, Dyson broke into a big, beautiful smile. “I know. But you will love me again in about five minutes. I promise.”
She truly wanted to kill him.
She hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Her body had been racked with pain she couldn’t control. Her mind was so exhausted that she didn’t know how she was still awake. But then another pain ripped through her body, and that reminded her.
She could barely breathe. Dyson held her hand and she squeezed it as hard as she could. He talked her through it, breathing with her, trying to get her past something that was so big, so impossible, that she had no idea how she would get to the end of it. Two hours ago she had sobbed on Dyson’s shoulder and swore she couldn’t do this, even as she knew she had no choice.
“That was a big one,” the doctor said. “We’re almost there now.”
Kayla opened her eyes to look up at the bright lights. A machine beside the bed beeped rhythmically, telling everyone in the room that the baby inside her was just fine, the little heartbeat steady as could be. She and Dyson had listened to that comforting little beat for hours as they paced the floors with his hand on her back. It had been the cadence that soothed them when she sank into a tub of warm water and let him wash her body. It was what made them believe there was a light at the end of the very long tunnel. That sound had sustained her through one contraction after another, and now it was what kept her going through the exhaustion. It was the promise of their little one, just a few pushes away.
“I can’t,” she cried now, the tears running down her face.
Dyson didn’t bat an eye.
“You can and you are,” he said, letting her squeeze his hand. He would have marks where her nails dug in hard, but he would gladly take those badges of honor. He would have taken over all her pain if he could have, but knowing that it was impossible, he instead tried to do everything he possibly could for her during those long hours. But now that the end was here, it was all Kayla. He was entirely powerless. All he could really do was watch.
And that’s what he was doing. He was watching this amazing woman of his do something that was so intense, so powerful, so challenging that it humbled him to simply be in the same room with her. Nothing he had ever done in his life, and nothing he would ever do, would be as monumental as what she was doing right now. The fact that he was allowed to watch such a miracle happen…well, there were no words. But there were tears. He wiped them from his face just as another contraction hit.
The force of it arched Kayla’s back and made her cry out with a primal sound that he had never heard from her before. The doctor’s voice was calm and soothing from the end of the bed. “You’re almost there, Kayla! Push for me now. Push hard!”
The nurse patted Kayla’s bare knee. Dyson bit his lip as Kayla squeezed his hand so hard it hurt, but he accepted it gratefully, knowing that it was nothing in comparison to what he was witnessing. Kayla pushed so hard her face turned a brilliant red and her breath stopped altogether. She pushed and pushed until she had to breathe, then fell back against the sweat-soaked bed, more exhausted than he had ever seen her.
“Two more,” the doctor said. “Two more, Kayla, and he will be here.”
Two more. Only two. She could do that, she promised herself, and then felt the urge to push again. This time she welcomed it, riding the wave of pain that wrapped around her belly, pushing through it with everything she had. The pain that had taken over her whole world seemed to dissipate as she put every ounce of concentration into what her body was made to do. She bore down hard, and the doctor said something she couldn’t hear, and then she felt a rush that she could never describe – it was pain and pressure, it was calming and soothing, it was the promise of something new, it was a job well done.
She collapsed back onto the bed. Her exhaustion was suddenly gone.
“One more push!”
Dyson’s hand was on her back as she bore down one last time. Her whole world narrowed down to this one final push. It seemed impossible that everything they had gone through, and all she had endured, came down to this final moment.
And then, within a few glorious seconds, it was over.
“You did it, Kayla! Your baby boy is here!”
Dyson burst into tears. They were true, deep, honest tears that came from his heart in all the good ways. He was a tough man, a seasoned Marine, a fighter at the top of his game – but the introduction to his newborn son reduced him to a sobbing mess. Kayla was crying too, silent tears that ran down her tired face. Dyson wrapped his arms around her, pulling her as close as he dared.
She clung to him, her pain forgotten, everything forgotten except the people in that little room. “Dyson, Dyson…he’s here!”
And holding each other so, they heard the sound of their baby boy, crying for the first time.
The sound was loud and lusty, the kind of wail that said he had been disturbed and by God, he wasn’t happy about it. It was a wail of passionate fury, and it was the most beautiful thing either of the new parents had ever heard.
“He’s here and he’s perfect,” the nurse said, moving around below the bed, doing things that needed to be done as their son squalled with vigor. “And he’s loud. Good grief, he’s loud!”
Kayla laughed weakly. Her body had calmed during the natural respite offered after birth, and the pain was already a distant memory. She held out her arms and the nurse immediately put the little one in them, right against her chest. Little fists waved in the air. A delicate mouth was wide open, but the wails were already softening. Little eyes were wide open to the world, looking at everything, and then settling on his mother.
“Oh, there you are…there you are,
my precious one…”
Kayla cooed to the baby, saying all the things she had dreamed of saying, long before they had even become pregnant with him. This was a child who was so wanted and loved that it could never be put into words.
Dyson put his hand on the baby. They both looked at the juxtaposition of that, the size of that big, scarred hand against the delicate, small body of their baby boy. Would he ever possibly grow up to be that big? Dyson could hold him in one hand! How could someone so special, someone who had changed their entire world, be so impossibly small?
Kayla was looking at her child as another contraction hit. The nurse swiftly took the child and smiled at Kayla. “Just a few more minutes,” she said apologetically. “Let me get him cleaned up for you.”
True to her word, just a few minutes later the ordeal was over. The nurse gently cleaned her up and helped her into a fresh gown. The whole time, Kayla couldn’t take her eyes from Dyson, who was standing a few feet away and holding their newborn son.
She stared at the beautiful tableau before her. She took in the handsome, strong man and the little child cradled in his arms, the way Dyson looked down at the baby as though it was the most amazing thing he had ever seen. She thought about all the things that could have gone wrong for them, the moment she had almost let him go, the times he had pulled her through the darkest moments. This was a man who loved her beyond her wildest imagination, and now he had their child to love, too. The tears started again, but this time they were happy ones.
“I’m sorry I said I hated you,” she said, and opened her arms, beckoning him to bring the baby over there with him.
“I know,” he said with a grin as he passed their child to her.
The nurse patted Kayla’s knee one more time and vanished from the room, giving them the privacy they deserved.
They rested together, she on the bed and Dyson kneeling beside it, both of them staring at the little face. The nurses had wrapped him in a blue and white blanket, and topped his tiny head with a knit cap to keep him warm. Kayla touched the impossibly tiny nose, and then eased the cap up over the baby’s ears to touch them. She was astounded at how delicate and perfect and tiny every part of this child was.
“He’s ours,” Dyson whispered. “He’s ours, and he’s perfect.”
Kayla sniffled. “Ours,” she said, tasting the word on her tongue. “Ours.”
“You hear that, buddy? You’re ours. And we are going to take such good care of you. Momma is going to feed you that good cooking, and I’m going to take you to the gym, and before you know it you will be whipping your old man…”
“Hey now,” Kayla teased. “Give him some time to be a kid!”
“This one? No!” Dyson said with mock sincerity. “He’s going to be America’s next top fighter! Once I’m done with the title, of course.”
Kayla punched him in the arm. Dyson acted as though he was gravely injured. They both grinned, then became more solemn as they looked at their beautiful baby.
“I will tell you one thing that we will always agree on,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“This one,” she said, touching the little nose again, “will always have a stable, comfortable and safe life with two devoted parents who love him more than anything else on earth.”
Dyson looked at his Kayla. She had been through so much today, bringing their boy into this world. But before today, she had been through hell and back, and the fact that they were together – and sometimes, the fact that she had survived such horrible things at all – seemed an impossible gift. Now that she was a mother, he knew that she would think often of her own mother, and the bittersweet memories would fade as she continued to build her life with Dyson, the man who loved and cherished both her and their son.
“He will never be alone,” Dyson said, and when he looked into Kayla’s eyes, he saw only happiness there.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too, Kayla.”
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