by B. Cranford
It had been seven weeks. Seven long—and getting longer—weeks. For the first few days, Andrew’s need to help her, to care for her, had been mildly stifling but mostly endearing. Then, two weeks later, when she’d gone back to work, he’d been there.
Which, okay, had irked her, but she’d tried, over the past five weeks, to be understanding about his need to be there. But with every day seeming to lack real, deep affection, while including more and more hints that he thought she wasn’t taking good enough care of herself and her baby, it was becoming harder to pretend it wasn’t bothering her.
Because it was. A whole hell of a lot.
“Are you okay, Little?” It was Simon who asked, Simon who was always the reasonable one. He was logic and kindness, serious when the occasion called for it and seriously fun the rest of the time. “Really okay?”
She moved to the couch and sat down on his other side. What we must look like, she thought, picturing someone looking at three thirty-something adults crammed onto one two-seater sofa. “Yeah, it’s just . . . taking some adjustment.”
He turned, bumping her shoulder gently in a display of affection. “I don’t believe you, but I’ll buy it for now.”
“You’re the best.”
“Oh, um, hi. Have you forgotten me? Your big brother?” Aaron asked, leaning forward to look past Simon at his sister. “I’m the best.”
Ashton snickered, enjoying the opportunity to rile him up. “Sorry, A, but I stand by what I said. You’re maybe, maybe, second best. Depends on whether your best friend gets himself together before I go off the deep end.”
“I’m offended. Give me the Pringles.”
“No, they’re mine.”
“I paid for them. And brought them to you without being asked.”
“And gave them to me, so now they’re mine.”
“I can take them back. Just because you’re pregnant, doesn’t mean I won’t fight you for them.”
Simon held out his arms, alternating amusement and frustration at the sibling banter he’d become familiar with over the years. “Okay, enough. One, you won’t fight a pregnant lady. She’d still kick your ass and then you’d be embarrassed. Rightly so, I might add. And two, you know you’re the best. Pretty sure I told you that this morning when we were—”
“Oh, my God, not you too! Traitor!” Ashton made a show of covering her ears, and singing “La, la, la” to drown out Simon’s words.
She really didn’t need to know about their sex life. Even if they seemed determined to share the details with her.
Simon’s hands closed over her wrists, lowering her arms and grinning at her. “I’ll stop. Jeez, you three are so dramatic.”
“You love that about us,” she countered, “don’t lie.”
“I do.”
“So, it’s settled. I’m the best. The Pringles are Ashton’s. Dunk is being an idiot. And Simon is everyone’s favorite. Excellent.”
Excellent. She wasn’t completely sure things were excellent, given how much things had changed—or felt like they’d changed since the incident, as Andrew had taken to calling it. But they couldn’t get much worse.
Could they?
Andrew: Where are you?
Ashton: *King of My Heart Listen Link*
Andrew: I’m serious, Ashton. Where are you? I just got back and you’re gone.
Ashton: I’m at the doctor. And come on, it’s T-Swizzle.
Ashton: Your fave!
Andrew: Without me? Why?
Andrew: What’s wrong?
Andrew: Are you okay?
Andrew: I’m coming there.
Ashton: I’m fine. Don’t come, I’m about to leave.
Ashton: I’ll be home in a few.
Andrew: You didn’t tell me.
Ashton: It was a last minute schedule change. You’d already gone to meet Aaron. It’s not a big deal, promise.
Ashton: See you in a few.
Andrew paced the length of the bedroom he shared with Ashton, trying to slow his racing heart. He’d come in from lunch with Aaron, expecting to find her on the sofa or in the kitchen or napping.
Definitely napping. She relished nap time and it was usually the same time every day, which was why he’d agreed to lunch in the first place. But not today.
No, today, she was nowhere to be seen. And it freaked him the hell out.
All he could think was where are they?
Where are my girls? And though Ashton’s texts had answered his question, they hadn’t settled that overwhelming thing in him.
That feeling that had been growing each and every day in the weeks since the attack. That feeling that drove him to get a job at her bar and that said he should be with her. Driving her. Shit, she’d driven there without him; hadn’t even let him know she was going.
It’s only been a few weeks. She’s not ready yet.
Except that wasn’t the truth. The truth was that he wasn’t ready yet.
He hadn’t been ready when she’d gone back to work and frankly, he wasn’t sure he ever would be.
“I’m back! Andrew? You here?” Her voice reached him and he stopped, waiting for her to come back into their room, not trusting himself not to rush her and wrap his arms around her, around them, and never let go. “Hey, there you are.”
There was a smile in her voice, he realized, with relief washing over him. She hadn’t had bad news today, thank God.
But the relief was short lived. Because once he’d determined she was okay, that the baby was okay, the anger rushed back in to take its place. “Why didn’t you tell me? A message at least? What were you thinking?”
She stared at him, her smile fading, the glimpse he caught of it when he looked up at her so brief that he thought maybe he’d imagined it. “I was thinking that my doctor’s office called and asked if I could switch my appointment to today because one of their other patients needed a change and it would be a nice thing to help a fellow mommy-to-be out.”
“And the rest?” he asked, hating himself for it but needing to know. Like a plague, the need to know ate at him, all hours of the day. “Why didn’t you message me or call me to go with you?”
He watched as her fists clenched, as her chest rose and fell with a deep breath that he could hear her suck in. She was searching for chill, he thought, but dammit, so was he. “Ashton?”
“Aside from the fact I forgot, baby brain”—she gave a self-deprecating half-smile as she called herself out on her forgetfulness, but he couldn’t return it—“I’m a grown-up who doesn’t need her hand held for a routine check-up. You’re forgetting that I’ve done this before.”
Before. Before he was back in town to attend ultrasounds and appointments. Before they were together and she was a single woman using a sperm donor to make a baby.
“Anyway,” she continued when he didn’t reply, “I have to work tonight, so lemme get showered and changed and I guess we can finish this later.” She moved around him toward the bathroom and it wasn’t until the door shut that he realized—
She hadn’t kissed him hello.
She hadn’t brushed past him, running her hand along some part of his body or other like she might have done otherwise.
She didn’t even look him in the eye.
“Here, let me.” Andrew walked over to where Ashton was bending down to the below-bar refrigerator to get a bottle of beer for a customer. “I’ve got it.” She’d already stood by the time he’d reached her, but still, he plucked the bottle from her hands and passed it over to the customer, eyeing him to make sure he wasn’t too drunk or looking at Ashton in any kind of threatening way.
In the eight weeks since she’d been attacked in the parking lot, her bruises and cuts and broken finger had healed. She was back to herself—mostly—though every day she seemed a little more distant with him. Especially today.
Especially after he’d kinda, sorta, maybe freaked out on her earlier about her doctor’s appointment.
But that was the thing—he wasn’t fine. His an
ger at himself and at the man who’d hurt his girls was increasing every day. It was festering inside of him and though he knew it wasn’t wise to let it happen, he also couldn’t stop it.
The man had pleaded guilty and taken a deal immediately. Vandalism, assault, breaking and entering—it meant he’d be in prison for a couple of years at least, but it wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t e-fucking-nough.
Andrew was tense, had been for weeks. And today, it seemed, it had built to a crescendo. Everything felt bigger. Every move. Every decision. Every look.
Every word.
“Andrew, I can get beer for the customers.” The smile Ashton gave him was as brittle as the words falling from her lips. He knew she was frustrated with him, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t. Not when he’d let her down so badly.
She’d told him she loved him that night—before and after she’d been attacked—and he couldn’t help but think he wasn’t deserving of it.
“Just trying to help, Kitten,” he responded, taking payment from the beer-drinker and sliding his change back over the counter. “Why don’t you take a break?”
“Um, maybe because this is my bar and I’ve been working for less than an hour. And by working, I mean, getting interrupted every time I try to do something by you rushing to help.”
“I’m just worried, that’s all.”
“I get that, I do, but—” She stopped herself with a long suffering sigh, and turned away from him.
It hurt, to be faced with her back, and his instincts told him this was a breaking point for them. “You’re pregnant, Ashton.”
She rounded on him then, fire in her eyes, anger in her voice even though the words were barely audible. “I know I’m pregnant. I know I am. But I am not an invalid and I don’t need to be fucking coddled.”
The word fuck fell from her lips in a way he’d never heard before. She didn’t use the word all that often. It was something he’d noticed about her long ago—the way she used other words where most might simply drop a fuck in for good measure. He assumed it was because she wanted it to have meaning when she used it, wanted it to have weight.
Right now, though, he assumed it meant nothing good for him.
“My office. Now.” She turned and stormed away, passing Odie who was back at work but still not talking to Austin, and telling her to “cover for me” as she made her way towards the back.
He squared his shoulders. He knew he was in for a fight, but he also knew he had to win. She was hormonal and emotional, and had been through a pretty severe trauma, so he’d let her say her piece and then he’d explain that he just wanted to—no, wait, needed to make it up to her.
He filed into the office past her, the door slamming closed when she kicked it with her heel. She looked magnificent, her blonde curls gathered in a messy kind of ball atop her head, her simple black blouse showing off the bump where her daughter—their daughter—was growing.
Seven months down.
Two more to go.
He just needed to get them safely across that line. Then he could settle down some.
“What is wrong with you?” Ashton leaned back against the door, and he fought the urge to tell her to sit down, because he could tell it wasn’t going to go over well in that moment. “Huh? You’ve been—you’re driving me up the wall.”
“Kitten, I—”
“Don’t you Kitten me. What the hell, Duncan?”
Duncan. The name hit him hard, a reminder of the time, all the years, she didn’t really know him and she wasn’t his. She’d been calling him Andrew since the night they’d decided to give it a go, and he’d gotten used to hearing that from her.
Hearing it now felt like a step backward.
“I just want to make sure you’re not doing too much. The baby . . .”
“My baby. It’s mine, you understand? I don’t need you telling me what to do. Demanding to know where I’ve been. I love you, I do, but you’re not listening to me. You’re not letting me live my life. I know you were scared and I’m sorry. I was scared too, but I’ve moved on and I just want things to go back to how they were. I don’t want to walk on eggshells and I don’t want to be babied. And I definitely don’t want to be questioned. By you or anyone.”
“Ash—” he tried to interject, but in typical Ashton fashion, she was working up a head of steam and letting out all the words that were gathering in her head.
“Uh-uh, no. You don’t talk right now, you listen. I made this decision, to have this baby. I sourced the fertility clinic, I selected the donor, I read all their credentials and looked at all their baby pictures and decided on the father of my child, and newsflash, it wasn’t you. I want you to be a part of this, but not at the expense of my freedom and my enjoyment of this. Of us. I can do this on my own and I will—I will if you don’t just, arghh.”
She threw her hands in the air as if the anger had overcome her ability to form a thought and, instead of letting him talk, she leaned in and kissed his cheek.
It wasn’t a soft, sweet kind of kiss. Not the kind of kiss he was used to from her.
It felt like goodbye. Which was all but confirmed by her next words, whispered in his ear. “You need to get your stuff and go to Aaron’s for a while. I need . . . I need a break from you, from this. I need to figure this out.”
He didn’t say a word, not because he didn’t want to. He did; he wanted to tell her not to be ridiculous, not to let this get between them, not to give up. But he couldn’t.
And when she turned to open the door to the office once more, walking through it without a second thought, he couldn’t find it in him to chase her.
“This. This is exactly why I’m gay.”
“Funny, I thought it was because you like sucking dick.” Austin laughed at his own comment, and Andrew joined him. It wasn’t all that funny, but they were five whiskies deep at Aaron’s house, so their definition of funny had taken a hit.
“Well, that too,” Aaron responded with a dirty grin and a glance at Simon, who just shook his head and took another drink of water. He wasn’t drinking, he said, because someone needed to be responsible. Aaron said it was because he didn’t like being hungover. Andrew said it didn’t matter because it meant more for him.
And he needed a lot.
A metric ton, at least.
“But also because women, man.” Aaron nodded like he’d just said something insightful, instead of actually nothing of use.
“Yeah, I know. Odie still won’t talk to me, but now she says it’s because I kissed her. But I didn’t mean to.”
Andrew cocked his head, trying to make sense of what Aussie was saying. “How’d you not mean to?”
“I mean, I meant to, but not if she didn’t want me to. I just thought she did.” He smiled then, a sad sort of smile that made Andrew’s already-hurting heart hurt all the more. Women, man was right. Maybe Aaron had said something insightful.
“Yeah, well, your sister kicked me out. So.” He shrugged, like whatcha gonna do? Except he wasn’t actually feeling all that blasé about it. The booze had helped quell the part of him that wanted to put his fist through something.
Like his own face.
He knew now that he’d been stupid. That he’d been undermining her every decision. He’d seen it in her face, heard it in her words. But . . . he hadn’t been able to help it. It was an instinct; to protect her, to show her he was worthy of her, to make up for failing her. Besides, didn’t all women want to be cared for? Protected and shit? He was sure that’s what he’d learned from watching all the girly crap that Kennedy had tortured him with.
“You actually deserved that,” Simon piped up, making three sets of eyes laser in on him.
“Traitor to your kind, man.” Aussie shook his head in disappointment, or maybe because he’d managed to get something in his hair—one of the salt-and-vinegar Pringles Andrew had stolen from the cupboard at Ashton’s place before he left.
How’d he get a Pringle in his hair?
“I’m not a traitor. I’m just telling it like it is.”
“You’re handsome when you talk logic, baby. Please, continue.” Aaron laid his chin on his fist, his arm propped on the arm of the sofa he’d fallen into when the whiskey had been produced.
“Ashton is old enough and smart enough and woman enough to know her own limitations. Even when—or dare I say, especially when—she’s pregnant. I know that what happened to her was scary for all of us, but that doesn’t give you the right to start taking away all the things that make her her.”
“I didn’t take anything. Did I?” He thought about it for a second. “Unless you count the Pringles, ’cause yeah, I took ’em and I don’t regret it, either.”
“No, I don’t mean the Pringles, although what kind of shitty human takes food from a pregnant woman?”
“The kind who got dumped, that kind,” Andrew muttered in response.
“Look, all I’m saying is you can’t wrap her in cotton wool and make her sit still. If that’s what she needed, that’s what the doctor would have prescribed. But she didn’t. Ashton is free to go about her regular routine, with a few small changes—which she adapted to early on, like not carrying the boxes of liquor around and so on—and you’re trying to stop her from doing even that.”
“I was trying to help!”
“You were being a pain in the ass, and trust me, I have experience with pains in the ass.” Simon gave his husband a look that said he’d experienced the Andrews’ kind of stubborn and frustrating, although both Andrew and Austin laughed at the innuendo. “Shut up, and listen to what I’m saying. If you want to help her, ask her what she needs. Offer help but, dude, if she declines, don’t just go ahead and do it anyway. If you want to spoil her, do it with chocolate or a massage or I don’t know, sex.”
“Sex is good. I like sex.”
“Me too, man. But not with Little. She’s my sister, that’d be weird. Sex with Odie.” Austin nodded with conviction.
“We’re going to have to schedule another counseling session for you, Tiny, once we have Ashton and Andrew sorted out. But believe me, we are circling back to that.” Simon looked over at Andrew then, and waited until their eyes met. “If you love her, and I know you do, you need to be what she needs and you need to let her tell you what that is if you can’t figure it out for yourself.”
