I Don't Dance (Freebirds Book 6)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “That was a different dance than what I’d had in mind,” I said lightly.

  She grinned.

  “You’re naughty,” she finally said, shaking her head.

  “You wouldn’t take me any other way,” I teased as I backed away, helping her down off the counter.

  “Now,” I said giving her ass a smack. “Get dressed so we can go decorate our tree.”

  She looked at me wide eyed before walking out into the living room naked, taking in all that I’d done while she slept.

  She turned to me once she was done, and then ran into my arms.

  She hit me like a tiny battering ram, making me take a single step back before I caught my balance.

  “Thank you, Ellie-bellie,” she cooed.

  I smacked her ass again, a little bit harder this time. “That’s not my name.”

  She kissed my cheek, then retreated so she could look into my eyes. “Elles Belles?”

  I shook my head.

  “Snookums?” She tried.

  I looked at her warningly.

  “Peaches. Sugar bunch?” She offered.

  I smiled and leaned down. “You can call me E, or Elliott. Possibly Master. Nothing else, though.”

  She giggled. “You’re such a goober.”

  Chapter 8

  How come when your wife is pregnant, everyone rubs her belly and says, “Congratulations;” yet no one rubs your balls and says, “Good job?”

  -E-card

  Blaine

  Christmas number 5

  I stared at the little stick, my heart in my throat.

  Pregnant.

  I didn’t know if I could handle it.

  It’d been eight months, and five days since I had my miscarriage.

  Eight months and five long days.

  Something inside me died when I lost our child. Something that Elliott had tried his hardest to replace day after day.

  He hadn’t fully succeeded. The months since it happened had been torture.

  Especially watching one of my best friends have two of the most adorable babies in the universe.

  Cheyenne was a wonderful person. She and Sam deserved to have healthy children. That didn’t make it any easier on me, though. Every time I saw her two babies, I thought about my own that I’d lost. The way Elliott had watched those two girls with such longing made my heart nearly tear in two.

  That night had been horrible. So horrible.

  I’d woken up during the middle of the night with cramping and pain in my lower abdomen.

  I hadn’t realized until I’d gotten to the bathroom just what was going on.

  Blood had been everywhere, and I looked like a massacre victim.

  Elliott had been on a job with a few of the other men, so I’d written a note and drove myself to the hospital, praying that everything would be all right. In my heart, I’d known that it wouldn’t be. Not with that much blood.

  I’d gotten to the hospital where the doctor performed an ultrasound, confirming my fears.

  Our baby had died.

  From there, I’d been taken into surgery to have a D&C.

  I’d woken up to a distraught Elliott at my bedside, his head bent over my hand while he spoke to me about why he loved me.

  We never told any of the others.

  I hadn’t wanted them to look at me any differently.

  They never even knew I was pregnant, either. I’d been waiting until we knew the sex of our child so I could reveal it all at once, and I never got the chance.

  Staring down at the stick that confirmed I was pregnant again, I prayed that this one would be okay.

  Don’t do this to me again. I can’t handle it. Elliott doesn’t deserve to have to go through this twice.

  We hadn’t been trying to have a baby. In fact, we were actively trying not to have a baby. I’d been on birth control, and he’d been using condoms since my miscarriage. How could this have happened? I wasn’t ready.

  “Blaine, baby, where are you?” Elliott called from the living room.

  Picking up the stick with shaking hands, I left the bathroom in search of my husband. I found him in the kitchen with his head stuck into the fridge.

  “Hey,” I said softly.

  “I know we’re having dinner with our parents in an hour, but I’m fuckin’ starving. I need something. Do you think some Ramen Noodles will be too…what’s wrong?” He asked in alarm when he finally looked at me.

  I smiled tightly at him and held up the stick.

  He looked at it as if I was holding a stick of dynamite, too scared to hope.

  “Tell me,” he demanded.

  The fridge was still standing open as he left it, and his eyes were on me, eager to hear the news.

  “It’s positive.” I whispered.

  His eyes closed, and when they opened again, I could see tension there. The panic. The hope. The love.

  He walked towards me slowly, picking up my arm that held the stick, scanning it.

  “Holy shit.” He breathed.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Blaine?” He rumbled, bring his hand up so he could tilt my head up.

  My terrified ones met his loving ones. “It’s gonna be okay, baby. This baby is meant to be. How else would this baby have made it through all the precautions we used not to conceive?”

  I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders, and with it my determination not to cry.

  I broke down in Elliott’s arms, and like the man he was, he held me throughout.

  Later that night, I stood next to the couch and watched my husband.

  “You doing okay, sugar?” My mother asked, coming up behind me and hugging me to her front.

  I nodded as I watched Elliott put together a train set that my mom had gotten him for Christmas.

  “Yep. My husband’s like a small child at heart, you know,” I said laughingly.

  She nodded. “Your father said he wouldn’t play with it, but I knew he’d like it.”

  I nodded. Elliott was like that.

  So easy going and fun.

  He’d be a wonderful father.

  “Oh, Christmas Tree…” the carol started on the new Bose sound system Elliott’s father had gotten for Christmas.

  “Oh, dear,” my mother sighed as she let me go.

  Elliott’s head snapped up, and he smiled at me warmly before abandoning the train and moving towards me purposefully.

  I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped my lips when he started ballroom dancing with an invisible partner, making his way towards me.

  “Can I cut in?” I asked as he finally arrived in front of me.

  He nodded sagely. “Yes, of course. My partner won’t mind.”

  I shook my head as he took me into his arms, twirling me around like a young girl.

  I went with the spin barely able to avoid his shoulder as I went.

  Over time, I’d learned to adapt to his less than stellar dance moves, compensating to where there was only minimal damage to my feet or extremities.

  “You know,” he started, swaying his hips in an exaggerated fashion.

  At my raised brow, he said, “I’m not that good at dancing.”

  I laughed quietly, leaning my head against his chest.

  “You don’t say.” I said sarcastically.

  “I sense some sarcastic undertones,” he teased.

  “No, not from me, Elliott Dear,” I sniffed, barely containing my emotions.

  I don’t know how he did it, but the man had a way about him. A certain something that made everything okay, even if it wasn’t. Even if I was scared shitless.

  “I love you, E.” I said, interrupting his next comment.

  He looked down at me, his pretty eyes looking into my own for long moments before he replied. “I know. It’ll all be all right. You’ll see.”

  Somehow, I knew it would.

  Chapter 9

  I love that when
I’m with you, I don’t have to pretend I’m nice.

  -E-card

  Elliott

  Christmas Number 6

  “This Christmas is bittersweet, little man,” I said softly to my son, Justin Douglas.

  Justin smiled a gummy smile at me, making me realize all that I had in my life. How lucky I was to be here.

  I could be six feet under like Dougie is. Like my first son was. I thought morosely.

  I can’t believe it’s been nearly two years since we lost our child.

  It seemed like just yesterday I came home to a massive amount of blood coating the bed and the bathroom, as well as a note from Blaine explaining what had happened.

  That’d been gut wrenching.

  Then my son cooed, and all thoughts of my dead friend and lost child were pushed back. Not gone. Not forgotten. But in a place that they should be. A place that Dougie and our son would always live. My heart.

  In the last year, things had changed quickly. So quickly that I hadn’t even had time to catch a breath.

  But Blaine had been there with me every step of the way.

  She’d nearly died in the process, too.

  My eyes squeezed tight as I thought about that day, less than three months ago, when my sweet Blaine had nearly been taken from me.

  ***

  “What do you mean, she’s in labor?” I bellowed loudly.

  I’d just dropped my mother off at her new house that her and my father had bought. They’d wanted to move closer so they could be in their first grandchild’s life. Which suited me. I wanted them to be there.

  Although, I’d thought that they had nearly a month to go before we got to see the baby. Not less than an hour.

  “She’s in labor. And she’s in the elevator stuck between floors,” Sam said calmly.

  In an elevator; at a baby store.

  Too calmly.

  “Is she okay?” I asked worriedly, my foot pressing down further on the accelerator without conscious thought.

  My question was answered, not by Sam, but by my wife.

  Her scream tore through me, ripping straight through my flesh and settling deep into my heart where it sat heavily, weighing me down with its intensity.

  “Ahh, she’s not liking anyone much right now. She’s pretty adamant about pain meds, but since no one can get in there, they won’t give her any. Gabe’s in there with her though, so she’s not alone,” Sam answered quickly, sensing the unease in my voice.

  My heart didn’t settle, and my foot didn’t lift from the gas.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I managed to grit out, weaving in and out of traffic like I was a madman.

  I called Gabe once I hung up with Sam, listening to the yelling coming from Blaine the entire way there.

  Why they had to go out of town to a fuckin’ Babies R’ Fuckin’ Us, I didn’t know. Although I was fairly confident that that wasn’t the name she’d used, but right now that’s all my mind kept repeating back to me.

  The one goddamn time she goes out of the city, I’m half an hour away from her.

  Scratch that. I made it within twenty minutes, but still.

  I’d even managed to miss any and all cops on the way there, which was a miracle.

  I wouldn’t have stopped, and I’d have had half a dozen cops following me to my wife.

  I parked in the fire lane, unsurprised by the fire truck, ambulance, and two police cars.

  “Sir, we’re gonna need you to move your car,” a police officer said from behind me.

  I lifted my hand with the phone in it. “My wife’s in there having our baby. I don’t have time.”

  He let me go with a nod, and I ran through the store, the phone pressed to my ear, following the commotion to the elevator at the very fucking back of the store. The lights that were surrounding the area were the only ones on in the entire building, so it wasn’t exactly hard to find.

  “Sam!” I yelled loudly, causing my captain to turn and regard me.

  He took in my frantic appearance quickly, before steering me towards the elevator where two medics were standing to the side while three firefighters worked on getting the elevator open.

  “Is she okay?” I asked frantically.

  I was answered with a yell from my wife, cussing me up and down about how she was going to kill me with the tailpipe of my motorcycle when she next saw me. Why the tailpipe and not a wrench, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t arguing with the woman.

  “Goddamn you, Elliott. You’re never getting near my lady lumps again. No more hiding the salami. You had better cherish this baby, because never will you get another one. I really want to chop your dick off right now for doing this to me! Why’d you have to go and see your mother anyway? You should have been here with me. How could you do this to me?” Blaine wailed through the phone.

  Then, all of a sudden, it all just stopped.

  The sounds. The screams. The conversation surrounding us.

  Then the most joyous sound of my baby’s outraged scream filled the air, and I could breathe again.

  It was a loud, lusty cry that made my heart sore.

  “Is he okay?” I asked Gabe, the man who’d saved all our lives countless times before, and had just done it again with my son.

  He grunted in affirmation. “It’s a boy!”

  I whooped in excitement. So fucking happy I couldn’t describe it.

  “He’s perfect man. Just perfect,” he assured me.

  Seconds later, the firefighters finally got the door to budge. It was a small gap, but enough to start shoving things through.

  First the medics shoved a red bag, followed shortly by a bottle of oxygen and towels.

  Sam and Max were barking orders left and right, but all my attention was focused on my wife.

  I could see her laying on the floor of the elevator.

  Her face was turned down, taking in our son that was laying on her chest.

  Her face was a mess of tears and sweat, and she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  Nothing in my life was more beautiful.

  I was thankful that the medics had gone up to the top floor, giving me an unencumbered view of my wife.

  Feeling like I wasn’t doing anything, I took the towels that another firefighter was about to send to another man to deliver to the door, and held them up through the hole, desperate to feel like I was doing something.

  Anything to dampen the need to be by my wife’s side.

  I watched her face, and witnessed the instant something went wrong.

  Her face started to drain quickly of color, and her eyes went from happy and animated to dead and lifeless within seconds.

  Her mouth parted, and a piece of blonde hair fell over one eye, obstructing her gaze from my view.

  “Blaine!” I called desperately. “Blaine, baby, wake up.”

  My pleas went unanswered as Gabe and the medics started yelling to each other.

  I didn’t hear what they were saying, though.

  My eyes were on my wife, and I watched as the life slowly leeched from her body one minute at a time.

  “Don’t do this to me, goddammit. Please don’t leave me, too. Please,” I cried.

  ***

  “What are you doing in here?” Blaine asked, startling me back to the here and now.

  I blinked up at her, realizing too late that I’d disappeared into that horrible dream again.

  “Nothing,” I tried for innocence.

  She looked at me sternly. “I told you that you need to leave him alone. If he’s sleeping, don’t pick him up.”

  I snorted. “Do you think that by you telling me not to do it, I’ll listen?”

  She sighed and shook her head, coming to sit on the couch’s arm beside me. “Unfortunately, no. That doesn’t mean that I won’t keep trying, though.”

  She sighed and walked to the window where the snow came down softly. The flakes fell lazily to the ear
th, covering the entire area with a sheet of white.

  “I can’t believe we’re having a white Christmas,” she breathed. “It’s perfect.”

  “Believe it, baby. We started many new traditions today. Ones I hope to fulfill for a long time to come,” I told her, pushing the floor gently with my foot, rocking the chair back and forth softly.

  “Did you eat the cookies?” She asked, staring from me to the plate accusingly.

  “Hey,” I rumbled softly. “Somebody had to do it.”

  She snorted. A most unladylike sound.

  “I like his jammies, though. We’ll have to see if we can find some of the same next year,” she said softly, walking towards us again.

  I nodded. “I can’t believe I agreed to take pictures with you like that. I’ll never hear the end of it from the guys.”

  She waved in her hand in the air, dismissing my misgivings. “Yeah, but just think of all the pictures we’ll have we’ll have to put into his senior yearbook when he’s older!”

  I winked at her, pulling her down until she was resting in my lap. “I love you.”

  “And I you.” She looked down at our son, lifting her hand and running it down Justin’s cheek. “He looks so much like you it’s not even funny.”

  I grinned. “You’ll have to beat off all the girls with a stick.”

  She glared at me. “He’s too young to be thinking about his future girlfriends.”

  “Just keep telling yourself that, darlin’. It’ll be tomorrow and he’ll be bringing his first girlfriend home for us to meet.”

  “Bite your tongue, boy,” she snarled.

  I laughed, pulling her into my arms and dancing the familiar dance. The one we’d done for six years now.

  It felt like yesterday when I’d done this the first time. Although now, six years later, I loved her impossibly more.

  As I took in her happiness, I couldn’t help but think, this woman’s my everything.

  Chapter 10

  If you can’t be the sharpest tool in the shed, you can always be the hoe.

  -E-card

  Blaine

  Christmas number 25

  “This is not fucking funny,” I seethed, looking over at my husband.

  Let me rephrase that, my about to be dead husband.