Claiming Serenity

by Eden Butler

  “It’s no problem,” Darren said, moving his gaze between Donovan and Layla. “You’re the father?”

  And then, Donovan stopped, pulled his hand back and that big jackass smiled, mouth wide, teeth gleaming as though he’d never been prouder to be called anything else in his life. “I am. Yes, sir. I’m the father.” He said the word like it was precious, coveted and when she heard it, Layla’s heartbeat began to slow. “I’m so sorry,” Donovan told the Marlows, face drawn down and serious. “I’m sorry.” Layla stepped forward, mind muddled and confused when Donovan stepped back from the couple, worrying his bottom lip as though he planned to deliver something horrible, something devastated. “I’ve thought about this a long damn time. Months and months now and I know that the responsible thing to do would be to sign on the dotted line and let you call our daughter yours.” His shoulders fell and Donovan closed his eyes, moving his head as though some internal mantra kept chanting in his mind, working him up, convincing him to say whatever had his head spinning. Finally, when he looked around the room, to Layla’s parents, to the Marlows and then finally at her, Donovan nodded, let a small smile move up the right side of his mouth. “I am so sorry to disappoint you, but I just can’t let you have my family.”

  “Donovan!” Layla didn’t hide her surprise, didn’t keep her voice low or even. “He’s not serious,” she told the Marlows, but she saw the realization, the confirmation of the truth in their expressions.

  “It’s okay, Layla, really,” Michelle said, standing from the table with her purse in her hand. “It’s a big, big decision to make and clearly it’s not just yours.” She moved her head, nodding at Donovan. “Seems to me you’ve got a few things to work out with him before you can really let that baby go. If you’ll be able to let the baby go.”

  Michelle followed Darren out of the room and neither one of them looked back. Layla barely noticed her parents following behind the couple or that loud click of the door closing. All she felt was Donovan standing behind her and the slow, comfortable span of his breath moving her hair against her back.

  “Baby…”

  Layla knew she should be disappointed. She wanted to be elated, but those emotions she’d been ignoring for months were looped and uneven, spinning in her thoughts like a top, consumed by the highs and lows of disappointment and excitement. She didn’t know how to settle them. She only knew that once again, Donovan the Demon had fractured her plans and she was left trying to grab onto a response, something that would clear her thoughts and fill the emptiness that had taken the warmth from the room.

  So, Layla relied on her baser instincts, the one that had also told her to attack first and ask for forgiveness later.

  “You unbelievable prick!” She whirled around, pushing Donovan once, slapping his hands away when he tried calming her. “Do you realize what you just did?” The expression on the Marlows’ faces had been blank, but beneath those stony exteriors, Layla knew there was a wave of anguish and pain waiting to be released. “Those poor people, Donovan! And, why? Why the hell would you do that? You don’t want this.”

  “Of course I do.” He wouldn’t let her slap his hands back and Donovan grabbed her as she squirmed away from him, finally stopping her fight with his hands on her face and his forehead against hers. When he spoke, his voice was soft, but his tone was confident, sure. “I want this baby.” He touched her stomach and Layla noticed how his fingers trembled, how his large palm looked small against her belly. “I want you and this baby and me and forever, Layla.”

  “What…” She pulled her head back, looking up at him, waiting for a punchline that never came. He couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t possibly want her. He didn’t love her. “But you never… never wanted to go to the appointments. You never wanted to talk about the baby or touch my stomach.”

  The crease between his brows, the one that had stuck there for months, finally relaxed. “Because it broke my heart. Because the second I saw her on that sonogram I wanted her. Layla, I wanted her so badly but I’d done all this to you.” Donovan moved his hand from her stomach and grabbed her fingers, staring down at her palm, rubbing his thumb against her wrist. “I’d bullied you into this… this whatever it was with me. I’d teased you and tortured you and then as if that wasn’t enough, I got you pregnant.” Layla had seen Donovan angry, upset. She’d seen him devastated and shocked, but she’d never seen him cry, not like this, not with the open emotion making his eyes water or the raw need pinching his eyelids tight. “How could I ask you for more? How could I ask you to keep her?”

  “Donovan, if this is just about the baby, I mean, I understand you not wanting to let her go, but you and me, we aren’t… we can’t…”

  “Yes,” he said, pulling her close. “We so can.”

  “No.” She didn’t want more lies. She remembered their rules, they’d been set for a reason and Donovan couldn’t have disregarded them so quickly. His heartache had been deep, cut through him. Layla couldn’t believe that he’d let all that pain go, that he’d replaced it with love for her. “We said no emotion. You said you didn’t love me. Besides, Donovan,” she said, trying not to look at the tears that were now heavy on his face. “We are a disaster. It won’t work and being with someone just because you got them pregnant isn’t a reason to…

  “Shut up,” Donovan said, kissing her hard, stealing away her argument with his mouth over hers, his hands on her lower back pushing her closer. When he pulled away, Layla was struck too dumb with sensation to bother speaking. “Layla, I want this baby but that’s because she’s me and you and perfect and real and I wouldn’t want this with anybody else in the world.” When she opened her mouth, Donovan grunted, shutting her up with a frustrated sigh. “I love you, brat. I’ve loved you forever, I realize that now. I love you irritating me and pissing me off and driving me insane.” He moved his hands up her back, growling when her breasts flattened against his chest. “I love how you make me laugh and how I smell you everywhere even when you’re not around.”

  “Donovan…”

  “Love like ours isn’t easy, Layla. It’s awkward and stupid and wrong and right. It’s fire and passion and it stings sometimes and I fucking love how much you hurt me.” She wanted to breathe, thought that breathing would be good, necessary, but somehow her mind quit working when Donovan’s voice lowered, when he pulled her with him to lean against the table. “Sometimes you look at me and I feel like the lowest piece of nothing on earth. Sometimes I hate you. I thought I hated you for years.” Donovan laughed, a small hint of amusement that had Layla grinning despite her shock. “And then sometimes there’s something in your eyes I don’t really understand. Something that’s scary. Something that’s real. It’s wild and tempting and it makes my lungs burn. I don’t know what that look is. But I want to. I wanna know if it’s passion. I wanna know if it’s just for me.”

  She was tired of running. Tired of that refrain in her mind that told her Donovan was the enemy, that vile cretin who had tortured her because he hated her. She’d told herself for years that it would always be like that with them, that their anger, their invented resentment was a constant that she would never let go of. And then, with Donovan’s fingers in her hair and that question moving across his eyes, Layla remembered that the lies she told herself, the ones she convinced herself was to keep the reality of who Donovan was present in her mind, was all a shroud, the mask she invented to protect herself from loving someone it had been far too easy to hate.

  But Donovan had worn his mask too. He had pushed her away. He had lied and she knew what it meant that he was stepping away from the shadows, freeing himself from the things he’d tried believing would keep his heart intact.

  Layla knew what the look was he was talking about. She knew it was more than passion. She knew it was his and so she removed that mask, tossed it aside to take hold of Donovan’s face. “It’s not passion, Donovan. That word isn’t big enough.”

  He smiled, just a grin that told Layla he was hopeful. “Then w
hat is it?”

  She couldn’t believe she was going to say it. To him. To the Demon, but Layla would. She needed to. Thumb over that thick, tempting bottom lip, Layla returned his smile. “It’s love. What you see in my eyes is me loving you.”

  He kissed her then, or rather, she met him half way. She knew there would be a lot of that with them, but she wouldn’t think about the hurdles ahead or the havoc she knew they’d dole out to each other. At that moment, she could only feel Donovan’s hands on her waist, his demanding, perfect mouth taking her lips, loving her. And because she would not make out with him in this too big office and because her father stood on the other side of that door, Layla pulled away from him, laughing, feeling superior, when he followed her mouth, growled when she jerked her head back.

  “You know, I still don’t like you.”

  One small breathy laugh and Donovan kissed her again. “I don’t care if you do, brat.”

  “But I do love you.”

  Donovan lifted her up, held her tight as he kissed along her neck. “Baby, what’s not to love?”

  “Stupid, stubborn, asinine demon of evil jackassedness!”

  “I… ow, baby, don’t, that’s my hand… I don’t think jackassedness is a word.”

  “Are you freakin kidding me right now?”

  “Layla, I need you to relax. Here comes another contraction.” Dr. Samuels’ voice was even, calm, but the firmness of her tone had Layla forgetting all the awful, filthy names she wanted to call her husband.

  “See? I told you! I freakin told you, Donley you piece of… shit. Oh God!”

  “Layla, come on now. Remember your breathing.”

  And she pushed, dug her fingers into Donovan’s knuckles, not caring that he squirmed, that he wrapped his fist so tight around the rail of the bed that the whole thing shook. Layla felt like her body was being ripped apart, like something heavy and burning was trying to squirm and burst and fight from her body.

  “Push, Layla, push!” Dr. Samuels said and Layla forgot how mad Donovan made her, how his stupid stubborn ass had them fighting traffic as they sped toward the hospital.

  The contraction passed and Layla flopped against the mattress, relaxing when that awful pressure eased.

  “Okay?” Donovan said, wiping her sweaty forehead dry.

  She could only nod, waiting as the doctor and nurses buzzed around the room, worked beyond that tented curtain that hid her exposed body from sight. “This is bad. This is so, so bad. No one in life has ever felt such pain, I swear to Christ.”

  Donovan kissed her neck when she stretched against the pillow and Layla had just enough energy to flick his nose. “Ow, brat.”

  “Oh please. You don’t know pain, Donley.”

  “But I will, right, princess? The way you’re squeezing my hand.”

  A quick glare and Donovan shut up, the nurses and doctor laughing beyond that curtain as his stupid comment.

  “In my defense, you’d been crying wolf for weeks. Twice you freaked me out at three a.m. claiming to be in labor.” Layla pushed his face away, ignoring him, wanting nothing more at that moment than to pull each of his eyelashes out one by one. Donovan adjusted his mask and tried kissing her forehead but Layla moved her head away. “Baby…”

  “Oh shut up. I just wanted ice cream. It was the only way to get you up. Besides, you tried selling Honey to that slutbag bartender at McKinney’s.”

  “Layla… that dog hates me.”

  “And?” She couldn’t believe he was trying to reason his way out of very bastardly behavior. “He freakin loves me and he’s my damn dog.”

  “But the baby… we can’t have that dog around the baby.”

  Layla lifted on her elbows, screwing up her nose into a scrunch she hoped would tell Donovan to shut up. “I’d rather him around the baby than you.”

  When Donovan stood up, dropped Layla’s hand, she caught the small pat the nurse to his left gave him and ignored the woman’s small quip of, “They can get mean if the pain is too much.”

  “The pain is fine,” Layla said, leaning back against the hospital bed. “It’s this asshole not believing me when I said I was in labor that is a pain in my ass right now.”

  “We got here, that’s all that matters, right?” She tried not to notice how his features had hardened, how they slipped between frustration and guilt.

  “We got here too late for an epidural!”

  “Okay, Layla, here comes another one.”

  And when the doctor’s stern tone returned and Layla felt another searing wave of agony rush through her body, she forgot her anger. She forgot everything but the thought that Donovan was not holding her hand, that she couldn’t see his face. He was there as she jerked her head to the left, as she clutched the railing on the bed. “Don’t leave…” she said, catching his eyes, fear subsiding when he took her hand off the rail and held it.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” His lips were warm, soothing as he kissed her knuckles. “I’m right here.” And Layla closed her eyes, gritted through that sharp pain and bore down, feeling the slow slip of something moving through her. “God, you’re so fucking strong.” She barely registered his hand on the back of her neck, helping her push, or his forehead against her temple. “I love you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Can’t you give her something?” Donovan’s voice was loud, panicked and she missed the warmth of his breath when he shouted at the nurse.

  “No time,” Dr. Samuels said. She could feel the woman’s fingers on her thighs. “Layla, push, right now!”

  Then that slow burn grew sharper, brighter and Layla screamed from the core of her being, her heart stammering until she smelled Donovan’s cologne, felt his hot breath against her ear as he whispered encouragement, astonishment to reassure her, and they rode that wave out together.

  An hour later Layla woke feeling like her skin had been electrified. She was calmer, relieved that the stinging burn of the baby ripping her body had transformed into something mild and numbing.

  Blinking, she sighed, cringing only when her thighs, her center felt languid and buzzing and then she slipped her focus to Donovan as he sat on the other side of the room, snuggling the baby and sounding nothing like the tough rugby player he’d always been.

  Layla had never seen him smile that way, all joy, bliss that could not be contained and just the sight of her new husband, hardly three weeks now, and that tiny little person sleeping in his hands had Layla’s eyes burning and that thick knot in her raw throat pulsing. He caught her gaze, smiling wider as he looked at her, then whispered next to that small bundle. “Here she is. Here’s your mama.” He spoke to the baby like she understood him, like she knew exactly what those jumble of noises coming out of his mouth made any sense whatsoever, but Layla didn’t care. She only had eyes for that soft, fragile skin and the sweet tuft of white blonde hair peeking out beneath the small cap as Donovan placed their daughter in her arms.

  “She okay?” Layla spoke to Donovan, smiling, but could not pull her attention away from the most beautiful little face she’d ever seen.

  Donovan sat next to her, leaning down to pull the thin blanket over the baby’s shoulder when it fell. “There’s never been a more perfect baby ever.”

  She smelled divine, soft, delicate scents that Layla couldn’t place and when she took her daughter’s hand and the baby instinctively wrapped her small fist around Layla’s finger, she thought that no moment had ever been more beautiful, no woman had ever felt so full.

  The baby’s skin felt fine, like satin and the bones beneath it were delicate but strong—that prominent Donley chin and jaw, the beautiful slope of a button nose and when she blinked awake and stared at Layla like she knew exactly who she was, and the young mother’s breath stuck in her lungs. Perfectly round, crystal eyes that were identical to Layla’s tried to take in the world around her.

  “She’s your clone,” Donovan said, kissing Layla’s forehead.
<
br />   “No. She’s got your chin, your jaw. Those eyes, well…”

  “I know. How long have I looked at eyes just like those?” Donovan leaned down further, moved his arm around Layla to hold them both against his large chest. “She’s so damn perfect, baby. Just…” and Donovan’s voice cracking, the labored inhaling of his breath and that precious little body squirming on her lap was all it took for Layla to lose it completely.

  “How…” Donovan’s fingers against her face felt warm, comforting, “how can you love someone you’ve just met so damn much?” She didn’t have an answer for him. Layla didn’t think there were words that would come close to describing the swell of pride and love and joy that fought for dominance in her chest. The moment was magical, surreal, and she gladly shared it with Donovan, understood when the silence was all they needed.

  “Look what we made.” His voice was a whisper again, so different from his usual tone. He sounded awed, overwhelmed as he moved his large fingers over that tiny forehead, down to the deep arch of those tiny pink lips. “Look what we did, baby.”

  She was perfect and flawless and completely theirs.

  “I’d give up Honey for her.” Layla blinked away her tears, gaze stuck on that precious face as she leaned against Donovan. “You were right.”

  “Nah, we’ll build a fence.” She loved him for his compromise and she knew, at that moment both of them would agree to just about anything.

  Sadly, Layla thought, that probably wouldn’t last.

  The fence would work. Their backyard was big enough and she knew Honey would enjoy the chance at being left alone out there. They’d bought a tiny cottage three houses away from Joe’s in the older section of Cavanagh. It was white with a small front porch and two bedrooms that she and Donovan, and all of their friends had painted and organized in the last nesting phase of her pregnancy.