Always Yours

by Grace Owens

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  Coming home from my night out, the apartment felt quiet and lonely. However, it felt good to be back in my sweats and one of Cailean’s t-shirts. To fill the silence, I curled up on the couch with ice cream and turned on the TV.

  I knew I could have gone downstairs, pretend to do some work and slowly approach Cailean about a truce. But I was a coward, hoping he would come for me instead, and by then I would be ready to put it all behind us. I was surprised that he had lasted as long as he had, to be honest. Maybe I was a bit hurt that he wasn’t fighting very hard, even though I knew I had no one but myself to blame. I was the one who had taken a week to realize that he was simply trying to get all of our ugly past in the open once and for all.

  It is a huge deal, Gertie, my mind reminded me what I had been thinking over and over since he dropped the huge bomb about my dad. I had always known something had happened between the Bakers and my dad, but vehicular homicide? No, I never in a million years would have guessed that one.

  All the thinking I had been doing since I’d gotten home from dinner with Allie and Hanna made my head hurt. I was going in circles and I couldn’t focus on anything, least of all the Netflix show I’d put on earlier. It would be hours before Cailean got home from work and I knew I should have gotten up from the couch, taken a few Tylenols for the headache and gone to bed. But nothing about the empty bed appealed to me, so I chose to lay down under the blanket and told my mind to shut up.

  It wasn’t that simple, however. By the time I had made it through four more episodes, my headache had reached epic proportions and my mind was still making up fantasies about a life with Cailean where we didn’t share a past.

  “Gertie, what’s wrong?” Cailean’s concerned voice made me open my eyes, the dim light of the apartment intensifying the headache. I hadn’t realized it was that late and the moment I had waited for had finally arrived. Too bad I was in too much pain to enjoy it.

  “Headache,” I whispered as quietly as possible.

  Talking, moving, breathing. It all hurt.

  “Let me get you some Tylenol, okay?”

  I just closed my eyes in relief. I should have done the exact same thing earlier when I first felt the ache forming. Now it was too late. Anything that got my pulse moving was excruciating and I doubted the Tylenol would help. It had been a while since I’d had such a bad migraine attack, but hopefully the little pill would at least take the edge off.

  “I need you to sit up real quick,” I heard Cailean whisper and while it hurt like hell, I did what he asked. Quickly swallowing the two pills before gently laying back down. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Hold me?” I pleaded even though it came out sounding more like a question. To be fair, I didn’t know where we stood at this point or if he would even want to be around me after the week we’d had. “Please.”

  “Always.”

  And just like that, with Cailean’s relieved sigh in my ear, things felt okay again. I knew we had an uphill battle ahead of us, but now we were back to being us.

  Chapter 15

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  MY HANDS MOVED over my slick body, taking their time exploring. I had woken up this morning and felt different. It was almost as if I was experiencing an out-of-body moment as I had awkwardly gotten out of bed. Now I was just trying to figure out what was different.

  Sure, my boobs were bigger than before, but that had happened within the first month of finding out I was pregnant.

  A bump.

  I stilled, my whole body frozen as time stood still.

  There was an actual bump where my baby was growing.

  I carefully moved my hands over my hard belly and took a trembling breath. I could have sworn that wasn’t there when I had gone to bed last night. While my clothes had started getting tighter and I had been gaining weight, there hadn’t been a distinctive bump there before.

  I almost slipped in the shower in my haste to finish up so that I could look at myself in the mirror, but I needed to see it.

  And there it was.

  Marveling in front of the mirror, I saw the tiniest protrusion of my abdomen, but there was no denying what it was anymore.

  It was real.

  Bump and all.

  I was having a baby.

  Rushing to throw on some tight fitting jeans - because everything was right fitting these days - and my one and only maternity t-shirt I owned, I was out the door in record time.

  I didn’t have any paperwork waiting for me today since I had spent the last week or so trying to stay busy. Well, that meant that there was nothing left for me to do until Cailean gave me more, so I didn’t have a reason, other than to see him, for being down at the bar.

  I made my way downstairs and only hesitated for a split second after closing the front door on whether or not I should even be doing this. While things had somewhat returned to normal between us since we made up, you could still cut the tension with a knife. Things were still good, but not great. We hadn’t had sex and both my body and mind had taken notice. He still held me at night, but until he got home, I was restless, sometimes unable to fall asleep until I felt his arms around me.

  I didn’t even bother knocking as I barged into his office, and judging by the slight jump and the muttered, “Jesus fuck,” I probably caught him by surprise. I was too excited to even give a damn.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” I said with a giant smile on my face as I strolled up to stand in front of him.

  “If you didn’t look so damn happy, I might have told you not do that again.” He pulled me to stand in between his legs and grabbed my ass.

  The pure look of lust on his face told me everything I needed to know about how he would have told me.

  “You can scold me all you want.” Because, Jesus, all he needed to do was look at me these days and I was ready for just about anything he did to me. “But I wanted to show you something first.”

  He motioned for me to go a head so I took a step back and gestured toward my bump.

  “You don’t have to show me that you’re sexy as fuck, Gert. I knew that already.”

  I rolled my eyes at his crudeness and utter manly answer. Of course he didn’t notice that anything was different.

  “There’s a bump!” I explained excitedly and palmed the firmness that was now my belly.

  “So?” he asked in confusion. “You’ve had a bump for a little while now.”

  “I’ve been.... pudgy, “ I corrected. “This is a bump. A cute one that requires cute maternity shirts like this one.”

  I did a small twirl to show off the t-shirt I had splurged on last time Allie had dragged me out shopping. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a navy shirt with white hearts all over it, but it was cute.

  He laughed softly at my show and pulled me back toward him. “So does this mean I can finally take you shopping for new clothes?”

  “You can come with me while I shop for clothes with the outrageous paycheck you gave me.” Since we had been on non-speaking terms when I had received my paycheck, I hadn’t mentioned it until now.

  “You did the work and I paid you for it. Nothing outrageous about it,” he answered. “Let me just finish up what I was doing and then we can go.”

  “You mean now?”

  Apart from our weekend with his parents and the occasional doctor’s appointment, Cailean rarely took time away from the bar.

  “Well, thanks to you, I’m pretty much caught up on everything and Sebastian will be available if they need help behind the bar.”

  I tried to ignore the warmth spreading in my chest at the thought of spending some extra time with him. I blamed it on my hormones and the time we spent apart.

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  Walking around Target with Cailean while shopping for our baby felt odd at first, but for the first time since I had discovered that I was pregnant, pure excitement was flowing through my veins. Sure, I had accepted and come to terms with what my life was going to look like, but not onc
e had I felt excited to see this baby. I had always looked at hers or his arrival with dread and it felt so good to finally feel happy about it that there was no way to stop the smile lighting up my face.

  I grabbed a couple more blouses and a pair of jeans before finding Cailean thumbing through bras and panties in the corner of the store.

  Of course.

  The smile that had been on my face fell a bit as I came back to the reality of everything. This was not how I had pictured myself preparing for a baby and that was even if I had a baby. My plan had always been my career.

  Now look at you. Jobless, pretty much homeless, and pregnant with Cailean Baker.

  “Whatever wiped that pretty smile off your face needs to take a hike,” Cailean interrupted, stepping into my space with a selection of undergarments in his arms.

  I forced a smile while I tried to remember that Cailean might be rough around the edges, but that neither of us were teenagers anymore. It wasn’t fair of me to keep judging him based on who he had been when he had proved over and over again that he wasn’t that guy anymore.

  “I’m fine,” I told him, trying my hardest to get the excitement I had felt earlier to come back.

  “Come here,” he ordered and put his things in our cart before dragging me toward the changing rooms. Finding an empty one, he gently shoved me inside before closing the door behind us. “I might not be an expert on women, but when your girl tells you that she’s fine, she’s usually not. Now tell me what’s wrong.”

  Everything in me screamed to defy him, something that happened every time he got this demanding or controlling. But this time I decided to just let it out.

  “For a minute, I just got really excited to prepare for and meet this baby,” I admitted, not realizing how bad that sounded until the words were out of my mouth. “I mean, I still am. It’s just that my life isn’t exactly how I pictured it.”

  “And how did you picture it?” he asked carefully, sitting down on the small bench.

  “Having my career take off, maybe meeting someone as devoted to his career as I was. A baby never really existed in my life plan, but if it did happen, I guess I just pictured us picking out clothes for him or her while making jokes about how ridiculous baby clothes are.” Shrugging my shoulders, I realized how lame I sounded. “Having an office that needed to be converted to a nursery, picking out paint and furniture and so on. I don’t know, Cailean, but this is as far from that plan I could possibly be.”

  “Sounds like a pretty boring and stiff life, if you ask me,” he answered and I wanted to throttle him for belittling my feelings. He was the one who had asked, and for once, I had actually answered him. “Apart from meeting your boring-as-fuck husband of your dreams, I don’t see what the problem is. Who says you can’t pick out clothes or shit for the baby’s room?”

  “What room? I don’t have a house and your apartment is a one-bedroom,” I argued.

  He nodded, but didn’t give me an answer. Not that I could really expect one considering I had just pointed out facts, not problems that could be easily solved.

  “I’ll wait outside while you try on your clothes,” he said, bending down to kiss me real quick before he left the small space.

  What?

  What had just happened? If it hadn’t been for that small kiss, I might have thought he was mad at me for some reason unknown to me. He had just left, passing up on the opportunity to see me undress, right in the middle of a conversation.

  Again, what the hell just happened?

  As I stood there, still dumbfounded, a sales lady knocked on the door to hand me the clothes both Cailean and I had picked out. I tried not to let his odd behavior get to me as I tried on the pants, dresses and shirts, but it was hard to find the enthusiasm I had woken up with this morning.

  “Did you find anything?” Cailean asked, pocketing his phone as I stepped back out.

  “A couple of things,” I answered, handing him the few items I had decided to keep.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked and pulled me closer.

  “We’re okay, right?” I hated that I even had to ask him that question and I hated how worried I was even more.

  “Why wouldn’t we be?” He furrowed his brows in confusion, looking down at me.

  I searched his eyes for any deception or hidden secrets, but what was staring back at me was just pure… Cailean.

  “Nevermind,” I said, dismissing my insecurities to deal with them later. “Want to look at some baby stuff while we’re here?”

  While we both wanted to wait to get most of the stuff until we found out if we were having a boy or a girl and figured out the whole sleeping arrangement issue, we still stuffed the cart with toys the baby probably wouldn’t use within it’s first year.

  But it was fun.

  And it was cute.

  And it made the nagging feeling of Cailean hiding something a little less… loud. It wasn’t until he was parking the car back home and pulled out his phone to answer a message that it all came back.

  Unsure of what to do or how to react, I grabbed my purse and got out. Even though I knew Cailean would have a shit-fit about me carrying the bags, I still started unloading the trunk of the things we got today.

  “Fuck, babe, I’ve got it,” he said and took over from me.

  It was expected and while I didn’t mind, it left me with nothing to do but trying to figure out what he was up to. His phone pinged a couple more times as we made our way upstairs to his apartment, but this time he didn’t answer it.

  Instead, he gently pulled me to him by my wrist, enclosing me in his strong arms.

  “I’ve missed you,” he murmured into my hair.

  Relaxing in his hold, I returned the hug, breathing him in. I couldn’t deny that I had missed him, too, over the last week and being in his arms like this again was as if he had breathed life back into me.

  It scared the crap out of me.

  Before I could ponder my feelings, or respond to his statement, his lips started moving across my jaw and down my neck. It started out slowly at first, but it quickly got heated.

  Not wanting to forget the changing room incident, I grabbed a hold of his hair, forcing him to look me in the eyes. “No more secrets.”

  “No more secrets,” he promised, attempting to go back to what he was doing, but I wasn’t done.

  “No more ghosts from the past. From now on, the past stays in the past.”

  He looked taken aback for a second, but as surprising as my statement might have been, I had been thinking about it long and hard. It was time to move forward.

  “Okay.”

  It felt as if the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders, and I guess in a way it had. Dragging our past around wasn’t doing either of us any good. Not when our future held the responsibility of raising a baby.

  “Okay, now can you please work your magic on my body?” I pleaded, the need for him almost making my body burst.

  “And what magic is that?” he asked and kissed his way up my neck in that way that always had me squirming for more.

  “You know what.” I moaned when his teeth sank into my sensitive skin.

  Why aren’t we in bed naked already?

  “You want me to fuck you, baby?”

  I did. And while I would never say it in such a crude way unless I was pissed off, his dirty words only turned me on more.

  Instead of answering him, I pushed him off me and made my way toward the bedroom. If he followed me was up to him, but the way he was looking at me as I stripped on my way, it left little doubt whether or not he was going to fulfill my needs or not.

  By the time I made it to the bedroom, all that was left on my body was my panties. For once, I wasn’t fighting the urge to cover myself up. The way Cailean’s hungry eyes roamed over my body from the doorway made me feel wanted.

  “Now, about that magic…” I trailed off and sat down on the bed.

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  “How did you end up opening the bar wit
h Sebastian?” I asked as we were basking in the afterglow of what we had just done. Lying in bed, face to face with Cailean, while talking like this brought me more contentment than I wanted to admit. It felt as if we were finally on the same level as we got to know each other.

  So far, I’d discovered that college hadn’t been his strong suit and he had dropped out the moment he had inherited money from his grandfather. I could tell there was more to the story, but he seemed reluctant to talk about it. All he mentioned was that the money had come from generations upon generations of hard work with whiskey distilling.

  “We got drunk one night and he mentioned how much he hated his fucking job. I came up with the brilliant idea of becoming business partners and then we went from there.”

  “Way to skip a bunch of details.” I rolled my eyes and he leaned forward to give me chaste kiss. I wanted more, but I also wanted to listen to him talk about his family. “I’m sure your moms are thrilled you’re so close, being sisters and all.”

  “Sure. We’re not really cousins, though, but we’ve always thought of each other as family. Our mothers are best friends and while we grew up on two different continents, we were still as close as brothers.”

  “So Sebastian’s American?”

  “Born and raised. To be honest, I don’t think mom would have approved of our move over here if it hadn’t been for Violet’s husband getting a job in Washington.”

  I took a moment to contemplate that tidbit of information, but in the end, it went into the massive pile of what-if’s in my relationship with Cailean.

  “How old were you when you lost your virginity?” I blurted out after a long minute of silence. While I wanted to know more about where he came from, it almost felt wrong to talk about cousins, moms and whatnot when we were lying naked in bed.

  “Fourteen. No, fifteen, it was on my fifteenth birthday.”

  “Fourteen?!” I exclaimed in disbelief.

  “Fifteen,” he corrected.