by Staci Hart
My laughter was muffled by my stuffy nose.
She leaned back to look at me. “We love you.”
“So much,” Rose added from my side.
“I love you, too. And it’s gonna be okay. Right?”
“Hundred percent,” Lily said without hesitation.
And I found myself smiling. “Then I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
I ushered them out with more hugs and calls for good luck and parting advice. Once the door was closed, the quiet was a comfort. I made my way to our bedroom, left alone with my thoughts,.
It was a huge room with windows that looked over the old building across 97th that sat along Fifth. Never had I gotten used to the wealth that Cooper’s inheritance and now job provided, but at least I didn’t mind it so much anymore.
I made my way to the closet, which was the size of my room when I’d stayed at Lily’s old apartment, and grabbed my duffel bag. One drawer at a time, I gathered up all the things I’d need for the weekend, including the clothes I’d wear to sail and a couple of cocktail dresses for dinners.
I slipped on the boatneck sweater, thinking about the salt on the ocean wind, imagining standing at the bow of the sailboat with the sunshine on my face. A vision struck me of us on a boat with a little boy who had Cooper’s tilted smile and bright, clever eyes, a shock of dark hair on his head, as he darted across the deck and into his daddy’s arms. I saw in my mind Cooper teaching him how to tie knots, showing him all the parts of the boat, explaining how to catch the wind, how to chart using maps instead of GPS.
And then I had an idea, one that outshone the punsies and speeches in my mind. When I reached into the shelf in my closet, I knew.
It’s gonna be all right.
And for the first time, I believed it with unfailing hope.
9
Pearls
Cooper
A salty breeze brushed across us, kissing our skin, kicking up the ends of Maggie’s hair as if it wanted to carry her away. The tendrils danced in the current, curling like smoke.
We sat in a cove just west of the Hamptons, enclosed by a curving rise of land, generous by Long Island standards though nowhere near what one might call a cliff. But it was enough to shelter us.
The sun chased the horizon, dipping closer to the sea with every minute. It had been cloudy all day, and as the light slanted through the atmosphere, it painted the sky in golds and pinks, blues and yellows, in a mix of color so saturated and luminous, it defied my senses.
My gaze shifted to Maggie. Her eyes were soft and heavy with wonder and contentment, her cheeks pink and sun-kissed and glowing.
All afternoon, we had sailed, moving like a single unit, tacking and jibing, adjusting the lines, taking turns at the helm. We’d also taken the time to just be, to stand on the bow, to sit on the deck, to feel the thrill. There was a moment where I’d stood at the helm, hands on the wheel, as she tightened the mainsail. Her hair had been in a braid down her back, but it never stayed put, the wild curls always working their way loose. When she’d turned to look back at me over her shoulder, her smile shining and eyes alight, those strands across her face like streamers, I’d felt the truth I’d always known, felt it so deeply, I’d braced myself and locked my knees against the force of emotion.
She was everything I’d ever wanted. She was the sum of my universe, my reason for everything.
Maggie turned to look at me, the pink that smudged her cheeks from the sun deepening with a flush. She smiled. “What?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
“You’re perfect,” was all I could say.
Her smile fell, though her face didn’t darken. Her brows tilted together. “There’s no such thing as perfect, Coop.” The words were quiet, touched with some meaning, some context I didn’t understand.
My heart lurched in my chest. “But there is.”
She watched me with curiosity as I rose. Curiosity turned to surprise when I took a knee at her feet. Surprise turned to a deep, stunned gasp when I pulled the box out of my pocket and opened it in display. Her hand flew to her lips.
“I have been waiting for this moment since I first held you in my arms. I’ve known since the beginning that I loved you, and I only hoped that someday, you’d love me too. All I want is you, forever. Marry me, Maggie. Marry me and make my dreams come true. I’m yours. Say you’ll be mine.”
Her eyes were full of love and tears, but the color had seeped from her face, leaving her gray and waxen. She didn’t speak, just stared at the ring, her hand clamped over her mouth.
Three heartbeats, and the muscle clenched painfully. Five more had it throwing itself against my sternum.
“Mags,” I said gently, “please, say something.”
Her eyes flew to mine, wide with panic, before she shot out of her chair and bolted for the edge of the boat.
For a split second, I didn’t register her retching for what it was, but the moment I did, the ring box was back in my pocket, and I was at her side. I gathered her haphazard hair and took it from her hand, resting the other on her back.
My brow quirked as I soothed her. She’d been seasick all day, which wasn’t like her at all. We’d sailed a hundred times and in far worse conditions, and never had she gotten sick. Inexplicably, it had stopped her from the champagne at dinner and left her picking at the salmon I’d cooked us for dinner.
When she finally emptied her stomach, she straightened up. I pulled her into my chest, smoothing her hair. Her small hands clutched at my shirt under her palms as she tried to catch her breath.
“Water,” she croaked.
I guided her back to the chairs and handed her a glass.
“I think I saw a boot come outta you,” I said with a chuckle as she took a sip, swished it around and spit it over the side of the boat, then found her way back into my arms. “You all right?” I asked, trailing my hand up and down her back.
Her face shifted against my chest. “Coop, I …”
Again the vise on my heart clamped tighter. She didn’t finish.
“What’s the matter, Mags?”
Another shake of her head. She pulled away, her face down and hand slipping into the pocket of the palazzo pants she’d put on for dinner. When it reappeared, a black velvet box rested in her slender fingers.
Maggie opened the box with a creak and met my eyes, hers face filled with even measures of hope and fear.
On the bed of velvet lay an irregular pearl, creamy and shining in the golden sunlight. I knew it on sight. We’d gone pearl-diving in Bahrain. I’d found a dozen. She’d found only the one.
“When we went diving that day,” she started, her voice unsure, “I thought I’d find the perfect pearl. That it would be brilliant and white, a flawless sphere, an exact replica of the vision in my mind. But one thing I’ve learned is that there is no perfect time. There is no perfect pearl. But its imperfection doesn’t make it any less beautiful.”
My gaze shifted from the pearl to her face. I searched it for answers through the pause.
“Cooper,” she breathed, “I’m pregnant.”
A zip of lightning shot down my spine and all the way to my heels, melting them to the deck as the world tilted on its axis.
I blinked. “You’re …”
A flicker of a smile was at the corner of her lips. “I’m gonna have your baby.”
My lungs emptied painfully. “My … baby?”
She nodded, her smile blooming. “Uh-huh.” She nearly cooed the affirmation.
I looked down at her stomach as if it would confirm what she’d said. With a shaking hand, I pressed my palm to the space below her belly button. “My baby,” I breathed. “Our baby.”
The shine of her eyes amplified the color, a blue as deep as the ocean. “Our baby. Of course I’ll marry you. I’d marry you a thousand times. I’d say yes a thousand ways on a thousand shores. Cooper, I love—”
I stopped her with a kiss, swallowing her words and breathing her promise. I held her in my ar
ms on the deck of our ship with the future on the horizon where the sun met the sea.
She was the one to break the kiss. There was nothing that could have convinced me to end that perfect moment. Because that was where she was wrong.
Perfect did exist. I held it right there in my arms.
About Damn Time
10
Mercy
Rose
“This had better fucking work.”
Patrick laughed through his nose as his lips brushed the edge of my bare shoulder blade. With a flex of his hips, he filled me up again.
“Relax,” he whispered, pumping again, the rhythm slow and intentional.
“Easy for you to say,” I snapped, my belly heavy and so low, my inverted belly button brushed the sheets. “You’re not full of forty pounds of baby.”
Another pump, another soft chuckle. “What if I like you full of my baby?” His hand moved from the place where my hip used to be and slid around the obscene swell of my stomach.
“Stop it,” I said, popping his hand. “Right now, that does not exist! Don’t touch the bump!”
He pulled out and flexed his hips, this time with enough force to jostle my ass. His hand skimmed the curve, tracing it with his fingertips before they dragged a trail downward, to my hood. “Can I touch this bump?”
My lids fluttered closed, and a sigh of relief slipped out of me. “Yes. Yes, you can.”
His arm was a thickly muscled, tattooed pillar, braced behind my own. The solidity, the strength of it there, was comfort enough that I leaned into him. I found myself relaxing under his touch, the sum of my thoughts turning from my discomfort to the swollen, aching place where his fingers circled in rhythm with the wave of his body.
“You’re beautiful,” he said against my bare neck.
His fingers disappeared, and his weight shifted as he reached up to pull my bun down. Strong fingers slipped into the locks and clenched, the sweet sting of my roots just enough to part my lips. With a gentle tug, he wrenched my neck, turning my head so he could reach my mouth, which he took with possession. His hips didn’t quit. A deep moan climbed from the base of my throat and into his mouth.
He let my hair go but didn’t release my lips, his hand skating my shoulder, my breast. His fingers caught the peak of my nipple and teased it until it was painfully tight. My core tightened right along with it. I’d forgotten all about my bulbous stomach or swollen breasts, my aching back or the stretch marks on my ass. I’d forgotten about the baby completely.
Until she kicked me in the ribs.
I groaned—and not in a sexy way. He broke the kiss, his eyes questioning.
“She’s awake.” I was practically crying, my throat tight. It was unfair, that was what it was. Flat-out unfair.
His face softened. His hips didn’t.
He cupped my face. “Shh. She doesn’t know, Rosie.” This time, when he cupped my stomach, I didn’t stop him. “Right now, you need to come.” The word alone set a clenching heat blooming in the sheath around his length. “You’re going to come. Your body is going to climb; you’re already close. I can feel it here.” He rolled his hips to punctuate the words. “And you’re going to lose yourself, disappear, forget about everything but my body and your body.” The pressure mounted from the place our bodies joined and deeper, just beyond where he could reach. “You’re going to come, Rosie. And then I’m going to fill you up, hard and hot.” Faster his hips moved, harder his fingers squeezed with my sensitive nipple caught between them, his palm cupping my heavy breast as best he could. “Come. Come on.”
“I … I can’t. I—oh God.” My body went rigid, my hips swinging in time to his.
“That’s it. Come on, babe. Now.”
My lungs shot open in a gasp and froze, the hammering of his hips the total of my universe as my body exploded, the lightning burst blinding, hijacking my control and composure. I was left a panting, moaning mess.
“Oh, thank fuck,” he breathed, speeding up. I felt the hard length of him swell inside me, a hiss of breath through his teeth, and he came hard, deep, long.
My arms trembled with exertion from holding myself up. As he came down, he slid his arm around my stomach and kissed my spine. I shifted, and he took the cue, twisting to drop us to the bed on our sides. My back pressed against his chest, my ass nestled in the cradle of his hips.
My heart had barely slowed down. A tightening came from low in my belly, a gentle contraction, an echo of my orgasm. I sighed.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Mmhmm. Thank you for loving me enough to seduce me.”
A laugh rumbled in his chest. He pressed a kiss into my loose hair. “I’ll seduce you until I die, Rosie.”
Emotion gripped me again, filling me up with love and sentimentality and tears. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said quietly, seriously. “Always have, always will.”
We lay there in the solitude of the morning for a long time. I was so content, like a fat, lazy cat, sated and stretched out next to him in bed. I didn’t think twice of his hand on my belly or the baby when she kicked and shifted against his palm.
I registered his lips on my shoulder and drew a breath, shifting to lie on my back. And I looked up at his face, his beauty blinding. The hard cut of his jaw, smattered with stubble he’d erase when he left my side. The depth of the black ink that scrawled nearly every inch of his body, up his neck. His lips, the perfect swell and bow, always serious, like his dark brows. But his eyes were the most brilliant of all, sharp and deep and laden with a million thoughts, a million feelings. He had the uncanny ability to transmit them all to me with a look alone.
A tear slipped from the corner of my eye. He watched it fall, cupped my face, ran his thumb across the track to wipe it away. When he kissed me, it was with possession and adoration, his lips closed and soft but not without demand.
He broke away with a sigh. “I don’t want to go to work.”
“I’m probably just going to alternate between sleeping, eating, and bitching. Trust me—you’ll be better off at work.”
He turned his gaze to my stomach, his thumb shifting against my taut skin. “Think it’ll work?”
“Well, all the books say it helps. Certainly didn’t hurt.”
A laugh. “No, certainly didn’t. But I don’t like being in Brooklyn. It’s too far away if something happens.”
“In fairness, we were supposed to have the baby a week ago.”
He shook his head, his brow heavy with regret. “I shouldn’t have taken the guest spot so far away.”
“Joel needed you to. Seriously, it’s okay. I doubt I’ll have her today, and you’re off all weekend. Just mercy fuck me when you get home tonight. And maybe tomorrow morning. Lily’s forcing me to go on a walk even though it’s a thousand degrees outside. But we’re walking to get snow cones, so there’s that.”
He didn’t look convinced.
I cupped his jaw. He met my eyes.
“Even if I go into labor, it’s gonna be hours before she’s here. Okay? I promise, everything’s going to be fine.”
His face softened, and with a sigh, he turned his head to press a kiss to my palm. “It’s just a few hours, and I’ll be home.”
“I’ll be here, eating junk food and watching garbage television.”
“Not too much. You’ll rot your brain.”
“Too late,” I said as he kissed my nose and climbed out of bed. Shamelessly, I watched his sculpted, tattooed ass until it was out of sight.
Out of sight indeed.
I smiled to myself, curling up on my side, pulling the top sheet over me. And as I debated pulling the blackout curtains and turning on my box fan, I was asleep.
My phone buzzed again somewhere on the fringes of my consciousness. The room was pitch dark, the fan whirring.
Patrick. I smiled. Goddammit, I love him.
I had no idea what time it was, but I was still naked, twisted up in the sheets. The baby kicked me in the bla
dder.
“Oof,” I grunted, my hand flying to the low curve as I clenched my urethra and thighs to stop myself from peeing.
It took Herculean effort to crawl out of bed, my mobility shot and my urgency high as I got up. Rolled out. Whatever. I waddled to the bathroom and dropped to the seat, rubbing my face and yawning.
My exhaustion was complete, from every square inch of my body to my foggy brain, which I firmly believed the baby had been snacking on for the better part of the last eleventy-billion months. And I still had a walk to endure with Lily in the dead heat of July.
With another yawn, I grabbed the counter and hauled myself up. I hobbled to the shower and cranked it on. Twisted up my hair and took a long look in the mirror.
Being pregnant was the most brilliant, bizarre thing to ever happen to me. My breasts were huge, swollen and heavy, resting against the swell of my stomach, the skin stretched so thin and tight. Where my belly button used to be was a pale, smooth bump, and down the length ran an almost imperceptible tan line. I tried to assess the state of my bikini line, but it was impossible. I hadn’t seen the thatch of hair or my toes in months. In a brief moment of embarrassment, I imagined a woolly snarl of hair between my legs to give nightmares to all the nurses who were going to see my vagina. But I reminded myself that their jobs revolved around vaginas and the humans that came out of them, and I was comforted. No way was my bush the worst. It was at least a B-plus.
Within twenty minutes, I’d rinsed off and put on a maxi dress. My phone buzzing had been Lily, as suspected, hounding me for our walk. And so, I tottered out of my room, stopping when I passed the nursery.
Patrick’s art supplies and easel had been moved to a corner of the living room, and his old studio had been converted, repainted, furnished and decorated. Everything was white with black details, the simple, delicate geometric patterns like brushstrokes on her quilt and crib bumper, the rocking chair cushion and changing table pad. The long wall of her room had been painted black, and stretching across it was a spray of flowers. Patrick had painted every stroke, every line, the effect almost like watercolor and pen but bolder, patterned with touches of black on white petals, sprays of aqua and orangey-pinks and tangerine and dusty sunshine. He’d worked on it for weeks, from sketches to the full spread, a labor of love and devotion as only he could give.
