by Malcom, Anne
He was going to say more, and I honestly didn’t know if I could handle more sweet, and my baby girl also had the same idea because she chose that moment to kick at Wyatt’s palm.
He froze, eyes moving downward. “Did she just...?”
I grinned. “She’s telling her dad to stop being such a sap and start being that badass and dick-like rock star that got her mother into bed in the first place.”
He gaped at my stomach in wonder as she continued to kick against my stomach. “She’s kicking, moving, fucking growing inside you,” he breathed. “Our fucking daughter.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“Most beautiful moment of my life, and I’ve got a feeling that we’ve got more beauty in store. Life’s given us enough ugly.”
I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t sure I believed him.
But it was nice to pretend in that moment.
* * *
“Em!” my name was shouted at me to get my attention but also like it was an exhalation of relief.
I turned, Wyatt was striding through the garden. The sensor light flickered on, illuminated his attractive face screwed into a frown. I guessed he had been surprised to find the bed empty since we’d fallen asleep, exhausted from the emotional fucking marathon we’d ran since I got the call.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he said, stopping in front of me, taking stock, measuring me up, to see what parts had fallen off the emotional unstable, pregnant Emma. “Jesus,” he muttered, rubbing my arms. “It’s fuckin’ freezing and you’re only wearing a tee?”
I glanced down, I’d almost forgotten I was wearing nothing but my ‘Frankie Says, Fuck You,’ tee and some leggings. Wyatt stopped rubbing my now numb arms to yank off his leather jacket and slip it around my shoulders.
I was warm from being around him, it smelled still faintly of tobacco, of whisky and Wyatt.
“What the fuck are you doin’ out here?” he demanded. “Apart from freezing yourself and the baby?”
He rubbed the bump protectively.
“Let’s go inside where it’s warm,” he decided.
“No,” I protested. “That’s exactly why I’m not inside. It’s too warm, it’s thick and hot and the air is too heavy in there. I just needed something cold and clear and crisp. I like the cold. It’s more honest.”
He stared at me, brows still furrowed. “You’re extraordinarily strange, Emma,” he murmured. “Only you can talk about the weather being honest and make it sound like sense instead of bullshit like it would sound coming from someone trying to sound poetic.” He paused. “You’re like the cold,” he said after a long silence. “You’re beautiful, you’re crisp, impossible to ignore. You seep into people’s bones.”
“And I’ll kill you if you stay around me for too long,” I continued. “That’s how my parents raised me, in the cold, I’m at home here.”
I felt his glare. Then his arms tightened around me. “Fine,” he said.
“Fine?” I looked up at him.
“If you’re at home in the cold then I’ll figure out a way to be too. Even with my warm California blood. You’re not gonna kill me, Em. Only way you do that is if you keep thinkin’ those ugly thoughts, keep trying to convince me to walk away from you. I’m not gonna do that.” His hand stroked my stomach. “I’m not gonna walk away from either of you. So I’ll make a home in the cold when I’ve got my girls to keep me warm.”
“Stop saying things like that,” I demanded.
He kissed me, long and hard and deep enough to warm my bones even if I’d been standing in the Arctic.
And we stood in the cold, pretending for a little while longer.
Chapter Sixteen
Wyatt and I had two weeks of peace after my father’s death.
Two weeks more than I thought I’d get with him.
And it wasn’t exactly peace, since it was me and Wyatt. We argued. Daily. About the fact that no, now that Wyatt was “eating my pussy for breakfast every morning” it did not mean he could move in with me.
We argued about him buying everything for the nursery without consulting me. What made me madder was it was absolutely perfect, everything I’d envisioned for the baby’s room but hadn’t been able to mesh together and actualize.
When I questioned him on it, he’d shrugged. “I stalked your Pinterest.”
And then I got mad at him just for being so thoughtful and knowing me too well.
We argued about him staying home with me every night they weren’t touring.
“You need to keep going out to parties with vapid socialites on your arm,” I said, tasting ash as I even suggested it. “Keep up appearances. So someone doesn’t decide to come looking for you and find you here.” Here being on my sofa eating corn chips and ice cream and watching documentaries on the Pygmies.
Wyatt’s face hardened. “I’m not going to some stupid party where I’ll have a miserable time talkin’ to people I hate when I could stay here.” His hand moved up my thigh and up my skirt until he brushed the side of my panties. “And have a decidedly not miserable time.” His finger entered me, and I gasped. “Fucking the woman I definitely do not fucking hate,” he rasped, moving with the perfect rhythm that he had on a bass.
My breathing was sharp as I struggled to find the reason to argue with him.
“Plus, I don’t give a fuck if someone comes lookin’, finds me with my woman,” he continued.
That did it. “I’m not your woman,” I hissed.
“My finger’s inside your pussy, Emma, my baby’s inside of you. You’re my fucking woman,” he growled. He emphasized this with a perfect swipe of his finger, hitting my G-spot and making me see stars. He moved so he was on top of me, his finger gone, pants unzipped and his cock pressing into my entrance before I could blink a few times. “Now I need to fuck you quick before you start arguing with me,” he murmured, surging into me.
I let out a strangled gasp. “I can still argue with you while you fuck me,” I said, voice breathy as he moved inside me.
His mouth covered mine in a brutal kiss. “And somehow that makes it that much hotter,” he murmured against my mouth.
“No one is knowing about us,” I choked out as he pushed me toward an orgasm.
“The fact that you’re admitting that there’s an us to know about is progress,” he grunted.
I placed my hands on the side of his neck, forcing him to stop. His eyes bore into me and my body cried out from his pause.
“It’s important to me, Wyatt,” I whispered. “That we keep...this, whatever it is, away from the world that will warp it and make it more complicated than it already is.” I sucked in a breath, feeling more vulnerable than I ever had. “I’m not strong enough for it yet.”
His gaze softened and he kissed me gently. “You’re strong enough for everything. But I’ll give you as much time as I can for you to realize that.” He thrust forward and my body responded violently. “And the fact I get to stay in here and fuck you so the world doesn’t see us isn’t something I’m gonna complain about,” he growled.
And then he fucked me.
And the world didn’t see.
For a time at least.
But all good things come to an end.
All bad things come to an end.
And Wyatt and I were somewhere in the middle of that.
But that didn’t mean whatever it was between us, the pocket of peace we were enjoying, that it wouldn’t come to an end.
It started when I was coming out of the drug store. I was wearing one of Wyatt’s ripped black tees, black leggings, and combat boots. My hair was a mess, I wasn’t wearing makeup, apart from whatever was leftover from my shitty takeoff job the night before.
So of course that’s where I was when the paps found me.
They couldn’t have got me when I’d had a fresh color, my wing was strong, my lip was red and my outfit was banging. No, they got me like this, carrying a bag of embarrassing pregnancy stuff.
They s
warmed me the second I left the automatic doors, clicks and flashes assaulting me and freezing me in place for a hot second. But then when I realized what was going on, I shielded my face and started to walk toward my car.
“Emma! Over here. Was the baby planned?”
“Do you and Wyatt have plans to get married?”
“Are you in it for the money?”
The questions were hurled at me like rocks as they swarmed me, cameras shoved in my face at all the wrong angles.
I’d taken it for granted, reading my trashy magazines, looking at celebs out and about, not realizing the reality of those photos. These were people just going to get milk in their flip-flops or dropping their daughter off at school and they had fucking strangers swarming them. Taking photos of them, demanding answers to personal questions like they had some kind of right. It was a horrible kind of violation.
I pushed through them, my hand on my stomach as if to protect her from this. But it was part of the world. That was the problem with becoming a parent, you couldn’t protect your kid from the world.
My phone buzzed, I glanced down at the caller ID and answered it, trying to ignore the people following me through the CVS parking lot.
“Emma, where the fuck are you?” Wyatt demanded.
“Closer to committing homicide than I’d like to admit,” I gritted out, scowling at the guy who had broken off from the rest to get a close up of me.
“The story’s out, I need you with me before the paps get to you.”
“Too late for that, they’ve got me at my finest,” I said, happy to see my car and the salvation it offered.
“Where are you? I’m coming to get you,” he decided.
“You’re not coming to get me, I can handle it,” I lied.
“Well come straight to me.”
I gritted my teeth as the solace of his presence was almost too enticing to pass up. But I couldn’t go running to him every time life got hard. It was a bad habit to get into. And I already had far too many bad habits. Granted, the pregnancy had eliminated most of them from rotation, but Wyatt was my worst habit of all.
“I’ve got shit to do,” I said, trying to remember exactly what I was supposed to be doing today.
“I don’t care,” Wyatt clipped. “I need to see you. Touch you. Know you’re okay. So come straight to me.”
I got in the car, slamming the door and sighing into the small amount of solace it offered. Not that it was much at all, the cameras still flashed as they pressed up against my windows. I threw my bag on the passenger seat, pressing my hand into my temple. “You’re not the boss of me,” I informed Wyatt.
“I’m well aware of that. But for once, pretend I am,” he growled. “And then I’ll fuck you like I am later.”
My stomach dipped.
The cameras continued to flash.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“You in your car?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Switch to Bluetooth. Don’t want you on your phone and drivin’, and before you snap at me, we’re pretending I’m the boss for now, remember?”
“Temporarily, and only because there’s a promise of an orgasm at the end,” I said, switching to Bluetooth, horrified to see that my hands were shaking.
I’d handled myself better in situations in the middle of war torn countries I’d gone to for the sake of art and a paycheck. But I was losing it here over a handful of photographers.
Maybe because I was prepared for it there, it was expected. I’d lulled myself into a false sense of security here. With Wyatt.
“You won’t be getting just one orgasm, Em, that’s a promise,” Wyatt rasped through the sound system of my car.
I shivered, pulling out of the lot, resisting the urge to run a couple of the photographers over ‘accidentally.’
They rushed to different vehicles to follow.
It was concerning, but I was focusing on the way I reacted to Wyatt’s words more than anything else. “That’s a big promise, Wyatt. Think you can follow through?” I asked, voice shaky.
“I think I proved to you I can follow through. And that I’m big.”
I laughed. “And modest.”
“I’m modest compared to Sam.”
“Anyone is modest compared to Sam,” I countered.
Silence fell for a few beats as I drove through shitty L.A. traffic, mindful of the fact that men with cameras were doing the same.
“Em,” Wyatt murmured. “It’s gonna be okay. Come home to me, it’ll be okay.”
Stupid me believed him.
* * *
Wyatt met me at my car, opening the door before I’d even come to a full stop. He’d leaned over, unbuckled my seat belt and gently pulled me out in a series of blinks.
He cupped my face in his hands, searching it. “You okay, sugar?” he asked softly.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m fine, Wyatt. It was a handful of photographers, not a drive-by. I’ve handled worse.”
His jaw hardened. “Yeah, you’ve handled worse,” he agreed. “It doesn’t mean you have to handle everything. Doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to let shit affect you. You don’t have to pretend with me, remember?” His hand found my stomach.
I sighed into his touch, into his words. I wanted to fight against the way he could pick whatever small thread of vulnerability was showing through the mask of strength I was so sure I’d perfected.
“I remember that you promised me more than one orgasm,” I said after a pause, my voice throaty.
His eyes darkened and his hand moved to grip my neck tightly. “Oh, I make good on all my promises, sugar.” He yanked my mouth to plaster his.
And he did make good on those promises.
* * *
There was only so much sex Wyatt and I could have before we had to face the proverbial music.
Though we had a lot of sex.
But then the world rushed in, with both of our phones buzzing nonstop.
Wyatt had forbidden me to look at either of them.
I’d complied because his fingers had been inside me at the time, and he knew he could pretty much tell me whatever he wished and I’d comply. Plus, I didn’t actually want to look at my phone. It would mean I would have to look at the future, have to make those big adult-type decisions.
I was happy to cling onto the present with Wyatt for as long as possible.
But there was only so much of him my body could handle.
So after a shower—one we’d shared—I took a glimpse at my phone while he was making food.
Another thing—Wyatt was a fucking great cook. He was the one person in L.A. who was against ordering in.
“I like takin’ care of you, feeding you,” he’d said when I commented on it.
And I’d flung some sarcastic remark to distract him, and more importantly, myself, from the way it softened my heart.
I had almost a hundred missed calls and twice as many texts. Many were from the band, making sure I was okay.
The rest were from my acquaintances I’d never call friends. Everyone offering support with thinly veiled ulterior motives.
Fucking Addy told me she could “come over and help me get camera ready whenever she needed me.”
The bitch.
I clicked on one of the many links from my news alert.
“Wyatt Summers’ Love Child.”
“Baby Momma spotted in CVS.”
Then I looked at the comments. The spotty information they’d already been able to gain about me. Thankfully nothing about my background, other than I worked for a ‘notable art dealer’ and various pictures from my social media.
“Emma!” Wyatt’s voice punctured through all the comments and pictures assaulting my mind.
The phone was snatched from my hand.
“Don’t look at that shit,” he demanded, pocketing my phone.
I stood, putting my hands on my hips. “What? You want me to insulate myself? Put myself in a bubble and pretend that doesn’t exist? You said y
ourself, I’m not the woman that does that. And I’ve gotta face it eventually.”
His jaw hardened.
But he didn’t argue. Because there was nothing to argue about. I was right.
And I hated it.
“I can’t believe that people know, this is a nightmare,” I said, pacing the room. The slideshow of headlines played through my mind. I thought about all the strangers digging through the rotting fucking compost that is my past. I glanced to Wyatt. “People are going to hate me. Your fans will hate me.”
I hadn’t seen more than a couple of insults about my appearance in the comments I’d managed to read before Wyatt snatched my phone. But the hate would come. It always did.
“You’ve never once cared about what people thought of you, Emma,” Wyatt said, watching me pace with gritted teeth.
I scowled at him. “Me not caring about what other people think is in regard to the stupid receptionist at work, the mom in Birkenstocks who gives me looks for swearing too close to her kids. The people I went to high school with. People who’ve seen me in person, heard me, and then form an organic opinion of what a foul-mouthed bitch I am. I’m okay with that. But strangers on a large scale, judging me without knowing me. I’m okay with people hating me after they’ve gotten to know me.” I continued to pace. “They’re gonna call me a gold digger after your money.”
“You don’t even know that it’s gonna be negative,” he continued, frown deepening. “You’re always gonna jump to the worst possible scenario.”
I rolled my eyes. “Because in my world, Wyatt, the worst possible scenario is the only scenario I know. I’m comfortable there, I can make a battle plan.”
He let out a rough sigh, striding across the room to grab my shoulders and stop my pacing. “You were freakin’ me out with that shit. I don’t want you fainting again.”
“Two times,” I hissed. “Two times I fainted. I’m not the little dove who is gonna collapse at any and all scandals. You can let me go.”
“I’m well aware of the fact you’re not a dove,” he said, playing with my midnight hair. “You’re more like a raven. Valiant, sleek, mysterious. Something everyone misunderstands, including you.” He frowned. “Especially you.”
