“And you weren’t,” he finished.
What I thought about saying next was not what came out of my mouth. What I thought about saying was, Of course, I wasn’t exaggerating. But what came out of my mouth was, “Have you told your parents about the baby yet?”
Jude froze. Hell, so did I.
Maybe Atwood’s advice made me so uncomfortable because she was right. It was a thought I didn’t want to dwell on too much.
Jude gently turned our positions, so my back was against the column, his arm caging me in, an effective barrier from any prying eyes on the quiet, tree-lined street.
“Not yet,” he admitted. His hand snuck under the back of my shirt, and he traced the bumps on my spine. “Soon.”
I opened my mouth, this time not even sure what I was going to say, and he leaned in, sucking my bottom lip into his mouth.
“H-how was work?” I asked, tilting my mouth away.
He kissed down my neck. “I hardly want to talk about work when I could be doing this.”
My fingers curled into the material of his shirt, and even as I recognized what he was doing—serving up a delicious distraction—I wasn’t able to find the strength to resist it.
Not conventional.
Maybe not even wise.
But I tilted my head and yanked him closer, earning me a grunt of satisfaction when my tongue slid wetly against his. One of his palms spread wide over my stomach, and I felt a warm glow somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.
Wise, conventional, whatever word someone else might suggest … I decided they were all overrated, and I lost myself in his kiss.
JUDE
By the time we were back at my house and Lia had curled up in her favorite corner of my couch, I’d sort of stopped hearing that little whomp-whomp-whomp sound in my head.
Sort of.
I scrolled the screen of my phone.
“Did you know the average heartbeat is up to a hundred and sixty beats per minute?”
Lia glanced at me, a bemused smile on her face. “I did not.”
“His was fast.”
Whomp, whomp, whomp.
Like a horse galloping on hard dirt.
Now the smile spread on her face. “His? I thought it was my job to get a feel for the sex.”
“Awfully sexist of you.” I lifted my phone screen and tried to pretend I wasn’t a little embarrassed that I’d been the first to admit which gender I thought the baby was. “Sir Google says that boy heartbeats average a bit higher, so you can sod off.”
She laughed. “There are so many girls in my family, it’s just weird to imagine having a boy.”
Weird was not the adjective I would’ve used.
Everything laid out in my head like a road map, all the ways I’d be able to do right by him when my parents hadn’t done right by me. And maybe everyone did that to a certain extent when faced with impending parenthood. The mistakes of our own families felt like blinking beacons, bright and obnoxious. And not just obvious but easily avoided.
My parents, from simple, hardworking stock, couldn’t imagine anything other than the life they’d both been raised in. My father was a farmer because his father had been a farmer. He dug his hands in the dirt, day in and day out, because it was what McAllister men did.
Until me.
And Lewis.
Though they accepted the life he lived because my brother still worked his fingers to the bone in his pub. He wiped down dirty counters and cleared tables, if need be. He poured drinks and stayed until the middle of the night if required. To them, it wasn’t farming the ground for our food, but it was honorable because it was service. But to them, I was nothing more than a show pony who could kick a ball into a very large, very easily found target. My success, in their mind, was rooted in vanity and excess, a failing on their part that I wasn’t more content in the life that they’d raised me.
To them, I didn’t serve anyone except myself. No matter that the entire world understood the unifying effects of sport, and the passion and joy and camaraderie of cheering on the same team. The entire world except my bloody family, it seemed.
To them, it was frivolous, this thing I loved and had dedicated my life to.
My son—or daughter—would never feel like that.
Whatever passion they were born with, whatever thing lit them up inside, I’d move heaven and hell to help them hone that into a life. I’d never make them feel like less for loving something different than I did. The opposite actually. If they wanted to paint or draw or write or spin pirouettes or design clothes, I’d tear my hands to blood and bone if I could carve out a place in the world for them to do the thing they loved.
And I could feel that building up inside me with a zealot’s fire as I watched Lia flip channels on the telly in my home.
Everything else might be going wrong in my life, branching off into directions that felt crooked and dangerously flimsy, except her.
“A girl is fine by me too,” I murmured, sliding a hand up her leg, where it draped over my lap.
Lia rolled her eyes. “I’d hope so.”
“It was fast, though, wasn’t it?” I asked. “The heartbeat.”
Funny, if I laid my hand over my chest, I got the strangest feeling I’d feel it pounding in that same rhythm.
Whomp, whomp, whomp.
She hummed, moving her own hand over her stomach. When the doctor rolled the wand over it as Lia lay flat on the table, it was hardly detectable. “It was amazing.” The graceful length of her fingers spread wide over her stomach, and she smiled softly. “I wish I could feel it.”
There was no doubt in my mind she’d be a wonderful mother. If pressed, I might not even be able to articulate why, or not well, at least.
We’d talked about so little, she and I. And the things she did seem to want to talk about were the subjects I wanted to avoid like a kick to the balls. It was instinct, I supposed. The same way I could stand in front of a keeper for a penalty kick and know in my gut that he’d go left, so I should kick right. I knew she’d be the best kind of mum. Fierce and fearless and intelligent.
In Lia’s lap was her notebook and a dog-eared copy of
Jane Eyre that was always in her bag.
“How did your meeting go?”
She sighed, moving the notebook and novel to the side so she could burrow further into the couch. “I kinda … argued with her. Or she argued with me. I don’t even know.”
I tilted my head. “What about?”
Lia’s eyes, that deep midnight blue, hit me like a punch to the chest when she looked up at me. She’d looked at me for a lot of reasons, out of lust and out of fear and in anger, but this was something different. There was a hesitation that I couldn’t make out.
My hand squeezed her leg. “What is it?”
“She said something, and it made me feel a little defensive, I guess.”
Gently, I tapped her leg, so she stretched out. Taking a foot in hand, I dug my thumbs into the arch and listened to her groan, an indecent sound that shouldn’t have been so sexy, considering I was rubbing her feet, yet it was.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.