Realization crosses his face, and I drop my hand. “Right. Of course, love.”
“Well,” I continue on, “I want to wait for Maximoff. When he’s a little older. Maybe three or four. We could take a trip together.”
Lightness bursts in his eyes, something that lifts me ten feet in the air. I am soaring inside. “He can’t be sorted until he’s eleven,” Lo reminds me.
“Okay,” I nod, knowing that’s the rules. I’m a proud Hufflepuff. Lo is a bitter Slytherin. And together I kind of wonder what our child will be.
“Then it’s a plan,” Lo says, and I glow at his words. Maybe we shouldn’t be making them so far ahead. Anything could happen. The worst could strike us cold.
But I choose to see the better future.
The one I want.
And if it doesn’t come to pass…
I’ll deal with it then.
“It worked,” Lo tells me, his eyes flitting over my features. He turns the knob of our door and walks backwards, into the dimly lit room.
“What?” I follow him like our bodies are connected, like a short rope is hooked from my waist to his. I will wander with Loren Hale through every moment, good and bad.
Very softly, he says, “You believe in yourself again.”
Yes. I smile. I think I do.
{ 31 }
LOREN HALE
“Lo,” Lily cries out while I thrust inside of her from behind. On our sides, I have her leg pulled over my waist. She clenches the red sheets, her mouth open as she trembles into these blinding sensations.
My cock throbs. Badly. Dying for a release, to thrust hard and come inside of her. My whole body is coated in sweat. And my nerves light on fire as I keep this deep rhythm. Jesus.
“Harder,” she whimpers, her feet arching.
I can’t go harder than this. Even if I want to just as much as her. She’s thin, gangly and carrying our child. I feel like if I’m any rougher than my pace now, I’ll break her in two. The closer she is to her due date, I also worry about inducing labor.
Block it out.
I just want to fuck my girlfriend. I push deeper, which causes her whole body to quake. And I hold this position, pulling her leg higher. My eyes almost roll back.
“Lo, Lo, Lo!” She reaches out for me, but since I’m behind her, she can only claw at the sheets. She moans into the mattress, and I let out a ragged noise.
I make the most of my climax, staying inside as she pulses around my cock. About a couple minutes later, I pull out and kiss her on the lips. She’s smiling as she rolls onto her back, but her eyes are starting to flutter closed.
I prop an elbow on the pillow, staring down at her. “That good?” I say, drawing circles on her belly.
“Mmmhhmm.”
I feign surprise. “She can’t even talk.” It’s rare that morning sex will put Lily back to sleep, and I suspect it’s because we went at it all night. We’re making up for the six weeks where we can’t do anything. I enjoy it as much as Lil.
Others in the house don’t. Rose heard us from down the hall last night and actually texted me to “put my dick away” and check in with Lily’s therapist.
She may be worried that I’m pushing Lily to a bad place, but I’m not. I can tell when she’s compulsive, and I don’t feed into that. I shut it down when it happens. I do understand Rose’s concern though. She can’t know what I do with Lily in bed, so she just speculates.
“Mmm…” Lily says again, her eyes closing entirely.
I smile, watching her enter a peaceful sleep. I sit up and grab my phone off the night stand, checking my email really quickly. I scan through them and stop on something Lil sent me from 5 p.m. yesterday, before we had sex.
The subject line: Don’t be mad! But you need to see this.
My smile fades. I glance at her, her chest rising and falling, and I lift the sheet and comforter up to her collarbones. She barely stirs.
And then I click in to see a picture of me and Lil from Hale Co.’s fourth of July party. Lily is passing me her corndog with a big goofy smile. It’s one of the cutest pictures I’ve ever seen, and I look infatuated by her.
She pasted in a link to a Celebrity Crush article. I take the risk and click it too. The headline: Lily Calloway Shares a Hotdog with Loren Hale on July 4th by Wendy Collins.
I skim the article. Wendy talks about the rumors concerning me, Ryke, Lily and my child. Other than that, she just says it’s ironic that Lily is passing me a hotdog.
I wish Lily wouldn’t read this shit. And I return to Lil’s original email and see that she typed a message to me: I thought it was a nice picture of us. Right?