His love declaration falls flat.
“I’m sorry. I don’t love you back.”
“I know you do.”
“No, I don’t.” Truth is, I don’t know what I feel or don’t feel. I just know I’m in over my head. I have to untangle myself from the situation fast.
“This conversation is not over,” he warns me, getting up after me and looking around like a thief in the night before slipping out of someone’s window.
I turn my back on him and walk away, thinking, yes, it is.
The man was going to completely destroy me, and there was nothing I could do but watch him from a front-row seat.
I knew it the moment he put his hands on my stomach.
Baby Whitehall fluttered when it happened. It felt like butterflies stretching their wings for the very first time inside my belly.
The baby knew her dad had touched her for the first time and was reacting to him.
Everything happened so fast after that.
The kisses.
The love bites.
The skin-on-skin.
The secrets.
It felt like falling off a cliff.
Falling, falling, falling.
And still, not trying to grab onto anything to stop what was happening.
The deep end didn’t feel so deep when you never wanted to get out of it.
This was why falling in love was a dangerous game.
It gave you the worst thing a girl like me could have.
Hope.
The next evening, I skipped coming home early after I finished the paperwork at Madame Mayhem. I was in a weird mood. On edge.
I didn’t want to come back home just to find out Devon was still out with Miss Fancy Pants.
The alternative of Devon being home and sitting me down for a grown-up talk was equally as terrifying.
What could I say to him? Yesterday had changed nothing.
I was still me and he was still him. We still had holes in our hearts.
His family would never accept me and would go through bankruptcy if he didn’t marry Louisa.
And me? I was still the same girl who closed her eyes to dream and instead saw Mr. Locken.
Instead of going home, I met with Aisling, Sailor, and Persephone at the latter’s mansion for an evening of fried clam plates and beers.
Sticking to soda was hard but necessary. Pregnancy brought with it disgust of numerous things—coffee, red meat, and most types of fish. But I still longed for a glass of wine every now and again.
“Well? What kind of symptoms are you having during your pregnancy?” Sailor knocked down her drink like an Irish … well … sailor. “When I was pregnant with Rooney, my hoo-ha turned purple. It was horrible.” She paused. “I mean, especially for Hunter. I wasn’t in a position to look at it. Literally.”
Persy put a hand to her mouth. “Thank you, TMI queen.”
Sailor shrugged, swiping a french fry in a bowl of ketchup.
“Just kidding. He kind of liked it. It made him feel like he was having alien sex.”
“I used to wet my pants. Constantly,” Aisling volunteered casually, popping a fried clam into her mouth. I spat my soda, peppering it all over my friends. Well, this was casual.
“Ambrose put a lot of pressure on my bladder. At first, it only happened when I coughed or sneezed. By the third trimester, all I had to do was bend over to put my socks on, and whoops, I peed my pants. I think I was the only pregnant woman on planet Earth who still used sanitary pads every day. Whenever I bought some at the local Walmart, the cashier looked at me weird, like, ‘you know you don’t need them, right?’ and I wanted to scream at her that I was a doctor.”
“What about you?” I turned to my perfect sister, who had two perfect pregnancies and delivered babies that were beautiful and good sleepers from day one. Persy, God bless, was incapable of imperfections.
She scrunched her nose, blushing.
“What?” Sailor demanded, grinning, a french fry hanging like a cigarette from the corner of her mouth. “Tell us, asshole!”
“Well.” Persy tucked her hair behind her ear nervously. “It wasn’t a symptom per se …”
All of us were now leaning toward her at the dining table, eyes wide, dying to know.
“It was just that, during both pregnancies, I was really, really horny.”
“You mean you needed vitamin D every day?” Sailor arched an eyebrow.
Persy laughed. “Yeah. I wanted it … a little rough. And Cillian, well, he was torn between giving me what I wanted and making sure we didn’t do anything stupid.”
We all nodded, considering this.
“Now your turn,” Persy giggled, throwing a french fry at me.