“Hi.”
There’s a long pause while I curse myself for not working out exactly what I want to say. But the silence can’t go on forever, not when my heart is beating like a metronome on high and I feel like any wrong move will slash me to pieces.
So I take a deep breath, clear my throat, and say with a lot more confidence than I’m currently feeling, “do you have time to talk?”
“Always,” he answers. Then, “I’ve missed you.”
And I don’t get it. I don’t get how it can be so easy for him. How he can open himself up to me like that when I’ve already walked away from him twice. I’m trembling, can barely talk, am on the brink of losing it just from the stress of opening myself up to him and he just sits there, telling me that he’s missed me.
I’ve never felt so pathetic.
This won’t do. Not when I’m about to tell the man I love—the father of my baby—that I love him. Not when I’m about to ask if there’s any chance for us to build some kind of future together. Not when I’m about to ask if he loves me too.
So I square my shoulders, take a few deep breaths, and promise myself that no matter what happens, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay and so is my baby. It’s exactly the boost I need.
“Can I see you?” I ask, and this time my voice is infinitely stronger, infinitely calmer.
“Of course. Come outside.”
“Outside?”
There’s a smile in his voice when he says “I may or may not be sitting on Z’s front porch trying to work up the nerve to ring the doorbell.”
It’s all the reassurance I need. I practically drop the phone in my headlong rush to the front door.
Chapter 20
Luc
She looks beautiful when she throws open the front door, her cheeks flushed and her long red curls springing out in all directions. For long seconds, I can’t do anything but stare at her, soaking her in after I’ve gone so, so long without her.
But the longer I look at her, the more I take notice of everything that’s just a little bit off. She’s skinnier than she was just a couple days ago. Beneath the hectic color on her cheeks, her skin is pale and nearly translucent. There are vivid purple shadows under her eyes.
And she’s shaking so badly that I’m not sure how she can stand up, let alone hold Z’s heavy front door open.
I wanted to take this slow, wanted to give her whatever she needs from me. But as I stand here staring at her, noting how fragile and broken and terrified she looks, I can’t help but pull her into my arms. Can’t help but bury my face in the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Can’t help but tremble myself as I pull her closer and closer and closer.
“I’m sorry,” she says as her hands clutch at my back. “I’m so sorry I walked out on you, so sorry I sent you away, so sorry you had to hear about the baby from Z.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, rubbing my hands up and down her back. Everything’s okay as long as I can hold her and protect her and love her.
“It’s not okay. It’s really not okay. I should have at least given you some warning—”
“Some warning would have been nice,” I tell her, pulling back so I can look into her beautiful green eyes. “Considering Z told me while we were both balanced on a roof. I nearly fell off.”
“Oh my God!” she squawks, pulling me closer. “I swear to God, once of these days I’m going to kill him.”
“Don’t do that. We might need him someday.”
“For what?”
“He’s the one who told me to stop being a pussy and get my ass over here and tell you how I feel.”
She freezes against me then and her eyes, when she looks up at me are so wide, so vulnerable, so hopeful, that she almost breaks my heart. How can this day be real, I can’t help wondering. Cam looking at me like that, holding me the way she is, and a 1620? It doesn’t seem fucking possible. For the first time since I woke up in my bed this morning, miserable and alone, I can’t help wondering if maybe I’m still dreaming.
I think about pinching myself, just to be sure, but then she’s asking, “How do you feel about me?” in a scared little voice and suddenly I can’t think about anything but making her understand.
“How can you not know?” I demand. “Everybody knows. Z, Ash, even Tansy and Ophelia. They’ve known forever.”
“Known what?” Her hands tighten on my back until her nails are digging into my skin. It’s just the pinch I need to prove to me that this is real. That it’s happening.
“That I’m crazy about you. That I am absolutely, completely, head over heels in love with you and I have been for years.” I take a chance, press soft kisses over her forehead and down her cheek. When she doesn’t push me away, I get a little bolder, kissing her jaw, the corner of her mouth, the spot on her chin right below her lips. “I know I’ve been an ass. I know I haven’t trusted you. I know I’ve been jealous and stupid and awful and I’m sorry.
“And I’m sorry, so sorry, that this is happening to you—that I didn’t take care of you when you trusted me to. I want you to know that whatever you decide, I’m here for you.”
The words are tumbling over themselves now, shooting through my brain and falling out of my mouth before I can censor them. Before I can so much as try to make myself look like anything but a lovesick moron who would do anything, be anything, for her.
“I know being pregnant messes up your career,” I go on. “I know you’ve worked so hard for this season and I’ve just taken it all away from you. And if you decide you want to have an abortion”—I stumble over the word, hate the feel of it in my mouth, hate the sound of it hanging in the air around us even more—“if you want to have an abortion, I’ll be here for that, too. Whatever you want, whatever you need. I’m here. If you want me.”
“If I want you? If? There’s nothing on this planet I want more than you, Luc. I love you. I think I’ve loved you for a long, long time, even when I was too blind to understand that that was what I felt. You’ve always been my favorite, always been the person I wanted to tell my secrets to. Always been the person I thought of first when I woke up and last when I went to bed. And now you’re the father of my baby. I get that it’s a lot. That this isn’t what you saw for yourself right now. And if you don’t want the responsibility of being a father already, I get it.”
“Have you not been listening to anything I just said? I love you, Cam Bradley, and if you let me, I’ll be here for you no matter what you decide.”
“I know. I believe you. But you mentioned me getting an abortion and I’ve decided I’m not going to do that. Yeah, it’s going to screw things up for my career for a while, but it’s just a year. And even if it was longer, which I don’t think it will be, it’s just a career. We’re talking about a baby, our baby. And I want to have it.”
Pure, unadulterated joy explodes through me at her words. I told her that I would be behind her if she had an abortion, and I would have been. I would have done everything I could to make it easy for her even if it wasn’t what I wanted. But now, knowing that she feels the same way that I do? That she wants our baby as much as I do?
I don’t even have words to describe how I feel.
Except I have to find them, don’t I, because she’s looking confused and uncertain and like she doesn’t know if I still want her if she comes with a baby. Like it would even be possible for me to not want her.
I need her like I need water, like I need air, like I need the feel of the snow crunching beneath my board.
“I want the baby,” I tell her as I pepper her face with kisses. “I want you and the baby and the life we’re going to build together. I want it more than I can even begin to tell you. You’re everything to me, Cam. You always have been. You—”
This time, she’s the one who kisses me and it’s slow and sweet and hot, so hot, that it’s all I can do not to take her in the middle of Z’s front porch.
She must feel the same way because she hooks her fingers in my belt loops and pulls m
e inside, making sure the door slams shut behind us.
“I have so much to tell you,” she says as she presses another long, lingering kiss against my mouth. I capture her tongue, suck it deep into my own mouth.
“I have a lot to tell you too,” I manage to gasp out as I back her across the foyer and up the stairs. “Later.”
“Much later,” she says as she tugs my shirt out of my jeans and over my head. She throws it over the banister, and out of the corner my eye, I watch as it flutters to the ground.
“Z’s going to see that when he gets home,” I tell her in between kisses.
“If you don’t get me upstairs in the next two minutes, I guarantee you that’s not all he’s going to see,” she answers as she whips her own shirt over her head and lets it fly.
I laugh for the first time in what feels like weeks.
“God, I love you.”
“I love you, too. But that may change if you’re not inside me in the next five minutes.”
“Well, then.” I scoop her up in my arms and take the remaining steps three at a time. “Never let it be said that I don’t give my woman what she wants.”
I hit her bedroom door at close to a run, then swing her back and toss her on the bed. She squeals as she lands—a totally un-Cam-like sound, and it hits me that she’s pregnant. And that I just threw her.
“Oh, shit. Is the baby okay?” I lean over her, searching her face for any sign of discomfort. “Did I hurt—”
“The baby’s fine. I’m fine.” She loops her arms around my neck and pulls me down onto the bed. “Or I will be once I’m naked.”
She reaches for the buttons on her shorts, but I beat her to it. I unbutton and unzip them quickly, then I’m yanking the shorts and her panties down her long, long, beautiful legs and tossing them over the side of the bed.
Cam moans as I slide my hand up her leg, then she starts in on my jeans. I stop her, and when she starts to protest, I solve the problem by burying my face between her thighs.
“Luc!” she moans, her hands clutching at my hair.
I shudder at the scrape of her fingers against my skull, at the spicy sweetness of her scent, at the sexy taste of her on my tongue as I lick my way inside her. It’s been so long, it’s been so long. The words are a mantra in my brain, a beat in my blood, as I thrust my tongue deep inside her, even as I stroke my thumb around her clit.
She screams, arches her back, and then she’s coming against my mouth.
It’s still not enough, not nearly enough, after being without her for so long.
I slide my hands underneath her, cup her ass. Then lift her up so that her legs are over my shoulders and she is wide open to me.
“Luc,” she cries out, her hands scraping against my shoulders now. “I need—I need—”
I want to tell her that I know exactly what she needs, but to do that would require me taking my mouth off her pussy and that is not going to happen. Not now and probably not for a long damn time.
I slide two fingers inside of her, loving how hot and wet she is around my hand. She cries out again, arching and shuddering against me. Which is another thing I love—how fucking responsive she is. How she just gives her body, gives herself, over to me like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
My dick, which is already so fucking hard that it hurts, grows even harder at the thought. I want to be inside her, want to feel all that wet heat as it clenches around me. But I’m not ready to move yet, not ready to give up the soft, desperate sounds she’s making. And I’m sure as fuck not ready to give up the gorgeous taste of her on my tongue.
So I don’t. I stay where I am, head buried between her thighs as I alternate between circling her clit with my tongue and licking my way along her sex. She’s trembling again, her whole body shaking as I get her closer and closer to another orgasm.
I’ve missed her in so many ways these last few months. Missed the way she always makes me laugh, missed the way she looks early in the morning with her gorgeous hair all sleep-tousled and sexy, missed the way she lights up a room just by walking into it. But I’ve missed this, too, missed it so much that I’ve been walking around with a permanent hard-on for what feels like forever.
Now that she’s here, now that she’s mine—now that she loves me and is having my baby—the need is so much worse.
The need to feel her come on my fingers, on my mouth, on my cock. I want it all so badly that I’m nearly insensate with desperation.
“Luc,” she chokes out, hands and voice and body shaking. “Luc, I can’t—”
“You can,” I growl, turning my head and biting her inner thigh hard enough to sting at the same time I twist my fingers deep inside her.
She screams then, shoots right over the edge into a second orgasm. I keep at her, taking her right back up and into a third orgasm before she ever has a chance to come down.
I read in one of the pregnancy books I picked up that women are more responsive during pregnancy due to hormonal changes and increased blood flow to certain areas. I can’t fucking wait to take advantage of that fact, to give Cam as much pleasure as she can stand. To make her as crazy for me as I always am for her.
“Please,” she calls out, her voice hoarse and sexy as fuck. “Please, please, please.” She’s clutching at my shoulders, my chest, trying to pull me up and over her.
And really, who am I to deny her what we both want?
Moving over her, I press hot kisses to her collarbone, her cheeks, her mouth. “I love you,” I tell her as I slip inside her. “I love you so much.”
“I’ve loved you for a long time,” she says, her hands moving up to cup my cheeks as she looks deep into my eyes. “Longer than I even knew. And I’m going to love you forever.”
Embarrassing as it is, those words are all it takes to send me over the edge. I bury my head against the flushed and heated skin of her neck and groan, saying “Fuck,” as I come and come and come.
And then she’s coming too, her arms and legs and pussy wrapped so tightly around me that I can’t tell where she leaves off and I begin.
It’s perfect. She’s perfect. Somehow, miraculously, we’re perfect.
And it’s enough. It’s more than enough, actually. It’s everything.
Epilogue
“Come on, come on, come on…” I’m chanting the words like a mantra as Cam drops into the half-pipe for her last run in this year’s X Games Women’s SuperPipe.
“She’s got this,” Z says from his spot next to me. But he sounds as tense as I feel.
It’s her first big competition since Hannah was born and I know how much it means to Cam to put up a good showing. To let the snowboarding world know that she’s still relevant. That a baby—and a season off—haven’t changed her focus or her talent.
Which they haven’t. I’ve been out on the powder with her for the last two months and she’s absolutely incredible—stronger and more fit than she’s ever been in her life. Yes, her first run was a little rocky, but shit happens. Maybe the pipe wasn’t smooth enough, maybe she was nervous, hell, maybe she just had an off run. It happens. But she can’t afford to have another bad run now. Not if she wants to medal.
Cam nails her first trick, a really clean, really pretty frontside 1260, has the crowd screaming. She gets really good speed coming out of it and rides the pipe up and into a double back alley-oop with really sick air.
“Holy shit!” Z breathes in what sounds like awe. “She’s stomping it.”
I know exactly what he means. Cam is getting revolutions on the pipe that are really rare for women—and really fucking awesome. All that running and weight-training we’ve been doing for the past six months is totally paying off.
“Go, Cam, go!” Ash shouts from my other side where he’s clutching Tansy’s hand like a lifeline.
“You’ve got this!” screams Ophelia.
And Cam does. She really does. Her earlier nervousness is obviously a thing of the past.
She comes out of the trick switch,
pushes it hard up the other side of the pipe where she lets fly with a backside 900 that she gets such wicked air on that she looks like she’s flying. My stomach jolts a little as she comes down—she’s really fucking high up there—but she’s moving so fast that I can barely register the clean landing before she’s slamming into another frontside 1260 with what might be the most perfect form I’ve ever seen.
“One more,” Ash says, his voice tense and exhilarated at the same time.
I know exactly how he feels.
My whole body tightens as Cam moves into her last trick. We’ve practiced and practiced it at home, but she only lands it about half the time. Of course, that’s because it’s a hard fucking trick that no other woman on the circuit can come close to doing, but that’s Cam, refusing to dial it back. Go big or go home, she told me right before the competition started. Right after she planted a big kiss on me in front of the crowd and the cameras.
She nails the upswing into the trick perfectly, hits off the lip of the pipe like the pro she is. She gets fucking sick air as she twists and twists and twists and lands the first ever YOLO flip executed in competition by a woman.
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. That was not the trick I thought she was going to do.
“Did she just—a YOLO flip? She just—holy—oh my—” Z is nearly incoherent, but then so am I, while Ash is just staring open-mouthed at my girl, totally stunned.
The crowd doesn’t have the same problem. They are going wild, screaming and yelling and chanting her name as she cruises into the end of the pipe with a snow-spraying flourish that has me grinning like a maniac.
She did it! She fucking did it!
Ash is whooping and hollering now—we all are, really. Except for Mitch, who is just standing there with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face that I’ve ever seen.
“She did great!” I tell him.
“Great? She was magnificent! Do you know how much money that run is going to make us?”
I laugh, clapping him on the back as I maneuver around him to get to the stairs. As I do, I wrap my arms a little more tightly around Hannah, who is currently sound asleep in her baby carrier on my chest. The last thing I want to do is bump her against someone as I make my way down to Cam.