Page 60 of Letters to Lily

“I need to pee,” I rushed to get out before standing up and heading to the bathroom. Yeah, I was a big fat coward. Honestly though, how did I go about asking the love of my life if he possibly picked up a sexually transmitted infection from fucking some other chick while I was pregnant and pining for him. Yuk. I preached earlier, to Helen, about letting things go, but some stuff just wasn’t that easy to dislodge from my own mind. I really wished it were though.

When I finally screwed up enough courage to leave the bathroom, after actually peeing (thank you, pregnancy bladder), washing my hands, splashing my face, and taking forever and a day to dry said hands and face, I ran right into Kade. He had been waiting in the hall. “I was always careful, Sasha.” Gross, I really didn’t want to hear that, even though I needed to. He had said, ‘Always’. That meant there was more than one time. My tummy flipped with the knowledge that he had been having regular sex with the woman who knew exactly who I was, and had been hiding it the whole time.

“I will get tested, so that you can have some peace of mind.” I couldn’t even look at him. I just stood there staring at where my feet should be if I could actually see around my ginormous belly.

I felt his fingers close in under my chin, attempting to angle my face upwards towards him. That wasn’t an easy feat since he was being gentle, and I was being stubborn. “Would you please look at me? I want to make sure you get my full meaning here, and I don’t think that will happen with you staring down at…” his head cocked to the side. “Well, not your feet, because I don’t think you can see them anymore.”

“I can’t, but I was trying really hard to do that,” I admitted without looking up.

“Sasha, please!” The tone in his voice, demanding and pleading all at once, finally made me look up. “She never meant anything to me. Never. What you saw that day, me laughing and smiling, I was actually tormenting her about losing her damn purse. That was probably the friendliest looking moment in our whole time of knowing one another, and that includes the couple times we actually were together.

“I’m not proud of admitting this to you, but I was using her to try to help me move past you, when I thought you were having a baby with someone else. That was all it was.” His eyes were begging mine to believe him, and I did. That didn’t make it any easier to swallow. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed back his own emotion and stood watching me. Then, mind apparently made up, he decided there was nothing else that needed to be said. Kade simply pulled me into his arms, kissed the top of my head, and held me there. His warmth seeped into my chest, reminding me of all that we were to each other in the past.

In that moment, all the months of missing him swelled up inside me and made me so damn tired. “Kade,” I whispered.

“Hmm?”

“I’m so tired. Will you stay? Not for anything… just…”

“Can I hold you if I stay?” I didn’t dare speak, just nodded my head. “Okay then,” the told me as our decision has been made. “Go get yourself ready for bed. I’ll lock up out here and be there in a minute.”

I changed into my little maternity sleep shorts and a tank top that didn’t quite cover my belly anymore. Then I tucked myself under the blankets and waited. Kade came in a few minutes later, stripped down to his boxers, and slid in the bed beside me. He wasted no time, nor did he ask permission, in snuggling up right behind me. He pulled my body flush against his, my back to his front. One of his arms pushed under my head in a way that had me using his bicep for a pillow. The other, curled around my belly and started rubbing gentle little circles on it with his fingertips.

I didn’t want to fall asleep. I wanted to stay awake and enjoy every minute of Kade being in bed with me. I wanted to treasure the very idea that he was there, touching me, within my reach, and that he wanted both the baby and me. As luck would have it though, instead of having trouble getting to sleep, or staying that way as I usually did; I fell right off to the best night’s rest I’d had in my whole pregnancy.

When I awoke, the other side of the bed was cold, and disappointment washed through me. I knew I hadn’t dreamed his presence up. I just wasn’t sure why he’d get up and leave first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, this wasn’t like in the books or movies where I stumbled out into the kitchen to find him there trying to figure out where I keep the coffee either. He just wasn’t there.

I sat down heavily on the bar stool at the kitchen island and plopped my head into my hands. I must have sat like that, wondering what had happened when I slept to make him leave, for a good five minutes before I heard an unfamiliar ring tone going off.

I followed the sound to the nursery, and found Kade asleep in the rocking chair, cuddling the teddy bear Kristin had put in the crib for Lily. I moved over to see that it was Brad trying to call through, so I woke Kade up by pushing on his shoulder. “Hey, Kade. Wake up, Brad keeps trying to call you.”

“Hmm,” was his sleepy response taking his normal smooth deep voice to a sexy gravelly place.

I lifted his phone in front of his face. “Brad is trying to call you. Must be important, because he’s not exactly a morning person.”

Kade grabbed the phone quickly then and answered immediately on Brad’s third attempt to get through. “What’s up?”

“Thank fuck! I need… shit… I slept with Kristin!”

Okay, I wasn’t the one on the phone, but the panic in Brad’s voice made him really loud and I heard every word he had to say. I sealed my lips together, biting down on where they met, in order to keep from laughing out loud.

“How did that happen?” Kade asked him as he looked up at me with a gleam in his eyes. Of course, this was good news for him. He saw his brother as his competition for me, even though he couldn’t have been any further from the truth.

“We were out drinking. She was upset about Mal. I was… well…” Brad cut himself off about what kind of issues he might have been drowning in the bottom of a bottle.

“Yeah, I get it,” Kade was none too happy about it either. It was probably good he interrupted his brother before he put a voice to what had him upset last night.

“Anyway, we got back to my place, started talking, and next thing I knew we’re making out and clothes were coming off.”

“Okay, sounds like a good night for both of you. What’s the problem?”

“We don’t like each other like that,” he admitted.

“Well, I hate to tell you this, but maybe you do both like each other like that. You were probably both just too hung up on the wrong people to see it clearly.” I had to give Kade credit, because one, that was probably more accurate than he even knew. And two, he delivered that news without any of the dripping disdain that would have come across if Brad could have seen the eye roll that accompanied the statement.

“Damn, well, I have to go. She just woke up.” The last was said in a whisper. “Maybe I can stop by in a little while so we can catch up. I’m sure Kris is about to go home and give Sasha an earful.”

“Um,” Kade stalled, looking up at me for permission to tell Brad where he was. I just shrugged my shoulders like it was no big deal. “I’m at Sasha’s.”

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