Page 6 of Bae

My front-row seat guaranteed a really good view.

I never wanted to see something like that ever again. The fear that wracked my body that night was unmatched. So severe I was certain it altered me in ways I’d feel forever. Kind of how a scar marred skin that had been smooth before. My limbs shook with terror that night, my throat was tight, and breathing was no longer such a thoughtless task. It wasn’t just fear for my daughter… but for my wife.

Sometimes I thought back to the night Braeden rushed Ivy to the ER. The night we all found out she was pregnant with Nova. I recalled how he looked standing alone in front of the viewing area of all the newborn babies.

The shadows beneath his eyes and the way my own chest constricted as we all stood around helpless, waiting to find out if there was or was not a baby.

I understood all too well how he felt that night, and as terrible as it had been…

What Rim and I suffered was so much worse.

You know, I was a pretty charming guy. A lot of people said I could talk a chipmunk out of the last of his nuts in the middle of a blizzard.

No one actually said that. But it didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Anyway, I said all kinds of delightful shit to Rimmel over the years we’d been together. It was one of the millions of reasons she loved me (another was my, and I quote, “big ego”). I was entertaining and funny.

I wasn’t a guy with a lot of regrets. Life was too short, and honestly, I was too fucking happy to care about anything that might have passed me by. However. I did regret this one thing I said once.

I’d like to place an order for one of these in blue.

The first time I held my niece, I’d said it. A jest, but not really. The idea of a tiny bundle made up of entirely me and Rim became tangible in that moment. The notion of becoming a parent, a father, bloomed somewhere deep inside me

I didn’t know it at the time how one statement could weigh so much.

After that, it seemed like a clock I never knew existed started ticking. The press went into “Bump Watch” (FYI: abump watchis entirely fucking stupid. A baby is not a bump. Just like a man bun is not a hairstyle. It’s stupid.). People started asking when we were going to have a baby of our own. It seemed like almost daily, people would toss out the question.

I learned quickly a question like that could never be casual. A question like that held just as much weight as my off-hand “charming” statement that day in the hospital.

Not long after Nova came home, Rim and I started trying for a baby, even though we said out loud we wanted more time for just us. No one needed to know, just like no one needed to know we’d snuck off and married in secret before our wedding. Some things were just for us. Some things were so special they remained unspoken and sacred.

Then one unexpected day, I found my girl crying in the bathroom because she couldn’t give me the bundle in blue I so charmingly ordered.

Fuuuckkk.

I hadn’t been too worried about the months we’d been trying and hadn’t been successful. I didn’t know every month that passed and she didn’t get pregnant was like a silent knife to her heart. Hell, the trying was enough fun for me.

For Rim, it had been more. It turned into something she couldn’t achieve. At least not in the timeframe she thought she should.

I hadn’t realized how much pressure she’d put on herself until I found her that day, sniffling. Her eyes were red-rimmed, glasses slightly askew. Her hair was a mess, and she was sitting on the bathroom floor with tissues bunched in her hand. My name stretched across her back as she sat bundled in my Alpha U hoodie. It was still her favorite thing to wear.

She was mortified I’d found her that way.

It was a different time and circumstance, but that image of her brought me back. Back to the time she was sitting in the center of the animal shelter with a one-eyed cat in her lap.

I fell hard that day for Rim.

I fell for her all over again in the bathroom.

I sat down, scooped her up, and made her tell me. She thought she was somehow failing me. As if she ever could.

We had a talk right there on the bathroom floor about what I expected of her as a wife. It went a little something like this:

“Breathe.All I expect is for you to breathe.”

It was a good talk. It got me a blow job and a smile on her beautiful face.

Not too much longer after that, I found her crying in the bathroom again. Seriously, a quick thought that our bathroom might be fucking cursed did cross my mind. Until I saw the smile beneath her tears. Between us, her arm was outstretched; in her palm, she offered me a stick. I really, really wanted to crack a joke about not wanting to touch something she peed on.

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