Page 100 of Traitor

I shrugged. “I just said tonight’s all about you.”

She smiled happily and slipped the hoodie over her head. I realized then that I would’ve moved heaven and earth to see her smile like that again.

So, I did what any red-blooded male would do if he found himself in my situation. I went into that closet and lifted my woman up into my arms, trailing rough kisses across her face and neck while she giggled and tried to move away.

“Mike—babe, stop. Your beard is scraping my face off!”

I sank my teeth into her neck and she looked down at me breathlessly. Her lips parted slightly and then she leaned down, pressing them to mine. I was transported back to that night on the beach in Galveston. Every fucking time. The taste of her sparked such a vivid memory that it was like I was reliving it all over again.

If I would’ve known then that she’d be the woman I’d spend the rest of my life with… “I would’ve found you sooner—”

“What?”

I didn’t hesitate. “If I would’ve known that night in Galveston what you were going to mean to me—I would’ve found you sooner. Fuck, I would’ve combed every inch of that hotel until I got to your room.”

She pulled back slightly and frowned. “Even knowing—even with—”

I knew where her sentence was headed and nodded. “Absofuckinglutely.”

At that, her lip began quivering and she buried her face against my neck. “You’re the best man alive, Mike Sullivan.”

I wasn’t.

Not by a long shot.

But with her in my arms, I knew I’d done at least one thing right.

Lauren

November 2016

“You will need three eggs, half a cup of vegetable oil, and—” I wiped a smudge of yellow powder off the box. “One cup of water.”

It was Mike’s birthday and after the trouble he went to for mine, I wasn’t going to sleep the day away.

Even if that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wasn’t even sure how I was getting through each day anymore—infertility consumed my every thought. The past few months had been hell. If I left the house, I was bound to see a baby, so I’d stopped going anywhere.

Jimmy had grown tired of my excuses and shown up one afternoon.“They’re asking for you at the range. Why aren’t you going in anymore? You said you loved working there, but all of a sudden you’ve fallen off the face of the earth.”

I’d tried justifying my actions, but he’d seen right through me.“You know what I never see at the range? Babies. You know why? Because it’s a fucking gun range. But fine, you want to hide out inside your house until the end of time—do it. I’ll be here every afternoon. You can’t phone it in and lose everything we’ve worked for.”

He drove out to the house every day for target practice. He’d even had me running laps up and down the long dirt driveway.

I knew that Mike wanted to talk about it—to see a specialist. It was almost better not knowing though. If we didn’t know for sure, then I could pretend that we both had issues, even if my gut screamed that it was all my fault.

Doubt had begun to creep in as far back as April, but I chalked it up to stress and poor timing. Since we’d gotten married, I’d been charting my BBT—basal body temperature— just like the pregnancy websites had instructed. And every single month, I had to suppress any hope that it had worked when my period showed up right on time.

I began lurking around the infertility message boards online, hoping to find something that would explain why my body was working against me. I’d never taken synthetic hormones and when I ate out, I tried to go with the healthiest option. I’d never smoked or done drugs, so for all intents and purposes, I should’ve had a whole damn litter by this point.

The night of my birthday, Mike had taken me out to his land—the same land he’d taken me to the year before and the year before that. He built me a bonfire and brought out bags of takeout Italian food for us to eat in the bed of the truck. The fact that he’d chosen spaghetti was not lost on me, nor were the remarks that it wasn’t‘as crunchy’as mine.

Wrapped up in his oversized sleeping bag, he’d pointed up at the sky, his finger tracing the constellations.“That one there is Cepheus. Now, old Cepheus was a king and he married Cassiopeia—that’s like being married to Heidi Klum, in modern day hotness quotients. Well, Heidi and Cepheus, they had themselves a beautiful daughter that they unfortunately named, Andromeda. Andromeda was like—Kate Upton.

“Well, Heidi thought it’d be a great idea to tell the entire world how Kate was more beautiful than anything or anyone else. The sea nymphs got word and were like, ‘Fuck that bitch.’ Then Poseidon got wind of it and basically battered the kingdom with the power of the sea until Cepheus agreed to sacrifice Kate to the sea monster, Cetus. So, he chained his daughter up to some rocks and left her, but luckily Perseus dropped out of the sky and said, ‘I’ll kill this monster if you give me that pussy,’ which of course Kate agreed to because Perseus looked like Channing Tatum.”

I’d rested my chin on his chest, watching his face as he animatedly told the story, feeling completely at peace for the first time in months. I loved him so much that it made my heart ache and I hoped that birthday bonfires were something that would become a tradition.

Mike dragging me out of the house on my birthday had awakened me to the fact that it could just be the two of us forever. I realized then that I could watch my life pass me by, while obsessing over whether or not I was ovulating, or I could face the harsh truth and somehow still be a good wife to a fantastic man in spite of it all.

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