Page 68 of Candygrams

“Where are you taking me?”

“Home.”

She starts stiffening in my arms. “I can’t leave. I’m a bride’s maid. Bonny needs me!”

I compromise and step into an empty room in the church. Fine. I’ll let her be a bride’s maid but then she’ll be leaving with me. But first, I’m going to make that clear.

I step inside the quiet room and kick the door shut with my foot. I sit her down on her feet and take her shoulders in my hands. We stare at one another, and I see the tiredness in her eyes, the dark circles that she’s tried to cover up with makeup.

I thought so long and hard about what I would say to her when I saw her again… face to face. Just because I gave her space doesn’t mean I just abandoned her. I’ve had a bodyguard on her for weeks now and I drive by her house at least once a day. All she had to do was step outside and ask for me and I would have been there in a heartbeat.

She just never asked for me.

“I…,”

She opens and closes her mouth like she is trying to figure out what to say to me. I look just as tired as she does. I’ve not slept well since I left the morning after we spent the night making love. I left to grab breakfast for us so we wouldn’t have to worry about getting out of bed since I was pretty sure she was going to be sore from all the nighttime activity. When I came back, she wasn’t there. I know she wasn’t there because I had the manager of the buildings open the door for me. The apartment was empty.

I spent all Thanksgiving Day outside her building waiting for her to come back, wondering what I did, calling and texting until I was mad with worry and fear for her. Did I hurt her? Was I too rough? Is that why she ran from me? I spent days searching for where she might have gone, where she ran to, only to find she was moving out of the apartment and into a house.

“Why are you here, Ander?” There’s a hint of fear in her eyes. Is she afraid of me?

I give her a question back, “Why the hell do you think I’m here, Lilly?”

“Why now?”

She looks like she might have lost weight. She felt like it too when I had her in my arms. She's not been eating like she should.

“I ought to throw you over the arm of that couch and spank your ass until you can’t sit for days.”

She backs up, putting space between us, causing my temper to slip. I grab her arm and start to pull her over to the couch.

“After I spank your little ass raw, I’m fucking you until you can’t walk too.”

“Oh my God! Ander! Please.”

Even though she is fighting me every step of the way, it doesn't take much for me to have her where I want her. Right when I’m about to turn her around and bend her over the arm of the couch she blurts out words that don’t make any sense to me.

“Ander, I’m pregnant! I…I’m pregnant! I don’t know if… if it will hurt the baby or…”

“What did you just say?”

“I…,” tears fill her eyes and her whole body starts to shake, “I said, I’m pregnant.”

“You…, you’re pregnant?”

A sob slips from her lips, and she looks on the verge of passing out. I lift her and sit with her in my lap on the very couch I was about to spank her on. A plethora of emotions burst through my brain causing me to be speechless.

“Were you going to tell me? If I hadn’t come today, would you have told me?”

“Of course I would have told you. I just told the girls I wasn’t saying anything to anyone until we spoke first. Well, nobody but them since it kind of, um, fell out when we were all crying and hugging and…it doesn’t matter. I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

She opens and closes her mouth, telling me all I need to know.

“After the birth but before college?”

She pops up off my lap.

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