Page 10 of Chosen Road

“We’ll make something up. Give me your answer,” he demanded, his expression turning serious.

I squeezed him once then waited a pregnant beat before squeezing him again, harder.

Relief softened his craggy face. He leaned down and brushed his lips softly over mine.

“I don’t know whether to make love to you or spank you for that,” he admitted.

I wiggled my wrists and he released me. I looped my arms around his neck and pulled his head down to mine. “Make love to me. I’ll give you plenty of reason to spank me later.”

He laughed and rolled to his back. “For that, you have to do all the work.”

The echo of his laughter reverberated in my memory. That was the only place I heard it lately. I could not remember the last time I made him laugh.

I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed. Not just smiled, or chuckled, but the belly-shaking, knee-slapping, snorting, crying, cover-your-face-with-your-hands kind of laughing. The kind of laughing Gus used to pull out of me on the regular.

Gus invaded my thoughts throughout the day when I wasn’t busy writing down every morsel of wisdom that fell from the presenter’s lips, most of which attested to my faults. My brokenness.

I missed my husband, and it was entirely my fault.

I knew that.

I also knew beyond a doubt that of all the balls I had in the air, the only one I could afford to drop right now, was him.

He deserved better.

But then, I’d always known that.

I gathered my purse and left to pick up Alex from Yiayia’s.

Chapter 4: A Lifetime

Amber

I turned off the car and sat in Yiayia’s driveway.

I so badly wanted to lay my forehead down on the steering wheel and close my eyes. At no time in my life had I ever been this tired. Except maybe when I was planning my wedding while pregnant with Alex.

Those days were terrible. I smiled at the memory.

Running to the bathroom to throw up that first time, Gus was hot on my heels in a panic, worried that I was sick. He knelt on the bathroom floor behind me and held my hair back, then carried me back to our bed.

One week, three more bouts of sickness that made Gus increasingly agitated, and a missed period, sent me to the store to purchase a pregnancy test that turned out to be positive.

He cried.

My big, blond, bear of a man, cried.

He still accompanied me to the bathroom when I threw up in the morning, he still held my hair, and he still carried me back to bed, he just did it smiling.

Until we figured out that a morning orgasm granted a stay of execution from the vomiting.

By the time our wedding day rolled around, I was eleven weeks pregnant and not yet out of the morning sickness woods.

Even though we were already living together, Yiayia forbade me to stay with Gus the night before the wedding. I was not hopeful that the day would go smoothly. There was nothing to do for it. It wasn’t like I could go to Yiayia, tell her I was pregnant, and needed Gus to get me off in the morning to avoid vomiting on the priest.

Gus instructed me to make sure I slept in my old bedroom, alone, and to call him as soon as I woke up. No matter how early it was.

And it was early.

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