Page 93 of Fight for Love

Morag was just finishing changing the bed when I emerged into the room. She held her arms out to me like she’d heard me crying, knew exactly what it was all about, and didn’t need me to say a word. I cried into her heavy bosom as we sat side by side on the bed.

“There, there, lassie, there, there. This wasna the one. This wasna the one.” She stroked my hair while Caelan stood behind us, his presence evident but his silence telling.

It was more likely to have been…

“Harold went for a doctor just as a precaution. We’ll get ye right again, lass. We’ll fix ye up once more, I swear it,” she promised, still stroking my hair with a mother’s touch.

“Can you get me some more pain relief?” I asked.

“I dinna ken where…” Caelan started to say.

“I’ll go.”

While she was gone, I turned around and begged, “Please, Caelan.”

He came to me instantly and dragged me onto his lap. I bawled into his chest, fisting the material. He shuddered and shook and that’s when I knew, even if it had stuck, he’d have loved it anyway. Because it would’ve been a part of me.

I was eventually soothed, my head buried in his shoulder, when Morag returned with the doctor.

A quick feel of my tummy, and a quick look in the toilet bowl, and he was prescribing antibiotics, hot water bottles and more pain meds.

That’s when it sank in: what the fucking hell had I been doing with Eric?

That bastard had wanted this to happen, hadn’t he?

Anger brewed silently. At myself. At him.

At the world.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

He never left my side over the next twenty-four hours, eating his meals beside me, making me chew through bits of fruit and bread, drink water and tea. He read his magazines, even a book, while we stayed in that bed. Logan squawked from downstairs an awful lot and Caelan would play with the boy on his lap whenever Harold or Morag brought him up. A little of the time, he’d lay beside me and we’d stare at one another, Logan reaching out to touch my hand. He would grin and chortle. I would try to smile. He didn’t seem to notice how sad I was.

“I think we should take a stroll,” said Caelan, just after lunch.

“Why?”

“Fresh air, and maybe, we can talk.”

“Am I not getting rid of you, then?”

“Not in a million years.”

I heard the seriousness in his tone of voice even as my face was pressed into the pillow. The bedding was fresh yesterday and still smelt lovely even as I’d cried, sweated and spilled my tea in it since the day before.

“Where?”

“Down at the bay. It’ll be quiet. People will be at lunch. They like long lunches here.”

“Will you dress me?”

“Aye, I can dress ye. Might look like a bag lady, though.”

“Bag lady is fine right now.”

He rustled through the drawers and after I’d changed my pads again, I stepped into knee-length shorts and a white t-shirt. Perfect.

He drove us there while Harold and Morag stayed behind, the baby joining us. Caelan donned the papoose and after just a few minutes of walking, the babe slept soundly against Daddy’s chest. It was like that familiar warmth and smell told him to rest awhile. It was a rare kind of magic, that thing between them.

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