“Babe, please.”
She focused on getting my boots off and, whoa, she was getting me all naked, and I liked it. I helped her help me out of my clothes, until I lay there in just my boxers, and that’s when she joined me, dragging the bedding over me as she did.
“Babe, thought you were gonna get on my cock.”
V fussed around, passing me some painkillers and water, and then she flipped the TV on, and found the series of Friends we’d been streaming.
“V…”
“You’re not up to babymaking right now, idiot. Even I know pain kills a boner.”
Fuck me, she just said boner. Why was that so hot?
“Fine. One episode, then I’ll be up for it.”
V
He made it halfwaythrough the first episode, and he was snoring beside me. I don’t think he was that badly hurt, but I think tonight’s little fight had maybe relieved some shit that had been weighing on him. He seemed more at peace after, like it’d rid him of a burden he’d been carrying. My phone dinged with a message, and I slid carefully off the bed, keeping an eye on Rocket as I headed for the door and met Caroline outside to collect Nixie.
“Is he okay?” She tried to peer past me, but I blocked him from her sight. I was feeling oddly protective of him, and his privacy, even from her.
“He will be. Thanks for looking after her.”
Caroline offered me a wry smile. “We both know she was the one looking after me, cuz. She’s very good at it.”
“You’re doing way better around all these people, C. You should be proud. Where’s Harley?”
She sighed, pointing outside. “He’s waiting. He uh… wanted to come with me, like he’s being possessive or something, because I’m going to another man’s room. Are all men like this?”
I shook my head, catching sight of Harley peeking in the door behind Caroline.
“I wish. Maybe we had to wait for the right ones, huh?”
Her eyes widened. “So you… you and he are… I mean-”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I glanced behind me at the sleeping man I was going back to. “I think I want to be.”
Caroline hesitated, then reached out and patted my arm, a soft smile on her face.
“I think you’re really good for each other. I think you’ve both been waiting to find somewhere to belong, and maybe this is it, right? You just might complete each other.”
I waved her off, and took Nixie back inside, checking Rocket’s feeding schedule for her, and topping her up with a little of the milk substitute, and a little soft food. She was doing so well, and that had so much to do with that battered, bruised man sleeping a few feet away from me.
I sat beside Nixie on the floor, and watched Rocket sleep. Caroline’s words kept coming back to me, reminding me of all the things that just might be in reach. ‘You just might complete each other’. Might we? Could we? Beyond all of that,shouldwe?
Was that what we were both even looking for? He’d come here to escape a bad relationship, and hadn’t I too? Weren’t we both running from heartbreak? It was probably too soon for either of us to be thinking about getting together, but then we’d foolishly decided to continue with my quest for a baby. Rocket’s baby. What if I really got pregnant at last? He’d be a father. Could I really enter into such an arrangement, when we were both still trying to stitch our hearts and souls back together?
And what if I got pregnant, and he realised he just wanted to be the sperm donor and nothing more? He probably didn’t really want to be a father, he just liked the idea of knocking a woman up, right? Only, as I sat there and watched him twitch briefly in his sleep, before a smile lifted his lips, I realised he didn’t have it in him to be that callous and cold.
He might hide it well from his club brothers, but he was all heart. All sweetness. Protective and supportive. He was the kind of man a woman could fall for, so was that what I was doing?
Rocket groaned, and I shifted my focus from my conflicted thoughts to the man who was now peering drowsily at me from his bed.
“Is there some reason you’re in the dog’s bed, babe? Do I snore or something?”
I smiled, checking on Nixie one last time before I got up and moved over to sit on the bed beside Rocket.
“I mean, if you snore, it’d hardly be any better over there.”
