Page 57 of Break Me Gently

She sighed again, her eyes glued to the screen glowing in the darkness of the room, the only light besides the faint orange bleed of a streetlamp through the curtains.

“Keep the plant alive and I’ll pump copious amounts of babies into you,” I snickered, before glancing at my own phone.

She groaned and flung herself onto my chest, her hair spilling across my skin.

“What if we get a cactus? No one can kill a cactus,” she said, kicking the quilt off her legs. “God, what if I kill a cactus?”

I opened Isabella’s message and found a flood of baby pictures waiting. Lewis already looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a world away from the tiny, peaceful thing I’d held in the hospital just a week ago. Now my little man looked ready to take on the world himself.

I rubbed my chest absently, and Amber laid her hand over mine.

“He’s got my hair,” Amber murmured, tracing a slow circle against my sternum. “What if we went over for the October half-term and practised on Lewis?”

I stared at the photo one last time—the baby’s wide blue eyes, the soft tuft of chestnut hair—before setting my phone face-down on the nightstand.

“He doesn’t have auburn hair.”

“Yet,” Amber said, her head shooting up off my chest to glare at me.

“I think it’ll darken, like Luke’s.”

Her lips quivered, and she slapped her head back down onto my chest with an exaggerated huff.

She was so easily wound up that I couldn’t help myself.

I pushed her onto her back and climbed over her, the mattress dipping beneath us, moonlight slanting pale across her skin.

A good fucking always set her straight.

I ignored the sly smile tugging at her lips as I dragged her vest up to her neck, the fabric bunching beneath my fingers. The second I saw her bountiful mounds and fat nipples, my mind went straight to our babies suckling from her.

Shit. Baby fever was real.

I’d need to make do for now.

I lowered my head. Her hands tugged at my hair, pulling me down to her.

My dirty girl was always impatient.

Epilogue

Amber

Christmas (again)

It took Zach three trips to unload the car, but it was Lewis’s first Christmas, and I was ready to spoil our baby brother rotten.

“Hello, poppet, Luke said, before pulling me into a hug.

He’d never been much of a hugger before Lewis was born.

Zach cleared his throat behind us. I didn’t need to look to know he was wearing his territorial glare. If he quoted scripture at me one more time, I swore I’d cut him off entirely. Though, knowing him, that would probably be more of a punishment for me than for him.

Luke patted my back before releasing me. To my shock, he walked over to Zach and pulled him into a bear hug. I groaned as they both started lifting and squeezing one another, grunting like a pair of competing gorillas.

“Try harder, old man,” Zach wheezed.

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, and went to scoop Lewis out of my mum’s arms.