Page 108 of Lovefool

34

THREE YEARS LATER

LAKE

“Ijust have to finish this article,” I say, huffing like a bull as I lean over to type on my laptop—which, yes, I’m convinced has gotten smaller in the past few weeks.

My brain is the consistency of taffy. I can’t even recall how long I’ve spent writing this story.

The sky expels golden embers into the fading light of the afternoon, and time melts into a shapeless pool from the eastern window’s reflective heat as dust motes sift through dandelion-colored beams.

Our house is two stories of renovated hard floors and DIY-ed walls, situated in a safe neighborhood on the other side of Maple Grove. American Dream-chic, including but not limited to a backyard big enough for a pool, a checkered backsplash in the kitchen, and a brick fireplace in the living room that practically jumped off the page of Architectural Digest magazine. We wanted to stay in town for the memories, and since both of our families are here, everything pointed to a quick move rather than a life-changing relocation.

Sutton swoops up my computer and holds it out of my reach, and fortunately for him, my lack of mobility only lends itself to a few half-hearted swipes in my attempt to retrieve it.

Life has really taken a turn since I got pregnant.

Sure, Sutton makes enough money that I could’ve taken the gestation period off, but I would’ve gone nuts.

My schedule is as follows: I expose my retinas to harsh blue light the moment I first wake up in the morning—if I don’t spend ten minutes wobbling to the bathroom to relieve my new pea-sized bladder—then the rest of the day blurs together.

I mean, I knew pregnancy wasn’t an easy thing to push through (pun intended), but I wasn’t expecting to go through some fucking supernatural transformation. I’m convinced I can smell stuff from a mile away, my leg hair has stopped growing—more of a perk, really—I get these super vivid dreams, and there’s something seriously wrong with my mucus production because I’m drooling through my pillowcase every goddamn night.

Couple that with your run-of-the-mill symptoms—indigestion, swollen ankles, twenty-four-seven nausea, weird food cravings—and I’m on the verge of collapsing into a sad, sad puddle of the woman I used to be. No more adrenaline rushes except when I walk literally anywhere. No more rash decisions except when I eat a whole sheet cake from Costco after I slather it in barbecue sauce.

Sutton, however, will make his opinion heard if it’s for the good of my health, and this man prides himself on never doing anything halfway. That certainly didn’t change when he impregnated me with this mammoth-sized baby. Who, in about one month, will probably rip my vagina in half as he breaches into this beautiful world.

I never imagined I would have a boy. To be honest, I never really imagined I would get pregnant out of wedlock. Not that I’m traditional in my stance. In Sutton’s defense, he did put a ring on it…a week before I took a pregnancy test. It was a happy accident.

You miss taking your birth control for a few days when you’re out with the flu and life decides to play one hell of a trick on you. I guess we were lucky that this was the only instance of an accidental pregnancy, considering the riskiness of his kink and how often we, uh, partook in it.

Sutton places my laptop on the counter. “No, what you need to be doing is resting. You’ve been working nonstop this entire week. Your boss gave you three months of maternity leave,” he replies, and despite the little growl in his throat, his words are wrapped up in a silken plea.

“I just have one paragraph left,” I whine.

I’m grateful to have a fiancé who’s so involved in the pregnancy—who’s willing to carry me bridal-style over any pond of rainwater that gets in my way, who’s willing to make midnight runs for a grocery list of cravings, who comes to every checkup, who educates himself on the changes my body is going through, who gives me nightly foot massages, who’s taken on the responsibility of planning the nursery because interior decorating makes me homicidal.

I know, realistically, that he’s right. My job was super lax when I announced I was pregnant. After college, I applied to a small newspaper that held ethics at the forefront of every conversation, and over the years, it skyrocketed in popularity.

I busted an inhumane animal breeding ring that was operating about two hours away from us, and everything I could legally take to social media blew up. The whole shebang—the jailbreak, the rehabilitation, the rehoming. Though, I should really thank Ellaria for that. She’s the one who had the idea of publishing my work on multiple platforms. Turns out that there are good people still out there in the world.

Sutton found his passion working for a nonprofit dedicated to sending the children of fallen first responders to college. It suits him. He knew he wanted to help people, and what made hockey so special to him was the aspect of being a part of a team.

Sutton Whittaker turned me docile. Me! The girl who was a hot train wreck for the majority of college and never, in a million years, pictured herself settling down with someone. But here I am, “blossoming,” as my fiancé so puts it.

Speaking of, my thoughts sprout up like little weeds in my mind, and I try to think of some way to placate him and get my ass back in front of that computer.

But he sees right through me—embarrassingly easy, considering he’s had three more years to memorize my tells. He’s got the whole dad look down; eyebrows stitched together in disappointment, lips curved into a frown, wrinkles scattered here and there from late nights and early mornings of consoling me and my hormonal mercurialness.

He puts his foot down.

My lips pillow into a pout, and I cross my arms over my aching, two-cup-sizes-too-big chest. My boobs didn’t hurt this much when I went through puberty. And, oh my God, they’re starting to sag. They just sit on my overinflated baby bump like it’s a sad table.

When I open my mouth with a poorly planned rebuttal, Sutton circles back over to me, gets on his knees, and rests his chin on my engorged belly. Sad puppy dog eyes in full effect.

“Please, Trouble. Let me provide for my wife,” he begs, planting a reverent kiss on my stomach.

I try to ignore the specific blend of lust and desperation that I only experience in his presence. If he keeps touching me, the high-tension wire between us is going to snap and result in a workout that definitely hasn’t been approved by my doctor.