Chapter 26
Ashlyn
“I think we broke him,” Zane says over Bentley’s screams.
“He’s not broken, he’s a baby,” I say. “And babies cry.”
“This much?” he asks.
“Sometimes,” I answer.
“This feels like more than sometimes,” Zane groans, and while I am a little annoyed with his whining, I am a little frazzled myself. It’s one thing to work with crying babies at a daycare. It’s another to go days without adequate sleep because Zane’s new bundle of joy doesn’t have an off button.
“I wonder where the term sleeping like a baby came from?” Zane asks, wiping his hands over his face.
“Probably a baby sleeping during the day,” I say, passing Bentley off to him. We’ve been trying to take turns with him, letting the other sleep. But it’s really hard to get any quality sleep with a screaming baby in the house.
“How did you deal with this before?” he asks, bouncing Bentley with no success.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Make sure you’re holding his head.”
Zane readjusts his hands to support Bentley’s head. “I mean, when you worked at the daycare. How did you handle this non-stop?”
“Well, I dealt with it the best I could. Then at about 4pm, I handed the kids back to their parents, went home, and ate a Klondike bar with a glass of wine,” I answer. “God, that sounds amazing right now.”
“You know what else sounds amazing right now?” he asks, and I know what he’s going to say. “Sleep.”
I let out a sigh with a smile. “Why don’t we try something else?”
“Like what?” Zane asks. “I feel like we’ve tried everything.”
“Not everything,” I say, carrying Bentley into the bathroom, which, like the rest of the house, has become overrun with baby stuff.
Zane watches as I set the baby bath in the tub and fill it with warm water and lavender and chamomile baby soap. Then I turn on some lullaby music on my phone and undress Bentley before setting him in the tub.
“How do you always know what to do?” Zane asks as I hold a now calm Bentley with one hand and gently wash him with the other.
Because this is the only thing I’ve ever wanted…, I think to myself.
“Instinct, I suppose,” I tell him.
“Well, your instincts are amazing,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the tub and watching me. “I feel like I’m in so far over my head.”
“I think most new parents feel that way,” I tell him.
“Yeah, but most new parents know they’re having a baby. The baby wasn’t dropped off by a stork 4 months after the fact,” he says. I giggle before picking Bentley up and wrapping him in a hooded baby towel.
“Don’t listen to your daddy, he’s just a little sleep-deprived,” I say.
“A little?” Zane asks.
“Okay, daddy is always a bit grumpy,” I say, and Zane smiles.
We take him into his room. We converted one of the spare rooms into a baby room a couple days ago.
I put his pajamas on him, and as I lay him down in his crib, he starts to softly whimper.
Zane grabs a pacifier from the dresser and gently eases it into his mouth, and we slowly back out of the room with a sigh.
“I don’t know about you,” Zane whispers, “and I don’t have any Klondike bars, but I could really go for a glass of wine.”
I smile and nod as we pad into the living room. “You have to admit,” I say as he uncorks a bottle of Merlot and pours two glasses. “He’s exhausting, but he is cute when he’s not screaming.”
“Yeah,” he says with a smile. I can hear the smile in his voice. Zane rounds the counter and meets me on the couch, handing me a glass.
“Thank you,” I smile up at him. We both take a sip, and I bite my lip, swirling the wine around the glass.
“What’s on your mind?” he asks, and I look up at him.
“How do you know there’s something on my mind?” I ask.
“I can tell,” he says.
“I’m just curious.” I say slowly. “What was she like? Bentley’s mother.”
Zane leans back and takes in a breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out.
“It’s funny because I actually didn’t know her very well.
Nicole, Nikki, was a fan I met at a signing.
I met a lot of girls that day, but she lingered a little.
She was cute and kind of shy. It was a long day of taking photos and signing posters, so I decided to ask her if she wanted to get a drink with me. ”
“Do you normally do that?” I ask. “Ask your fans out on dates?”
He smiles. “It wasn’t a date. It was one drink. That turned into two. Hey, you asked how I knew her.”
“I did,” I shake my head. “You’re right.”
“If it makes you feel any better, it was never serious. Not for me. We went out a couple of times, and I probably should have seen the signs that she was more invested than me. We slept together, and I didn’t see it as much more than casual.
She’d come over, we’d have a drink, and it would lead to more. ”
“So she was at the house,” I say with a small smirk.
“Not a lot,” he says.
“Did she have a key?” I press.
Zane shifts in his chair. “No. I mean, sort of…”
I arch an eyebrow. Honestly, I am enjoying how uncomfortable I am making him. I don’t care about who he was with before. But it’s entertaining watching him talk about it. “Sort of?”
“She knew the code to get into the house. She came and went. Then she got clingy, and I knew I needed to cut it off. I thought it was understood that it wasn’t serious, but I guess she didn’t feel the same.
I know I sound kind of shallow, but I knew my heart wasn’t in it, and I didn’t want to lead her to believe it was going to be more. ”
“Except that she got pregnant,” I say.
“Yeah. I had no idea, by the way. None. I haven’t seen her since the night I broke it off.”
“That’s wild,” I say.
“Yeah…life is wild,” he agrees.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have had my share of complicated relationships too. I used to be married,” I say, and his eyes widen a little.
“You were married?” he asks.
“Yeah. But not for long,” I admit.
“Did he cheat?” Zane asks, and there’s an edge to his tone.
“No. But he left,” I say.
“Why would he leave? You were his wife.”
I take in a breath and let it out before going on. “I wanted kids.”
“And he didn’t?”
“No, he did, but not as much as I did. When we tried month after month and nothing happened, I became depressed. I have friends who have struggled to get pregnant, but I never thought it would happen to me. I fixated on it so hard that it kind of took over our marriage. It also made working with babies at the daycare, something I have always loved, nearly unbearable. So I quit. I started doing photography, but I was still broken. And one day, Mitch came in and said he was done.”
“He gave up on you,” Zane says with a furrowed brow.
“My sadness consumed me so much that it was overtaking our marriage,” I say.
“Don’t defend him. He gave up on you,” he says, and I look up at him. “You are meant to be a mother.”
I smile, but I’m fighting tears hard as my heart clenches in my chest. “It’s not going to happen,” I tell him.
“You really believe that?” he asks. “You really have no hope?”
“Hope is kind of hard to have when you repeatedly get negative results on pregnancy tests,” I say.
But Zane just smiles sweetly and takes my wine glass from me, setting both of them on the coffee table. Then he scoots closer to me on the couch, leaning in and pulling me into a kiss. From there, he leans back, taking me with him, not just physically but in every way.
I don’t know what our labels are. I don’t know what any of this is anymore, but it isn’t fake. It’s not for face value or a brand or anything else. It’s unspoken.
The kiss goes deeper as our tongues meet, soft and warm and unrushed. His eyes are open, peering inside mine, and for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I don’t feel violated by the idea of being this close to someone. Of the intimacy. Of letting someone all the way in.
Zane shifts his weight so that he is on top of me, and I inch out of my cotton pajama shorts. He pulls his underwear down, and I take him in my hand, stroking the length of his warm, smooth girth. He moans from my touch.
He slides himself inside me, hot and hard; soft and warm, all at the same time. I wrap around him, snug and perfect. It’s as if we are made for each other. He slowly starts a rhythm between us, a dance that I feel like I’ve known my whole life, but never had the chance to do.
“You feel so good,” he says. “So warm and tight and perfect.”
“So do you,” I say, and he presses his forehead to mine.
Then he takes my hand in his, lacing our fingers together and kissing the back of my hand before pinning it above my head. The pace quickens as our bodies respond to the need, and I moan as every nerve ignites.
“Zane,” I whisper.
“You’re so gorgeous,” he says as his hips move against mine. “Fucking perfection.”
I squeeze his hand tighter as the heat rushes towards my pussy, mounting like a tidal wave, higher and higher until it crashes and we both cry out. Wave after wave, we roll through the orgasm, surrendering to it, drowning it, and letting it swallow us whole.
Afterwards, I am exhausted in the best way possible, and Zane lifts me in his arms and takes me to the bedroom. Bentley sleeps through the night, and so do we. For the first time in days, all three of us have everything we need.