22. Nash
TWENTY-TWO
nash
We found the perfect house in early December.
It was a big old fixer-upper off Main, right between the bar and the school—close enough to walk to both.
Not that Maggie was doing much walking these days…
twins meant that she was already showing in a big way, and it was so cold I didn’t want to risk her on the ice.
Tourist season had settled, but the Christmas lights were out.
My favorite time of year in Juniper Falls—when it was still beautiful, but just for us locals.
It was snowing outside as I painted the nursery, Maggie sleeping in our bedroom, Nell playing with her dinosaurs downstairs. There was a big sunroom where Nell had all of her stuff…and Maggie had added a hell of a lot of craft supplies, new toys, a whole library. Nell was spoiled perfect.
She deserved it. Deserved to have the mama who loved her more than anything.
Maggie was all that and more.
I heard footsteps creaking on the wood floor down the hall, and Maggie appeared in the doorway—dressed in black leggings, soft pink socks, and a big cozy grey sweater that just barely covered her bump, her long hair down around her shoulders.
She cocked her head at me, leaning against the door frame, her hand resting on her belly.
“How’s it coming along?” I asked.
I put the roller down in the pan, turning around with a sigh…
just to look at her, not really because I needed a break.
My ring sparkled on her left hand, a gift from Claire—one of our mom’s rings.
She’d agreed to be my wife one night while I was still inside her, and I knew I needed to hop on getting the actual jewelry.
We’d kept it quiet. Courthouse wedding.
She wanted to stay Miss Laine, and I said that was just fine.
“Slow but steady,” I said. “Reid’s coming over with the kids later today so they can get some of their energy out running around the house and to help with repairs. Just trying to get this room painted in the meantime.”
Maggie stepped inside, looking at the blank wall. She had plans for a mural in here of some sort…I didn’t know exactly what yet, but I trusted her to make it perfect. She hummed, hand now idly stroking her stomach.
“I think it’s really good for him,” she said. “Reid, I mean—having a project? Growing something? I know you were worried about him.”
“It seems like he’s actually doing better,” I said. “Slow…but better.”
Sadie had been young young when Amy died—and it had been hard on her.
But now, she seemed to have found a best friend in Nell, who was a year older and sweet enough to heal all wounds.
The two of them together were a force of nature, which was good for both of them; Reid needed his kids to have somewhere to be, Nell needed more people in her orbit.
Maggie understood all of this without being told. Just another reason I loved her.
She was still looking at the wall, head tilted, moving her hand in slow circles on her stomach.
She’d started doing it unconsciously a few weeks ago, and it made me want to touch her too—so I moved behind her to wrap my arms around her, Maggie immediately melting into my embrace and leaning her head back against me with a satisfied sigh.
“You have…no idea how sexy you are,” I breathed in her ear, smiling against her skin. “Walking around this house like it doesn’t drive me crazy not to be inside you every damn hour of the day.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “Just wait until Winter Break—then I’ll be here all the time and you’ll just have to deal with it.”
“Deal with it,” I repeated. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I’ll be doing.”
I turned her around.
She looked up at me with those blue eyes and I put both hands on her face and kissed her the way I’d been wanting to since she appeared in that doorway in her pink socks. She opened to me right away, like she always did, tilting her head so my tongue could tangle with hers.
When I pulled back, she was already flushed, giving me bedroom eyes.
“Nash,” she breathed against my mouth. “Nell’s downstairs…”
“I know,” I said. “Which means she’s not here in this room. Right now.”
“But—”
“Gerald’s taking care of her,” I laughed, my hand sliding down to cup her ass. Maggie moaned softly, pressing against me. Fuck, I was already getting hard. “My woman needs to be fucked. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She bit her lip. “No can do.”
“Thought so.” I walked backward to the door…pulling her with me, shutting it so quiet that Nell wouldn’t hear, then I locked the door.
“I’m worried about—” Maggie started.
“I’ve got the playroom monitor on my phone,” I said. “It’s in my back pocket. I know you worry.”
She looked at me for a second—deciding whether to argue or let herself have this—and then she reached up and pulled my mouth back down to hers.
Decision made.
I got my hands under her sweater, feeling the warmth of her skin, the curve of her belly, then her heavy breasts.
She’d stayed sensitive; it was one of my favorite ways to play with her, to tease her, to suck on those gorgeous nipples until she was begging me to fuck her.
I got on my knees and shoved her sweater up, finding her completely bare underneath, and immediately wrapped my mouth around one peaked breast.
She clutched my head to her chest.
“Nash—”
I flicked the other nipple with my thumb and forefinger, holding her close with my right arm. “Fuck, Maggie…teaching me more about myself every day. Learning you…learning how fucking turned on I am by this pregnant body? Good lord…”
She moaned loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth and moaned into her palm instead. I laughed. “Damn right—you stay quiet so we don’t have to stop, okay?”
“I can’t stay quiet when you do that.”
“Try harder,” I said against her breast. “I’m not stopping.”
I worked my way between them slowly, taking my time, one hand still at her waist and the other sliding between her legs, under the waist of her leggings. I felt her fingers tighten in my hair.
“Nash—”
“Shh…” I dragged my tongue up her breast. “I’ve got you.”
She’d been self-conscious lately. I knew it without her having to say it—the way she angled away from the mirror sometimes, the way she’d said I’m enormous last week with an edge that wasn’t quite a joke.
The way she’d started wearing my shirts instead of her own clothes, which I loved for entirely different reasons than she intended.
I’d been addressing it. Thoroughly. Repeatedly.
Apparently we needed another session.
I pressed my mouth to her stomach, kissed her slow.
“You know what I’m thinking about when you walk into a room?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“I think about how you did this,” I said. “How your body just—decided to do this extraordinary thing.”
I pressed my palm flat against the side of her stomach, where I’d felt them move last week, and felt her breath hitch. “You’re growing two people, Maggie. Inside you. Right now.”
“I know, I was there—”
“And your body is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.” I looked up at her from my knees. “Every single change. Every curve. Every part of you that’s different than September.” I held her gaze. “I am out of my mind for all of it.”
Her eyes were bright.
“Don’t,” she said. “You know I’ll—”
“I’m not trying to make you cry,” I said. “I’m trying to get you out of these leggings.”
She laughed, but she let me drag the leggings down with her panties. I pressed my mouth to the inside of her thigh, tasting her—this different flavor than she’d had when I first knelt between her legs at the bar at Rick’s, when she was sad and hurting and already mine without me knowing it.
“You sore?” I asked.
“My back,” she admitted. “And…oh god…yeah, everywhere?”
“Here?” I pressed my thumbs gently into her hips, rubbing slow circles, and she made a sound that wasn’t entirely about what I was doing with my mouth.
“Yes,” she breathed. “God, yes.”
“Tell me what feels good,” I said.
“Everything you’re doing feels good.”
I laughed against her, then I just…devoured her.
Breathed her in, felt how she was changing, how she was the same…
how much she was still going to change. Reminded myself I got to be there through all of it, that I wasn’t missing out on this part, not this time.
I learned her all over again, the new version, the December version—where she was sensitive, where she needed softness, where she needed more.
She stayed as quiet as she could, one hand over her mouth and the other in my hair, her whole body trembling by the time I finally let her fall apart.
I held her through it.
Both hands on her hips, steady, while she came apart above me.
When she came back down she was looking at the ceiling with an expression I knew well—undone, satisfied, slightly indignant about how thoroughly she’d just been handled.
“Nash,” she said.
“Mm.”
“Get up here.”
I stood.
She was already reaching for me, pulling me back down, her mouth finding mine—urgent now, done with being patient.
“I want you inside me,” she said against my lips.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I got her turned, her hands on the wall in front of her, on the wet paint, damn it—and pressed myself against her from behind, one arm around her waist, my other hand spread over her stomach, her back against my chest.
“Like this,” I said quietly. “Okay?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “Please.”
I got my pants down and thrust inside her.
She gasped at the pressure, at the sudden fullness…and I could feel how the pressure was changing. There was less room. She was so fucking tight, clenching.
“Oh my god,” she gasped.
“That’s right,” I said. “Give me everything, just keep it quiet.”
She kept her lips sealed.
I moved slow—slower than I wanted to, slower than she was asking for with the way she was pushing back against me—because I had her, I had all the time in the world, and I wanted her to feel every single second of this.
“Nash—” Urgent, breathless.
“I’ve got you,” I said against her ear. “Stay with me.”
My hand spread flat over her stomach—our babies, right there—and I felt her shiver.
“I love you like this,” I breathed. “Full of me. Full of them.” I pressed my lips to the back of her neck. “You have no idea what you look like.”
“Tell me,” she breathed.
“Perfect,” I said simply. “Round and soft and mine and—” I thrust deep and she gasped. “I would keep you like this forever if you’d let me.”
“Nash—”
“I know.” I kept moving, my hand on her stomach and my mouth at her throat. “I know, sunshine.”
She was close. I could feel it in the way she was tightening around me, in the small sounds she was making despite her best efforts, in the way her hands were pressing flat against the wall like she needed something to hold onto.
I slid my hand down. to play with her swollen clit, and she made a sound that was entirely too loud for the situation, muffled into her sleeve.
“That’s it,” I said quietly. “There you go.”
“Nash—” Just my name. Just that.
“Right here,” I said. “I’m right here.”
She came apart—quietly, desperately, her whole body trembling against me—and I held her through every second of it, both arms around her, my face in her hair.
When she finally stilled I kept moving, chasing my own finish, and she pushed back against me and whispered yes, come on, give it to me, fill me up and I was done.
I buried myself deep and stayed there…and thought about September and the light and the broken condom and the life that had been waiting for us in the dark of a bar on a night she hadn’t meant to be there.
We stayed against the wall.
Both breathing.
The snow falling outside.
“Nash,” she said eventually.
“Mm.”
“You can’t fix my body image issues by having sex with me.”
“Strongly disagree,” I said.
She laughed, and I turned her around carefully and pulled her into me, her cheek against my chest, my chin on her head.
“You’re beautiful,” I said. Into her hair. “September and now and when they’re here and in ten years. That’s not me trying to fix anything. That’s just the truth.”
She pulled back and put her hands on my face—then her eyes went wide, yanking her hand back and laughing. “Oh no…the paint,” she said.
I saw the yellow on her hands and immediately realized it was now on my face. “Shit,” I muttered, laughing with her. “Somehow, we always end up making a mess.”
She shook her head, smiling wide. “Oh Nash…none of this is messy. It’s perfect. All of it.”
I looked at her.
Paint on her hands. Paint on my face, apparently. Her hair loose and her cheeks flushed and my ring on her finger and her belly round with everything we’d made together.
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
She went up on her toes and kissed me once, careful of the paint, then pulled back and started looking for her leggings. I found them by the unpainted wall and handed them over.
She got dressed. I got decent. She looked at the yellow paint on her palms, then at the wall, then back at me with a hapless smile.
There were two handprints, side by side, at about shoulder height…imprinted on the otherwise perfectly painted wall. It was funny—it should have been embarrassing, I guess, but it reminded me of the twins. Nothing else. Just the sign of what we were building together.
“Is it wrong that I want to leave them?” I asked.
Maggie snorted. “Like a sex trophy?”
“Jesus,” I shook my head. “No…like…our mark here.”
I lifted my hands and pressed them to the wall next to hers, higher up.
She laughed. “Now it just looks like I had my way with you in here.”
“I mean, you kinda did.”
She huffed, but then she slowly exhaled. “Yeah…” she said. “It’s perfect. I’ll paint flowers around them or something.”
“Of course you will.”
She reached out and squeezed my arm, then she turned, snapping her fingers. “Well…get back to it,” she said. “The nursery’s not gonna paint itself.”
She left me there to look at the handprints on the wall—to think of how damn lucky I was. A few minutes later, I heard the door open downstairs, then Reid’s voice…then his kids, then Nell. Maggie laughing, talking quietly with Reid’s oldest, Maya, who was actually starting to seem better too.
She’d come into my life out of nowhere, and I never thought I’d deserved her…but now she was here. We were together. We were in love.
Maggie Laine had healed a part of me that desperately needed healing without ever knowing it…she’d made my family whole.
And I was going to spend the rest of my life thanking her for it.