Chapter Ten
Harry
Two weeks later, we still hadn’t told Victoria anything. As fate had it, she was out of town or I was busy for a lot of the last fourteen days, so it was easy to ignore. Zora and I were both massive chickens. Massive.
Victoria had followed her parents’ desired path, working for a big corporation that always had her in different cities. It had never posed an issue for us; we’d never been a couple to need each other like that.
And that grew even more obvious for me in how obsessed I was with her sister. Through every night I lay in our bed by myself, I realized just how little I needed Victoria. How long it had been since I had wanted her in any meaningful way.
So, the disgusting ass I was, I’d lie under the covers Victoria had chosen and dream about her sister, about the baby she was growing, about what a life with her would look like. The wrong sister.
Both Zora and I had neglected to share the truth, burying our heads in the sand and continuing on like we weren’t about to blow shit up, both admitting to avoiding looking Victoria in the eye whenever we were in her presence.
We’d also kept seeing each other, unable to keep away for more than a day.
At any time that we were both free, we were together.
For hours, or minutes, or overnight. We’d neglected to go to either of our homes, only hotels or moody bars with dark lighting, but it was becoming clear there was something big between us.
I couldn’t keep my hands off her.
So when she’d asked me, as I left the cheap hotel she’d booked for the night, if I wanted to come to her next sonogram, it was an easy yes.
“Aaand…” the sonographer said, moving the little jelly-covered wand over Zora’s lower stomach. “…there they are.”
We both tilted our heads, trying to spot what she was showing us on the small screen. It was all grey-scale and weird looking, patchy kinda.
How could I not have accepted this invite? I wasn’t lying when I said I was all in. Even if we had to get to know each other while also getting to grips with the mess we’d caused, I was in it with her. I didn’t want to miss a moment of this.
A baby? Hell fucking yes.
It was cowardly, not telling Victoria everything. Zora and I were both cowards here. Weak. We’d admitted it to ourselves in those quiet moments after we hooked up, promised we’d tell her tomorrow. But every tomorrow turned into the next.
“Here, see,” the sonographer said, pointing to a shape on the screen. “This is the head, then the body. You can spot some hands if you look closely.”
“Oh wow,” Zora said, looking a bit shocked, her eyes wide. Like it was all just dawning on her. “Holy shit. It’s the most like a baby it’s ever looked.”
The sonographer chuckled, and I just observed in awe as this little thing moved around inside Zora. We’d made that. Created fucking life. How could that be anything other than amazing?
I watched the screen in wonder for the rest of the appointment, absorbing every little detail I could.
“I have a question,” Zora said a little while later while the sonographer was typing some things up and she’d just finished sitting up and pulling her shirt down to hide her stomach.
It was still pretty flat, as soft as it was when we’d first met.
But soon she’d be round and full. Shit, I resisted the urge to adjust myself and focused on the question.
“Fire away.” The sonographer kept typing, but nodded her head. She was a little older than me, maybe, efficient and plain-voiced.
Zora flashed me an apologetic smile, then barreled ahead. “Nipple play — we good to go? I heard it can be bad for the baby. Bring on early labor…”
I choked on nothing. My face heated to the strength of a thousand suns at her brazenness, but I swallowed it down.
It was a decent damn point. Zora was nothing if not a little too confident, uncaring of what people thought.
It was part of the reason she struggled to get on with her family so much, by all accounts.
She could never manage demure and subservient.
The sonographer paused and looked at Zora, then me, before going back to Zora. “It can cause premature labor in very late pregnancy. But at this stage, don’t worry about it. As long as you have no complications, there is no reason to stop.”
Zora nodded, satisfied, and gave me another sneaky glance. Little devil.
We wrapped up the appointment and left together, a tiny picture of our baby in each of our pockets. Zora’s hand curled around mine as we yammered away, guessing what the baby would be like, how big she was going to get and how expensive the whole thing would be.
It was light, but it was normal. No talk of cheating, of Victoria and that looming hell we were facing.
Chickens, the both of us.
“I would say excuse the mess, but I don’t really care,” Zora said as I stepped inside her apartment for the first time. “You live with clean freak Victoria; I live with a person with about as much inclination to tidy up as myself…”
It was cluttered, sure, but in a homey way.
There was no dirt or grime, just stuff everywhere.
Random stuff too. Colorful pillows piled on the floor, nicknacks of all designations, from CDs to figurines, on every surface they could fit.
Stacks of books and vases filled with dried flowers, sticks, and all sorts of other shit.
I liked it, though. It was warm. Like her.
“As long as you’ve got something to drink, I don’t give a shit,” I said, shutting the door behind me and kicking off my shoes to join the pile in the corner. There was a shoe rack, but it’d overflowed half a dozen pairs ago.
“Ah,” she said, ducking into the fridge. The front door led into the kitchen, which spilled right into the living space. “Let’s see… I can offer you ginger ale, questionable Eastern European vodka that Bellamy bought, or… water.”
Laughing, I said, “Water, please. Vodka seems the wrong move.”
“Definitely the wrong move.” She handed me a bottle of water and grabbed a ginger ale for herself. “Bellamy won’t be back for a few more hours, so we can sit out here and hash this out.”
Finally. It was time. Without being in public to distract us, without the innate sexiness that was a hotel room. This needed to happen now.
After seeing the little dot on the screen, we decided we had to get this family drama shit sorted before the baby appeared into the world. We needed to talk logistics. All that fun stuff.
And we did. We sat there, nursing our drinks, making a plan. Zora typed shit into the notes app on her phone, and I nodded along, sometimes adding to them. Learning a lot as we went.
“Aren’t we just so grown up,” Zora said with a smirk, looking at the notes I’d written with satisfaction.
I realized with a jolt. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven,” she said through a swig of her drink. “And you’re twenty-nine. I know a lot about you from Victoria.”
“Ah yes, all the times she sat on the phone talking to her sister, Zora. Not Rosa.”
Zora shrugged, but did appear a little apologetic. “Who gives their real name at these things?”
“I did.”
“And how many Harrys are there in the world, huh?” She pulled a silly face. “So common.”
I laughed, wanting to touch her, to tease her. She was carrying my child in her, and that thought was so fucking sexy.
“Oh no,” she said with a giggle, shifting away from me. “I know that look!”
I smirked and lunged, grabbing her and pinning her to the sofa while she shrieked and fought back with no real effort. “Harry, we can’t! Not until we’ve cleared all of this up.” I tickled her. “Logistics!” she cried out, giggling and fighting me. “Not again. We have to be sensible adults.”
I ran my nose along hers, hovering my lips an inch from her delicious mouth, the spiciness of ginger on her breath. “But it’s so fucking good.”
Her legs widened for me to fall between, and I knew I had her. “You know, ever since you drew that first drop of milk from me, I’ve been trying to make it happen again.”
“Oh, fuck, really?” I asked, leaning away from her to see her full face.
“Really.” Her eyes glittered. “Yesterday in the shower, it worked.”
“Show me where your shower is, right now.”