CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE PAST: RESURRECTED
AGE TWENTY-SIX
In my life, I'd experienced few relationships that had come to me easily.
Not including those with my mom and grandparents.
My relationship with Soldier Mason was one of them. Within a few months of us meeting, he had effortlessly become Dad. Of course, that road hadn't been without its challenges and trauma, but not once had we been anything other than father and son.
My friendship with Jay was the same. Easy, effortless, and although we’d gotten into our share of trouble over the years, Officer Williams had become the best partner I could’ve asked for in the force.
But—and I thought it went without saying—nothing had come quite as easily as my romance with Meg Kinney.
And, man, it moved quickly.
Two months in, she asked me to move into the apartment she rented above old, decrepit Mrs. Montgomery's garage.
A year in, I asked her to marry me, and although she said she wanted a long engagement, there was no chance of her saying no.
Three years in, I decided I wanted to work toward becoming a detective.
Four years in, we bought a house in what we both—at the time—thought was the perfect location … right around the corner from both her parents and mine.
And while I had never at any time felt anything but content in my relationship with her, something else had come easily too.
A restlessness.
A sort of discontent with this quiet life we'd created for ourselves, in a house that needed far more work than either of us had been equipped for.
But with the help of our fathers and her uncles, it was coming along.
Not without its own headaches, but it was happening, little by little, as much as our bank account would allow.
But do we want to blow every penny we have on this place?
The thought crossed my mind regularly, just as it did now, as I watched TV after we'd returned from dinner at her dad's house.
Money was tight right now, with everything we'd been dumping into this house, and dinners were often had at her parents' place or mine.
It wasn't that I minded. I loved my parents, of course, and her dad and stepmom had become like a second set of parents to me.
But it was the routine of it all that sent me spiraling sometimes.
The predictable outcome of every single day.
Meg came out of the kitchen after putting away leftovers Kinsey—her stepmother—had sent us home with, which would, as usual, be tomorrow's lunch.
She unwound her curls from the messy bun she'd worn all day, and a smile tugged at my lips as they fell around her face, a waterfall of twists and turns and pathways I lived to wrap myself in.
God, it hurt how much I loved her.
She was the only reason I did all of this. Her and her alone.
And most days, it felt like enough.
“What?” she asked, catching my eye.
I gave my head a subtle shake. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” She crossed the floor to drop onto the couch beside me, stretching her legs across my lap.
“About how much I love you,” I said, reaching out to wrap her curls around my hand, then leaning over and guiding her lips closer to mine. “And how I'm gonna tie myself up in this hair while I'm fucking you later.”
“Oh, really?” She leaned forward, meeting me halfway to press her lips against mine. “Good thing I'm ovulating.”
Ah, yes. And that was the other thing.
Ever since Meg had turned thirty, the ticking of her internal clock had gone from a quiet, monotonous tone to clanging alarm bells.
She wanted a family. She wanted it with me, and I wanted one with her.
Badly. There were few things I wanted more than to put my baby in her belly and watch it grow with his or her life.
I was desperate for it. Feral even, and the thought of it filled me with a primal desperation that turned me into an animal at the very mention of ovulation.
Fuck, I'd never been more invested in learning about a woman's menstrual cycle in my life. I'd even read whole articles, books, on the topic.
But with every month of trying and failing, seeing the disappointment on her face every time she got her period, I was also starting to wonder if it was a sign.
A sign to wait. A sign that the timing wasn't right. A sign that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't here that we were supposed to start a family but … somewhere else.
But Meg didn't want to be somewhere else.
And that, right there, was the root of the problem. I knew it, but I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to give it a voice.
“You ready to try again?” I asked, ignoring those thoughts of protest.
“I'd try forever just to have a baby with you,” she replied, scooting her butt onto my lap and wrapping her arms around my neck. “But we don't have forever. So, you need to try really, really, really hard.”
“Babe, I have no problem getting anything hard,” I countered, laying my mouth over hers and licking across the seam of her lips.
“Yes, Detective, I can feel that,” she groaned, accepting my tongue into her mouth and kissing me thoroughly and deeply.
It was astounding how quickly she could turn on her arousal, even after five years together.
I wondered if it was like this for my parents, or even hers, and then, just as quickly, I sent that thought out the fucking window because who the hell wanted to think about their parents having sex, let alone at the moment their fiancée was unzipping their fly and pulling their dick out of their pants?
“I need this inside me,” Meg mumbled against my lips. “Right now.”
“Skipping the foreplay tonight, I see,” I commented as she stood up and pushed her sweatpants off her hips. “Quick and fast. I'm here for it.”
“Do you need foreplay?” Her eyes dropped to my erection, standing proudly at attention. “Because it doesn't look like you do. But, I mean, if you want, I can—”
“Nope, I'm good. You're running this show, baby. You do whatever it is you wanna do to me, and I’ll be a willing participant.”
She laughed, shucking her pants and underwear before straddling my waist. Ten seconds of making out had been enough to flood that spot between her legs, to make me slide in with little effort, and my head fell back against the couch, my eyes rolling in time with a groan.
“Jesus Christ, Meg.”
“You're so hot,” she muttered, leaning in to trace the length of my throat with the tip of her tongue.
“Fuck. So are you.”
She gripped my shoulders and lifted her hips, only to drop them again, and again, and again, drawing us both closer to the edge of orgasm.
“Will you still think I'm hot when I'm pregnant and huge?”
I lifted my head, sniffing a gentle laugh as I curled my hand once again in her hair and gently pulled her lips to mine.
“Babe, I can't imagine anything more beautiful.”
She pretended to pout, her mouth moving against mine. “You didn't say hot though.”
“Oh, is that what you want? You want me to be so turned on by the sight of you carrying my baby that I'm walking around with a raging boner all the time?”
She laughed into my mouth, grinning, then gasped at how far, how deep, my body could reach inside hers, fitting into her perfectly, as if we had been made for each other.
Because we had been.
There wasn't a single doubt in my mind that we had been … made for one another, made for this. Made to travel through this life together, and the next, and the next, and the next …
But here?
Stop. I swallowed, focusing on the pleasure coursing through my body, taking life, tightening and pulsing and begging for release.
“Yes,” Meg said, answering both my question and the call for explosive release.
“That's what you want? To be pregnant and having me bend you over every chance I get, stuffing you full with my hard cock?”
“Fuck,” she groaned. “Yes. That's what I want.”
Five years ago, if you'd told me that Meghan Kinney would get off on dirty talk, I'd say you were crazy. She had always been so polite, so pure. Such a good girl.
Until I got her in my bed … or hers, I should say.
We never had sex at my parents' house.
That was the last thing I needed—to have my little brother interrupting intimate moments with my girlfriend … or worse, walking in and witnessing them. I never would've heard the end of it.
There had been none of that at Meg's apartment, and there was none of that now, as we made love on the couch in the middle of our living room, tumbling over the edge of ecstasy together, panting and sweating in a chorus of moans.
“I love you,” I said, breathless and sated.
“I love you too,” Meg said, kissing my neck, ear, and along my bearded jaw. “And hopefully, I won't get my period in a few weeks.”
She gave my cheek an affectionate pat, the romance officially over, and climbed off my lap unceremoniously to grab her pants from off the floor.
“Maybe your body just wants you to finally be my wife before it gets pregnant,” I suggested jokingly.
She cocked a hip and raised a brow. “You think my body really cares about getting pregnant a handful of months before the wedding?”
“Four months, excuse me, and you never know. You wouldn't want your grandma accusing you of being a … what does she say? A floozy?”
Meg threw her head back and cackled as she turned to enter the kitchen. “Baby, first of all, she's never called me a floozy. And second of all, we've been living together for, what? Five years? You think she doesn't know what we're doing over here?”
“I dunno. We could call her up and ask,” I muttered. “Maybe she wants to walk over and watch one day—”
“Oh my God, shut up!” Meg exclaimed, continuing to laugh. “Noah, you're awful.”
“The literal worst,” I said, leaning my head against the back of the couch to watch her continue to work around the kitchen.
Putting dishes away. Wiping down the counter. Humming every step of the way, a flush of happiness and hope bright on her cheeks.
Truly, truly, I loved her. I would love her forever; there was no doubt in my mind.