Chapter 11 – Adrian #2
“Not too late,” I say, and yet again, without weighing the risk and reward, I act, letting the sponge fall. It hits the water with a soft plop. Cora twists her head to look at me, blinking in surprise.
I hold my breath and kiss her.
She whimpers into my mouth, like she’s in pain, like she’s hurt.
Like I hurt her.
My pulse spikes. I cup her face, rising on my knees, kissing her harder, demanding and desperate, like she’s going to be torn from my arms at any second, forever, and I’m powerless and at fault and terrified.
She tastes like wine and salt, from sweat or tears, I don’t know.
“Adrian,” she gasps when I’m forced to take a breath.
“Don’t think,” I order—or maybe plead—kissing her again, cupping her neck and pressing her as close as I can with the wall of the tub between us. Her wet breasts press against my chest. The marble edge digs into my abs as I bend over, gathering her up, starving for the smell and feel of her.
She moans, her hands scrabbling at my back, tugging at the back of my shirt to free it from my pants. I let go of her with one hand to unbuckle my belt, and she kisses me back for real, sliding her sweet, slippery tongue into my mouth the way she knows drives me crazy.
Exultation swells inside me. I haven’t lost her. She’s here with me, feeling this frenzy, as hungry as I am. I can fix this. I haul her over the side of the tub, onto my lap, water sloshing everywhere.
She twists until she’s straddling me, her thighs a vise around my hips. She winds her arms so tightly around my neck, she’s almost choking me out. She kisses me like it’s been forever, like she’s been miserable without me, too, and something in my chest cracks wide open.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her, tighter than I should, than I would if my insides weren’t shattering.
Her tooth scrapes my lip. Her nails dig into my shoulders.
I can’t kiss her back hard enough to let her know how much I’ve missed this, missed her, her attention that feels like sunshine, that feels like air.
I want this back.
I want to have never fucked it up. Why did I?
Something to do with pride? Some nihilistic impulse?
It doesn’t matter. Cora is kissing me, naked, her fingers fumbling from button to button, undressing me.
I stroke her tongue with my own, swallowing her whimpers, as I gauge how to stand without dropping her so I can carry her to bed.
I’m going to eat her pussy until I’ve licked her so raw, she kicks me away. I’m going to fuck another baby into her. She’s not getting out of bed until I see two pink lines on a stick.
Her small hand finds a way under my waistband and grazes my straining cock. I groan, burying my fingers in her hair.
My phone rings. Cora startles, blinking. I reach for my pocket. She’s faster.
It’s probably Logan. Only family and key staff have the number.
Cora jerks her head, yanking her hair out of my hand, and looks down at the screen. Her face crumbles. Her eyes dim. My stomach plummets. I glance down.
Delaney Pierson.
Shit.
“Cora—”
She shoves my chest and scrambles off of me, lurching to her feet, tipping wildly. My heart leaps into my throat as I envision her falling, her head cracking against the marble tub. I jump to my feet, reaching to steady her. She stumbles away toward the sink.
“It’s not what you think. It’s work.” I don’t know what the hell it is. Delaney has my number, but we text or do voice memos. Everyone does. Did someone die?
Someone better have died.
She glares down at the phone in her hand.
“It’s just work.” Please God don’t let her answer it. How long is it going to ring?
She raises her gaze to me. “What am I just again? Just a breeder? No, no, I know—just convenient, right? Conveniently broke. Conveniently alone in a new city. Why didn’t you just ask me to be your surrogate?
” A bitter laugh bubbles from her mouth, and my ball sack shrivels.
“I was so lonely I would’ve probably said yes. What a joke that is, right?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Oh, Adrian. You’re not going to start lying to me now, are you?”
The phone finally stops ringing. I exhale. “Listen, can we just start over?” I take a beat and lower my voice. “Let’s just lower the temperature, okay?”
“Start over?” She laughs, sharp and raw, and my chest aches. “You don’t get it. You broke it. You can’t go back. There’s no do-over. Now I know that you aren’t who I thought you were. I know what we had wasn’t real. You can’t re-delude yourself.”
The phone starts ringing again.
My hands are raised in the air like she’s got a gun. I hate this. It’s undignified.
My chest hurts so fucking bad.
“Cora,” I say, a note of warning in my voice.
“I loved you. I know I shouldn’t have, because I didn’t know you, and you don’t know me, and people can’t really love each other if they’re basically strangers, but I don’t care about should and shouldn’t—I did.
” She pounds her chest with her empty hand.
“I felt it here. And now it’s empty, and it hurts. I wish you’d taken my leg. Or my eyes.”
Her lip quivers. I can’t swallow or open my throat to speak. My body screams at me to grab her, that I’m going to lose, she’s slipping away, but my hands curl into impotent fists at my side.
I don’t recognize the feeling until it’s pulsing in my ears. I’m scared.
“It’s gone. There’s no getting it back. I see you for what you are now.” She sniffles and hikes her chin. “And you’re a piece of shit.”
The ground shifts. I need to stop this, but there are no handholds. No brakes. No floor under my feet. “Cora,” I rasp.
She reaches out and drops my phone in the toilet. Plop.
Pain drains from her blue eyes until they blaze with ice. “You know, Adrian, I’ve wrecked a home before, too. I could do it again. If you know what’s good for you, stay the hell away from me.”
She stalks out of the bathroom, and by the time I fish out my phone and scrub a layer of skin off my hand under the hottest water, she’s disappeared into Pearl’s room and closed the door.
I could go after her, throw her over my shoulder and carry her back to our room. She’d be careful not to wake the girls. She wouldn’t want to scare them.
She can’t walk away like that.
She can’t expect me to let her. I can’t breathe.
I’m about to do it when Winnie lets out a short, perturbed cry. She stares over at me with foggy eyes, scrunches her nose, and decides it’s not worth waking all the way up. Her eyes drift shut again like the world’s slowest garage door.
My chest twists. She’s beautiful. So is Pearl. Perfect replicas of their mother.
A big family has always been a goal of mine. It was the only thing my parents did right, having four of us so we’d be strong enough together to face whatever life threw at us.
When I look at my girls, though, I don’t know what I was thinking. They are vulnerabilities. My father had himself an army of scrappers. I’m collecting porcelain dolls. I’d never trade them, not for anything, but I need sons to help protect them.
I feel like Aragorn at Helm’s Deep. There are so many dangers—kidnappers, traffickers, blackmailers, schemers, scammers, con men, and lotharios—and those are only the human threats.
That’s not including the microplastics, forever chemicals, pesticides, PCBs, BPAs, the nineteenth-century diseases making a comeback, the rising seas and hurricanes, wildfires and floods.
My aspirations were rational, conventional—a wife, children, a peaceful home. I got Cora, Pearl, and Winnie—soft bodies, breakable bones, fragile hearts. I was unprepared.
I kiss my thumb and gently press it against Winnie’s warm, chubby cheek.
Babies her size are so terrifyingly delicate.
She only weighs thirteen pounds. The plates in her head aren’t even fused together yet.
It would be so easy for someone to take her, so easy for her to disappear and never be found.
Before you become a father, they don’t tell you about the insidious, constant terror. Or maybe they do, and I wasn’t listening. Maybe my arrogance made me think the shit everyone always talks about wouldn’t apply to me.
I watch Winnie sleep for a few minutes until I’m sure she’s out for the count.
I have half a mind to pass out on Cora’s daybed, but pissing her off first thing in the morning is not the smart move.
I tug Winnie’s sleep sack down so the collar isn’t creeping up around her neck and quietly let myself out of the nursery.
I’m wired. My phone is bricked. The Madeira I drank is hitting me hard, and my bed feels too far away. I lean against the wall outside the nursery and contemplate the long walk down the hall.
I want my fucking wife. I had her. She was right there, in my arms, and she slipped away. That’s all she does anymore—slip away.
I sink down the wall onto my butt, every muscle aching for no apparent reason except exhaustion. I’ll just sit here a minute.
Sighing, I stretch my legs straight. My shirt and pants are damp. I’m missing a button.
I had her, and I lost her.
And that’s what I was always waiting for, wasn’t it, to fumble her so badly that she’d leave and never come back?
That’s what I was bracing for, day after day, year after year since Pearl was born, and I stopped being smugly pleased with the perfect wife and mother I’d secured and started worrying about what she was thinking behind those blue eyes.
Whether she was really happy. What would happen when she got old enough to realize that she’d traded too much for an easy life. That I’d asked too much.
And then, when the waiting became unbearable, I put myself out of my misery.
It’s so obvious now in hindsight, with drunk clarity. So fucking pathetic. I drove her away because I couldn’t bear waiting to lose her anymore.
I got what I had coming—the consequences of my actions.
It would humble another man to be this stupid and weak, but my arrogance is natural-born, hardwired in my DNA.
I sit on the floor, shameless, outside the nursery where my wife hides from me, until I fall asleep, slumped against the wall in a damp suit.
The master of my fate.
The captain of my own destruction.