Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
“ O h, she’s just darling! How old?”
“Thank you,” Lily smiled warmly at the older woman who was looking at Sage in her stroller. She’d taken to walking in the park each morning after Gunner left for work. Things between them hadn’t thawed since their kiss, and Lily was having a hard time being in the apartment. “She’s two months old. I can hardly believe it. I swear she was just in my belly, kicking the breath out of my lungs.”
“I remember those days so well,” the woman laughed. “And I see you’re out getting some exercise with her. That’s good. You’ll want to lose the baby weight as fast as you can, otherwise it sticks with you for life. It’ll be a good example for her, and your husband will thank you. Trust me when I say men never want to see a reminder of what your body went through to bring their child into the world. You have their babies and then they want their pre-baby wife back right away.”
“I…uh,” Lily didn’t know how to respond. She’d always been on the curvier side, and certainly with Sage’s pregnancy had gained more weight than she’d planned to, but did she re ally still look bad? “Yes. Exercise is important. I like to get fresh air for the baby.”
“Good. Good. You know, when I was trying to lose the baby weight from my boys, I also restricted my calories. I would skip breakfast and lunch all together and just eat a small salad for dinner. Maybe you could try that.” The stranger’s eyes roamed over her body and she felt herself shrinking back from the judgmental gaze. “I think you have a little more to lose than I did, but with a little determination, I’m sure you can do it.”
Tears stung at the back of her eyes. All she could think about were the countless diets she’d put herself through from the time she was seven until she got pregnant with Sage. There wasn’t a single one out there that she hadn’t tried. Not a single one that she hadn’t hoped would be the diet to give her the figure she always wanted. She wanted to do better for her daughter, but the woman’s words rang out so loud in her mind.
“Thank you for the advice. I don’t want to be rude, but we need to get going. She’ll want to nurse here before too long.” Lily patted Sage’s tummy and thanked the universe when she seemed to take the hint.
“Aw honey, you’re welcome. I hope it helps.” The woman walked past her on the sidewalk, patting her shoulder as she did.
“Lily?” Gunner watched her push her food around her plate. “Are you feeling okay?”
Something had been wrong all afternoon. When he’d come home from work, he’d expected Lily to tell him how her day went. He knew she was going to take the baby to the park and look at some of the shops around town. But she said nothing.
Instead, he found her sitting on the couch, staring at the TV while Sage napped. She’d given him one-word answers to the questions he tried to ask, then retreated to her room and shut her door. He wondered if she would have even come out for dinner if he hadn’t gone to her door and made it a point to tell her the food was on the table while scooping a sleeping Sage out of her arms and placing her in the bassinet.
Things between them had been strained, but he didn’t think it was bad enough to cause this level of distress in her.
“Of course. I’m fine,” she said, her eyes not leaving her plate.
“You’re not fine. I’ve never seen you fiddle with your dinner like that before. I thought you liked pasta? We’ve had it a bunch before.”
“I do like pasta. It’s just…was that Sage?” her head lifted, and she looked down the hall.
“No. Don’t use our daughter to avoid talking to me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing, Gunner. I thought I heard her fussing.”
“The only person fussing is you. I can’t watch you push another piece of pasta across your plate. Tell me what’s wrong.” Worry squeezed his chest. “Is it your blood pressure? Are you feeling nauseous?”
“No, Gunner. Nothing is wrong. I just…I’m just going back on a diet. I need to lose the weight I gained from having Sage.”
“What the fuck, Lil? Who put that stupid idea in your head?”
“What? No one. I just don’t like how my clothes are fitting, that’s all.”
“Then get new clothes. I’ll take you shopping this weekend. You’re perfect, just as you are. Now, eat your dinner. ”
“No. I’m going to go make a salad.” She pushed her chair back, and Gunner watched her walk into the kitchen with her plate.
What the fuck had made her think she needed to lose weight? She was literally perfect just the way she was. It hadn’t even been three months since she’d had Sage. Gunner racked his brain, trying to think if he’d said something to make her feel like she needed to change.
Pushing his own chair away from the table, he walked into the kitchen, where he found Lily cutting into a head of iceberg lettuce.
“You are not just eating a fucking salad for dinner.”
“You weren’t there, Gunner. You didn’t hear what she said to me.” Emotion was thick in her voice, but he could tell that she wasn’t going to let herself cry.
“Who, Lil? Who said something about your weight?”
“This woman stopped me today while I was out walking with Sage. She said I needed to be a good example for her and lose the weight I’d gained. That my husband wouldn’t want to see the constant reminder of my pregnancy. I know what she saw. I’m still so lumpy and soft. She’s right. I need to focus on getting my curves back under control.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his, gently removing the knife with the other. Gunner set it on the counter before he pulled her into his chest, his hands gliding down her sides and onto her hips. “The curves that make you a woman? These amazing curves that make up my wife ? You want them to go away? They’re a perfect part of you, Lily. I don’t want them to change. I don’t want you to have a flat belly. It should be round with my child. With my children . And when we’re done having kids one day, I want it to be soft. A sweet reminder of the warm, healthy, and fucking insanely sexy way you carried my babies.”
Fuck. Where the hell had that come from ?
Lily stared into his eyes like she couldn’t believe what he’d just said. He could barely believe the confession himself, but it was the truth. He’d pictured her pregnant with his baby more times than he wanted to admit. There was so much he missed out on when she was pregnant with Sage. Helping Lily through the nausea and fatigue of the first trimester, finally getting to feel the baby kick, talking to the baby each night before bed. He wanted to experience it all over and over again with her. The doctor had mentioned needing to monitor her in future pregnancies for preeclampsia, and that would always be a fear burning bright in his chest, but if she felt good with having more babies, he wanted to make that a reality so fucking bad.
She took a slight step back from him, and for a second he worried that he’d said the wrong thing.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but fuck, Lil, the sexiest thing you can do for a man is carry his child. If there are people out there who can’t understand that you sacrificed your body for nine months to grow life inside of you, and your body has changed now because of that, then they can go to hell. You’re perfect just the way you are.”
“That’s not true at all, Gunner. And I’m sorry that I didn’t realize it until today. No wonder you never told your friends about me.”
He froze, Nash’s warning ringing loud in his head. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t tell them you had to marry me.” Her eyes drifted towards the floor. “They didn’t even know we were coming here with you. I thought it was because you’re really private and maybe you were just overwhelmed with losing your mom and the move, but I know that you kept them up to date on everything except me and the baby. I didn’t understand why, but now I do. You were ashamed to bring me here. To be stuck with me. ”
Tears were filling her eyes, and Gunner froze.
“You’re embarrassed by how your wife looks,” she continued.
Gunner wrapped his fingers through hers and pulled her towards his bedroom.
“Gunner, I…”
“No, Lil. You got to say your bit out there. And now, I’m going to tell you just how wrong you are. Stand here,” Gunner moved her in front of his mirror. “I am not ashamed or embarrassed by you, and I’m so sorry that those thoughts even went through that beautiful head of yours for even a second. It’s not true. The words that woman said to you are not true. You are perfect in my eyes. Perfect, understood.”
Lily didn’t move. “Why didn’t you tell them about me? About Sage?”
“Because I’m an idiot. I was so freaked out when you got sick that I was afraid to say anything and have you taken away from me. You and Sage are the best things that have ever happened to me. The very best. I was scared for someone else to see that. I’m scared of the happiness being taken away from me every single day.” He turned her face, so she was looking directly at him, no longer through the mirror.
“I should have told you this before. It’s just a hard thing to bring up. Gage lost his wife and son. They were hit by a drunk driver when we were deploying for a mission overseas. By the time we landed and Gage found out, they had been gone almost an entire day. Watching him hear that news,” he swallowed, trying to stop the tears he saw swelling in Lily’s eyes from bringing on his own. “The way he screamed, Lil, it’s burned into my heart. We don’t have what Gage and Melody had, but we have friendship. And there’s the most perfect little girl sleeping across the hallway that we share. I didn’t tell the guys about you because I couldn’t imagine having to tell them I’d found and then lost my wife all in the same breath. ”
Her eyes welled with tears. “I didn’t know…”
He brushed his finger against the small white scar near her hairline.
“You remember this summer?”
“How could I forget?” she asked as she sniffled.
“For how small of a cut that was, it looked like you were bleeding out.”
“Well, I might have been slightly concussed. You threw that softball at me like I was preparing for the Olympics.”
“Yeah, I was probably just trying to impress you with my strength,” he confessed.
“I had such a big crush on you growing up.”
His heart beat faster. “You did?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how you didn’t figure it out. I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”
“I honestly never knew, Lil. I thought maybe in high school, something was going to happen between us, but it never did.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was going to ask you to prom after one of our tutoring sessions.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“The day I finally got up the courage, you bounced in all happy, with little hearts floating in your eyes, saying that Greg Schweitzer had asked you.”
“No…I would have turned him down if I had known. I was just glad someone finally asked me.”
“It wasn’t meant to work out just then.”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears again.
“Why does that make you sad?”
“Because maybe if it had, then Sage would be yours.”
“Sage is mine, Lil. In every single way that matters, she is mine, and she always will be. ”
“I, I mean, I don’t know what to say to all that,” she smiled.
“You don’t have to say anything. How about you just get that gorgeous heart shaped ass of yours back to the dinner table and eat the pasta I cooked?”
“Okay,” she whispered before she started to walk back to the kitchen.
Before Gunner could think to stop himself, he grabbed Lily’s wrist, twisting so that her body stopped just inches away from his. Her breath hitched as he moved his fingers up her arm, enjoying how her skin pebbled beneath his touch. Her bottom lip tucked in between her teeth and Gunner let his hand leave her arm, his fingers brushing against the delicate skin of her lip and he urged her to set it free from her bite.
His hand slid into her hair, pulling her face closer to his, and in the instant her eyelids drooped and her pupils blew out, he knew she felt the same tension he’d been feeling. Finally, he was going to make up for royally messing things up between them.
As Lily moved onto her tiptoes, a ferocious cry pierced through the house. She froze, and Gunner cursed under his breath as he watched her eyes bounce between the hallway and him.
“I should…I need to go check on Sage,” Lily sighed as Gunner tried to hold her in place. “Please, Gunner.”
He let the tension in his arms go slack and watched as Lily walked out of the room.