Twenty-Two
Lachlan wasn’t sure what had happened but something clearly had. Things had been going well.
He’d thought?
Better than he’d hoped for. He hadn’t brought her here to make out—it had been his intention to do some stargazing somewhere other than Blairgowrie, and he liked it out here.
But, as ever, this pull he felt around her, the pull he knew she felt as well, flared like crazy in the close confines of the car. Before he knew it, he was touching her and then she was in his lap and they were kissing and …
He was certain she’d been having a good time. In fact, he’d been pretty sure she was close to orgasming.
He sure as hell had been.
Not exactly the usual way, but if grinding her way to the end was what she’d wanted in that moment then he’d been up for it. Lachlan was up for anything where Rowena was concerned.
Only, something had … changed. He’d sensed her frustration. The roots of his hair had certainly fallen victim to it as she’d yanked hard.
What had he missed? Had she suddenly thought about the baby?
‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was still a little husky.
‘It’s fine,’ he dismissed.
Because it was. He didn’t care about the abrupt ending to their make-out session. Sure, his boner was slightly miffed, but it’d live. He rolled his head to the side, his gaze falling on her profile as she stared at the roof.
‘Did I … do something? Or not do something?’
She shook her head quickly, the sound of her hair rubbing against the fabric of the headrest loud in the muted silence.
‘It’s not you.’ Her voice was even huskier. ‘It’s me.’
Lachlan watched her throat undulate as she swallowed and then, to his horror, a tear trekked from the corner of her eye.
She dashed it away quickly but the presence of it was like a hot poker to his gut.
He wasn’t one of those guys who was rendered useless in the face of a woman’s tears, but he hated seeing Rowena like this.
Was something seriously wrong or was it just …
pregnancy hormones? The books he’d been reading had said it was normal for women to be inexplicably emotional.
Lachlan wished he was secure enough in his relationship with Rowena to offer the comfort of touch in this situation, but he had no idea if it was what she either wanted or needed.
‘Ro?’
‘I can’t …’ She huffed out a breath then pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes for long moments before dropping her hands into her lap. ‘I can’t orgasm.’
Lachlan blinked at the air of defeat in her tone. That he hadn’t expected. ‘Okay. But … sometimes these things happen, right? It’s probably some temporary glitch.’
‘Nope.’ Another shake of her head. ‘It’s been going on for a while now.’
Hmm. Interesting. ‘Could it be a pregnancy thing?’
According to his reading, hormones and extra blood flow to the genitals could make women super orgasmic in the second trimester. But that didn’t mean every woman.
‘I mean, you … got across the line that night with me, which is the night you got pregnant, so the timeline fits?’
She didn’t say anything for a beat or two then a long sigh escaped her lips. ‘I didn’t.’
Lachlan’s brows knitted together. ‘Didn’t what?’
Finally she glanced at him, a slight wince marring her features, apology shining from her eyes as her meaning slowly dawned.
Well, crap. ‘You faked it?’
The wince deepened. ‘Sorry.’
Lachlan was speechless as he remembered that night. He didn’t pretend to be the world’s best lover, but he did pride himself on not being selfish in bed and knowing the difference between a woman who was satisfied and one who was not.
So much for that.
‘Oh god.’ He groaned out loud and shoved his hands through his hair, turning his gaze to the roof of the car. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d—’
‘It’s fine.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not my first faked orgasm. I’ve grown quite good at it.’
Lachlan contemplated her depressing admission. Should he apologise on behalf of his sex?
‘Sometimes it’s … easier, you know?’
Lachlan looked at her again. ‘Okay. I just wish you hadn’t felt like you needed to.’
‘Bloody hell.’ She gave a half laugh. ‘We’d have probably still been there if I hadn’t.’
‘You know I would have happily taken direction that night. If there was something I could have done to help. My ego can take it.’
Although, to be fair, it was slightly banged out of shape right now.
Rolling on her side, she shoved her bent arm under her head, propping her cheek on it. ‘It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do. It’s …’
She hesitated and Lachlan could tell she was grappling with how much to tell him. He rolled onto his side, mimicking her pose. ‘It’s?’
‘The medication.’
‘Medication?’ Clearly there was a much bigger story here.
‘I take medication. To manage anxiety.’
‘Okay.’
From what little Lachlan knew about the subject, a lot of people took anti-anxiety pills. Part of him wondered if there was a specific reason, but mostly he was wondering about the effects on the baby.
As if she could read his mind, she said, ‘It’s perfectly safe to take during pregnancy. There’s a lot of data on it and my psychologist concurs.’
‘Okay.’
Her assurances helped as his brain crowded with other questions. She’d spoken about her therapist before and he wondered how long Rowena had been seeing someone. Had she been dealing with anxiety all her life? Or had the accumulation of her many life challenges triggered it more recently?
‘Is the anxiety a chronic thing?’
She didn’t say anything for long moments. ‘It’s a … new thing.’
Lachlan could feel her hesitation hovering between them and he wished she felt able to be more open, but he didn’t want to push either.
‘Although,’ she added, ‘as I have come to understand through therapy, it’s a conglomeration of all that has come before.’
Encouraged by her sharing a little more, Lachlan dared another question. ‘Did something happen specifically? Did you have a panic attack or was it more subtle?’
She gave a dramatic groan then, pressing her face into her bicep. Following instincts he hoped were right, Lachlan said, ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’
Lachlan wanted to know. Because he wanted to know everything about this woman who had turned his world on its head. But more than that, he wanted her to want to tell him.
To confide in him.
Peeking out at him, she sighed. ‘It’s kind of an embarrassing story.’
Smiling, he murmured, ‘Try me.’
He saw the moment she made up her mind to go for it and hoped like hell that here, in the fogged-up cocoon of his dual cab, surrounded by the vastness of the outback, she felt comfortable enough to tell him everything.
‘It happened sort of slowly and then all at once. Quite spectacularly, actually.’
‘Okay.’ He nodded encouragingly and waited, not wanting to say anything that might spook her back into her shell.
‘It started at the beginning of the year. With a drug error. Actually, an almost drug error. I caught it before it was administered but it … shook me. I mean, in the NICU, two RNs have to check every drug, so it shouldn’t have happened.’
‘I can see how that could impact you.’
‘I went home that night shaking, thinking about all the what ifs. And it just kinda grew from there, triple-checking everything, a constant feeling of dread that I’d screwed something up.
That I’d get to work one day to find that the baby I’d looked after on the previous shift had died after I’d left due to a medication error I’d made. ’
A slight waver in her voice betrayed some of that angst and she shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she was looking right at him.
‘As someone who has struggled to have a baby I couldn’t even conceive how awful it would be to have the thing most precious in your life taken away because of an error made by a bedside nurse. The person every parent in the NICU trusts implicitly.’
Lachlan could only begin to imagine the cost of that kind of screw-up.
‘But it was the infusion rates that were my real undoing.’
‘Infusion rates?’
‘Critically ill babies often end up on a lot of intravenous drugs that are administered in a continuous supply as infusions. Drugs that support the heart and blood pressure. And when it’s premmie babies, the doses are quite tiny.’
Lachlan supposed they would be.
‘We have sophisticated pumps that work out the exact amount of mils to deliver based on the drug and the baby’s weight.
Really sick babies can have multiple pumps at any given time and the delivery amounts can fluctuate constantly depending on the baby’s condition, so they’re always being toggled up or down. It’s a constant juggle.’
Lachlan had been into ICUs during the course of his police career. He remembered how full-on they were. ‘It sounds complex.’
‘It is.’ She blew out a breath. ‘I was always super paranoid at work about the infusion rates, checking them multiple times throughout a shift. But after that near-miss I found I couldn’t switch off once I got home, either. My system was constantly awash with this cloying slick of adrenaline.’
She broke eye contact and rolled onto her back. Staring at the roof, she continued.
‘I started to ring work to get whoever had taken over my patient to check that the infusion rates were right. Only once to start with, but it escalated quickly until I was ringing several times a shift and then several times an hour. Towards the end there I was so hyped up, I barely slept.’
‘Did anybody try to intervene?’ It was clear to Lachlan that Rowena had been spiralling. Surely the people who worked with her had seen it too? ‘Ask you what was going on?’
‘Yes, but I was able to brush it off convincingly enough. And the unit was chockers. We were so busy. Shifts and shifts where you barely got a pee break, let alone time out to ask are you okay. And then …’
Her voice drifted off and Lachlan could hear her pull in a slow, even breath. This was it. This was the all at once.