Chapter 26
Julia
Iwake up on someone else’s sofa, snuggled into Ian’s armpit.
There’s a kink in my neck and the sun’s shining in my eyes, but I’ve never been comfier.
It was so late by the time I’d had my fill of chatting with Ian’s family and holding those sweet little pups that I let myself drift off against his solid, warm side, and I’m not sorry.
I should go. I have to work today, and I definitely can’t go to the bookstore as a purple-PJ, no-makeup fashion disaster or I’ll risk the wrath of Lashleigh.
I really need to stop calling her names in my head. I’m an adult, really. It’s just easier to complain about my manager than it is to admit that I’m embarrassed to be struggling to keep up at an entry-level retail job.
I feel Ian wake up, his arm curving around to hold me in place.
“Not yet,” he murmurs. “Just a little longer.”
“Just a little,” I agree, breathing him in.
He smells like cedar, as always, but now he has the faint scent of newborn baby clinging to him, too, and the combination is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
If there weren’t a dozen of his family members milling around the room, chatting quietly over coffee and tea and toast, I might climb into his lap.
Just the decision to stand up to Richard has me feeling a little unleashed, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still married.
I have a couple difficult conversations to have with my husband and kids—and Eomma, too—before I can be part of a real family with Ian.
But damn if I’m not ready to make my own rules.
“Want coffee?” Ian rumbles, his hand stroking my upper arm. The gentle caress raises goosebumps all down the right side of my body. “I don’t know if they have soy milk, but I can run out and get you some.”
“You’re sweet, but I need to go. Work day, and I should probably get dressed.” I sit up, regretfully leaving the warm circle of his arm, and make a face as I stretch and my neck twinges.
His ears prick forward. “Are you okay?”
I grimace as I feel for the sore spot and try to rub it out. “Yeah, just a little knot from sleeping at a weird angle. Hazards of aging. You’ll see. The day you turn forty it’s like your body goes on strike.”
“Let me.” He adjusts our positions on the sofa, then grasps my shoulders with his huge, warm hands. His thumbs work their way up my neck in slow circles, chasing away the pain as my muscles succumb to the massage. After a few minutes of this heavenly treatment, he pauses. “Good?”
“Yeah,” I say, sounding a little too breathless for eight a.m. on a Friday.
I push myself up out of the deep sofa cushions, feeling suddenly shy about wearing my night clothes in the light of day.
It’s dumb. Everyone, from Ian’s mom to his little nieces and nephews running around with jam on their faces, is still in their pajamas.
Like he said last night when he sent me that way-too-coercive pic of his lap where I could see the outline of his dick through the plaid flannel fabric, I fit right in.
“You should eat.” He eyes my belly, so I’m guessing he means for the babies.
“I will at home,” I assure him. “I’m not a meal-skipper.”
He grab my hand and kisses my knuckles, the soft brush of his whiskers making my fingers curl reflexively. “Let me take you out. I know a great brunch place, and your shift doesn’t start until eleven.”
Oh, right. He has my work schedule in his calendar.
But I really want to take a long, hot shower and cry this morning.
It’s not that I’m sad about meeting the babies.
It’s just shown me everything I almost gave up.
I can’t believe how willing I was to walk away from this.
Before-Richard Julia, real Julia, never would have considered it.
“Ian…” I start, but he’s already released my hand.
“I know,” he says with a cheeky grin that I know is hiding his disappointment. “Can’t blame a wolf for trying.”
Three weeks into November, and I have officially become that pregnant lady who texts her baby daddy at two in the morning about my cravings.
Julia: “I need kimchi fried rice. I might die without it, and I used up the last of my kimchi batch at lunch.”
Ian: “How close to dying are we?”
Julia: “My soul is leaving my body as we speak.”
Ian: “Which restaurant?”
Julia: “Anywhere that’s open. I don’t care. I’m desperate.”
Twenty-three minutes later, I get a text with a wolf emoji. I waddle to the front door in my robe, mouth already watering, and collect the paper bag on the welcome mat. Ian’s Jeep is pulling out of the driveway, his headlights flashing once in what I’ve come to recognize as his signature goodbye.
He never comes inside or even waits for me to open the door.
Not once in all the late-night-cravings deliveries, which have become embarrassingly regular.
Not when he brought me the spicy pork belly I couldn’t stop obsessing over after having it for lunch, or the black sesame ice cream that made me weep with gratitude, or the emergency supply of sour gummy worms and beef jerky.
He just leaves the food, texts, and drives away.
It’s maddeningly polite. It’s also, I’m realizing, exactly what I asked for. Clear, respectful boundaries. No line getting blurred by flirting on the porch.
Except my lines are feeling all blurry when I’m balancing a bowl of kimchi fried rice on my pregnant belly at 2:47 a.m., reading the little note he tucked into the bag: Sweet dreams, pretty girl.
I hide the note in my nightstand drawer with the others. I have seven of them now.
Ian shows up at Dog-Eared Pages twice a week, minimum, always with a legitimate purchase as an excuse. What to Expect When Your Mate is Expecting. Raising Bilingual Pups. Not to mention stacks and stacks of children’s books.
Today, he’s browsing the pregnancy section again while I restock the holiday cookbooks.
Cashleigh is watching him like a hawk, eager to scoop up the commission, so I keep my interactions friendly but brief.
The model employee with a regular customer.
I can’t afford to lose my job if I want to fly my mom out in a couple months.
“Find everything okay?” I ask when he approaches me, a copy of Two Hands, Three Babies: A Guide for New Fathers of Multiples.
“I have now.” His tail wags, so I know he means me.
I pat my cheeks, willing them to cool. “Great! Ashleigh will ring you up.”
He winks at me and heads for the register, but once he has his periwinkle paper bag, he stops by my section on his way out. “What time is your shift over?”
“Nine. I’m closing tonight.”
He frowns. “That’s late. Is there someone to walk you to your car?”
Sweet that he’s concerned, but Apple Grove is a very safe town, and the streets are well-lit. “I’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t argue, just gives a nod that I wish was a hug, and heads for the door.
But at eight fifty-five, when the last customer leaves and I start the closing routine of cash drawer, returns cart, tidying and trash, and lights, I hear the front door chime.
I should have locked it even if it was a few minutes early.
“We’re closed!” I call, not looking up.
“I know.”
My heart does a little skip, because that’s Ian’s voice. There he is, standing in the doorway, holding two to-go cups.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say, even as I’m walking toward him. “Ashleigh will murder me if she finds out I let someone in after hours.”
“Then we better not get caught.” He hands me the cup. Barley tea, I discover when I take a sip. My favorite in the evening. “Figured you could use some help.”
I should send him away. Instead, I lock the front door and hand him the broom.
We work through the closing checklist in relative silence, moving through the tasks in tandem.
We reshelve the returns together, and I catch myself smiling more than once at the sight of this huge, flannel-clad wolfman carefully aligning the spines of picture books.
Usually when I close, I hurry through the routine so I can get home as soon as possible, but tonight, I don’t want it to end.
When everything is done in the children’s section, we end up flipping through our favorites. The streetlights outside cast a warm glow through the frosty glass storefront, and the empty aisles feel cozy rather than eerie.
“Read me a chapter?” Ian pulls a book from a nearby shelf. It’s part of a series of middle-grade adventure novels with animal protagonists. “I slept with it under my pillow when I was nine or ten. Must have read it a dozen times. I want to hear it in your voice.”
How can I say no to that? We settle into the big window seat, and I read to him. His head tips back against the window as he listens, eyes half-closed, tail occasionally thumping against the cushion.
When I finish the first chapter, he doesn’t move.
“Ian?”
“What?”
“It’s the end.’”
“It’s not,” he murmurs. “It’s still the beginning.”
My heart thumps, hard. I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.
We sit there in the window seat, my shoulder pressed against his arm while I pretend to drink the dregs of the cold barley tea that I finished forty-five minutes ago, until finally I have no more excuses not to turn off the lights and lock up.
He walks me to my car, of course.
“Text me when you get home safe,” he says before I shut the door.
I watch his taillights disappear, then sit there for another few minutes, wishing I could tuck this evening into my nightstand with all his little notes.
When I get home, I do as he asks. His reply comes immediately.
Ian: “Goodnight. Hope you sleep well.”
Julia: “You too. Thanks for helping tonight.”
Ian: “Any time.”
And soon after I wake up, he messages again.
Ian: “Morning. How are the pups treating you today?”
Julia: “They’re demanding pancakes. With strawberries.”
Ian: “On it.”
And of course, pancakes show up on my doorstep within the hour. No wonder I’m feeling so blurry. Breed me and feed me, and I’m a goner, apparently.
Speaking of breeding, the pregnancy hormones have kicked in with a vengeance when it comes to my libido.
I’ve read that mid-pregnancy horniness is due to increased blood flow to all the relevant areas.
What the books don’t mention is how inconvenient that is when your husband won’t touch you and the person who knocked you up is respecting your boundaries so thoroughly that he won’t even step foot in your house.
It’s probably a good thing he won’t, because all I think about these days is the way his callused hands felt on my skin when he worked out the knot in my neck. The way they felt other places, that night in his cabin when we made our pups.
I think about his mouth. The unfamiliar shape of it, the heat. His tongue.
For all those reasons, it’s a good thing he doesn’t come inside. He’s my big bad wolf, after all. My, what big hands you have. My, what a big tongue.
The better to taste you with, pretty girl.
When I have these thoughts, I press my knees together and remind myself that I am still married, still keeping my vows, still trying to be a good person for my daughters.
But god, I want Ian with the full force of my ever-expanding uterus. I want him in a way that scares me. Not just the physical stuff, although yes, absolutely the physical stuff. But I also want more notes in the takeout bags. More bedtime stories. More shoulders to fall asleep on.
I want that life with him, plus all the good parts of the life I’ve built already. But I know deep down that I can’t have both.