Chapter 32 – Skylar
SKYLAR
The shower sprays down on us, filling the room with steam and relaxing my stiff shoulders and muscles. It’s been a day. The wedding party took a lot out of me, and Zoey asking if I was her stepmother was another layer I wasn’t expecting.
A good layer though.
One I worry about, but for now, fills the pieces of my soul that want to see her living her best life. She’s not my daughter. Not really. But I love her. I do. I want her happiness and her smiles and her fun. I want her to only see rainbows and never feel the rain.
“I’m your kid’s stepmother,” I muse as Aston sets me down in the shower and kisses my neck from behind.
“You are. She told me when I tucked her in that she was happy you said yes.”
My eyes close and a smile splits my lips, even as my heart thumps harder.
“Is this all moving too fast for you?”
Yes. No. I don’t know. “We’ll have to tell her about the baby. About how it’s not yours,” I go with instead.
He doesn’t respond to that, and I can’t see his face to figure out what’s going through his mind. We have so much freaking drama, we’re like a soap opera and a miniseries all in one.
I feel him growing hard behind me, his cock rubbing into my lower back, and I sigh and hum.
“How about it’s just us for tonight. No more thinking. No questions. Life can wait until tomorrow.”
I nod. I can live with that. Because life will definitely pick back up for me tomorrow and I could use the mental reprieve.
He spins me around and lifts me back up into his arms. His mouth claims mine as he walks us until I’m pressed against the shower wall.
His hands firmly grip the space between my thighs and ass. “I want this. I want you.”
I can’t tell how he means it. If he’s talking about my body or… more.
He doesn’t give me the chance to question him. His cock rubs up and down my pussy, and when he has me moaning and trying to pull him inside of me, and yes, begging, he pushes in.
There are no dirty words this time. No raunchy sex.
It’s slow and deep. It’s kisses and breath.
It’s gentle and sweet. It’s… loving. At least that’s how it feels, and it spins my mind up and twists me into a million different directions.
Our eyes hold, only closing when he hits a certain spot or I squeeze his cock with my pussy.
But it only lasts a minute before we’re there again, foreheads pressing and dizzying kisses.
I could do this forever, I think. But then he shifts, and I feel him against my bump.
Reality swarms back and stings me. It bites at what this is and what we are and what’s yet to come.
Something we haven’t talked about. Not really. Not logistically.
The baby.
It makes me choke out a gasp and cling tighter to him, not wanting to let him go. It’s only been a week, but it’s been the best week of my life. And the amount of time is inconsequential considering how long we’ve been living together and sparring. Flirting. Touching. Kissing.
He picks up his pace, his cock moving in and out of me, his hands on my ass guiding me, helping me move against him. I’m swollen inside, but somehow that only makes it better. It’s a tiny bit of a sting and I like it. Sort of like when he pulls my hair.
His thumb goes back into my mouth, and I suck him down, but he pulls it out just as quickly as he pushed it in and uses it to rub my clit.
That’s how I lose the battle. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his neck and ride his cock and finger until I come.
He follows, his grip on me tightening, and I hope he leaves marks on my thighs and ass.
I hope I can look in the mirror tomorrow and see his possessive fingerprints there and remember this night with him always.
The moment we’re done, I climb out of his arms, but he doesn’t let me get far. Shampoo is poured liberally into his palm, and he washes my hair. His fingers massage my scalp, and I moan some more. No one has ever washed me. No one has ever been this tender before. Cared this much.
He’s taking care of me.
My eyes burn. Tomorrow is a big day, and I’m scared. This is throwing me over the edge. He continues to clean me, conditioning my hair and washing my body. And when we’re done, we fall asleep in a heap, only sleep doesn’t last long for me.
I wake early and leave a little before dawn, needing space to think.
Today is my ultrasound. I’ve heard the baby’s heartbeat.
That was an incredible moment. But I’m still walking into that ultrasound room alone.
Aston has a shift this morning, and I didn’t feel right asking him to come with me anyway.
It’s one thing to be with him when I’m pregnant.
It’s another to have a new baby that isn’t his.
I don’t know what will be with us after I give birth, and we haven’t talked about it. It’s too soon for that anyway.
Yes, I could bring a friend or my mother or my father.
But my situation is that I have to plan this as a single mother.
I can’t rely on the idea that Aston will want to be part of my child’s life.
That we’ll live happily ever after with me as Zoey’s stepmother and him as the stepfather to my baby like we’re the freaking Brady Bunch.
Maybe that’s how it’ll turn out. But maybe not.
And I have to be ready for that. I have to be strong. I have to be able to handle all of this myself.
Then there’s the other piece of this puzzle. The Josh piece. The one I still have yet to figure out.
After killing time in the coffee shop in the hospital lobby, I make my way over to maternal-fetal medicine. The waiting room is filled with pregnant women and their significant others, but I read on my e-reader and ignore the annoying sinking in my gut that only gets deeper as the minutes tick.
“Skylar Davenport?” the tech calls out, and I stand, my nerves all over the place, mixing with a bubbling excitement that makes my stomach roll.
“I’m going to give you a gown. Please remove everything from the waist down.
I’ll be back in a few minutes to begin. Are we waiting for anyone else to arrive? ”
“No. It’s just me.”
She nods and leads me to a dimly lit room with a gurney and a large ultrasound machine.
I get changed and onto the bed, draping the sheet over my legs.
The door opens a few minutes later, and the tech enters, walking me through the procedure for the transvaginal ultrasound.
It’s all very technical, and the nurse in me loves that.
“Do you want to know the baby’s gender?” she asks. “We can’t always tell, and it’s not a hundred percent accurate, but I’m pretty good at reading it.”
I swallow, my chest fluttering and my fingers tingling. “Yes. I want to know.”
“Great.” She gives me a reassuring smile. “Let’s get started.”
I lie back and blow out a breath just as the door bursts open. My head whips over, and I squint against the harsh hallway light that filters in. Aston is in scrubs with a harried expression on his face. He spots me on the bed before he looks at the monitor and sighs in relief.
“What are you doing here?”
He comes straight over to me and takes the chair at the head of the bed, his hand on my face as he kisses my forehead and then my lips.
“I ran over from the hospital. It’s your first ultrasound.
I wanted to be here with you. I wanted to see it.
If I get a page, I’ll run back over. It’s just around the corner. ”
And that’s it. That’s all it freaking takes for me to fall in love with Aston Hughes.
“Are you ready for me to begin?” the tech asks, and all I can do is nod because if I speak, I’ll sob or squeak or I don’t even know. Dammit. I’ve never been so happy to have someone and so afraid to lose them at the same time.
She puts warm gel on the probe and gently inserts it inside me.
It’s not the most pleasant thing I’ve had up my vagina, but the moment the screen flickers and my blob of a uterus shows up, I no longer care about the discomfort.
Measurements are taken and she clicks on a million things, but all I’m focused on is the small moving creature in the center.
The one with the heartbeat pulsing like a hummingbird’s wings.
Aston sucks in a deep breath and wraps his arms around me.
We’re both silent, mesmerized by what we’re seeing.
Then she narrows in on it, and we get to see arms and legs and a belly and a head.
Tears pour down my face, and with every sniffle I make, Aston kisses my cheek and rubs his nose against me.
“That’s my baby,” I murmur.
“It is,” he replies softly. “She’s beautiful.”
“What?” I face him, blinking a million times a minute. “She?”
He pulls back, a stricken look on his face. “Um. Well. Shit, were you not going to find out?”
I smack his shoulder. “I was, but you can’t just tell me like that.”
He laughs lightly. “I didn’t mean to. It just came out. I saw her, you know, anatomy, and that was kind of it.”
I make a displeased noise. “You can say vagina. You are a doctor.”
He rolls his eyes at me. “Fine. I saw her vagina.” Then he smiles the sweetest smile ever. “You’re having a little girl.”
I turn back to the screen as the tech measures the baby’s nuchal translucency and checks out her heart, all the while pretending to ignore us. It all looks good, as best I can tell.
“I’m having a little girl.”
“Don’t ever run out on me again,” he whispers in my ear.
“You’re young and you’re just coming out of a bad relationship.
I understand that. But I didn’t like waking up to find you already gone.
If you need space, you tell me. If you’re spooked or scared or nervous or freaking out, you tell me.
I get it. I’m having a lot of those moments, too.
But I’m in this, Skylar. I’m not going anywhere.
Not now. Not ever. All this means is I’ll have another girl in my life to…
to care for,” he says, stuttering over that as if he were going to say something else.
“I’m okay with that. More than okay with it. Let me be in this with you.”
I nod and wrap my arms around his head and hold him. “I’m in this with you too.”
I’m at a weird angle, and there is literally a woman with a probe inside of me, but in this moment, I don’t care. In this moment, I feel like maybe, just maybe, it’s all going to be okay. Even if the rest of me knows, this is the calm before the storm.