Chapter Sixteen
I’m wedged into the corner of the couch with three pillows crammed behind my lower back and one shoved under my right hip, and none of it is helping.
My spine feels like someone took a crowbar to it sometime around week thirty-six and never bothered to put it back.
The baby is sitting so low in my pelvis that every time I shift even slightly, a grinding ache rolls through my hip joints that makes me want to scream into the nearest cushion.
Breathing is a joke. Each inhale gets about halfway into my lungs before it hits the wall of baby pressing up against my diaphragm and stops, leaving me perpetually short of breath like I’ve just climbed a flight of stairs when all I’ve done is exist on this couch for the last two hours.
Machete has her head on my thigh, her warm weight a small comfort against the general misery of my lower body.
She’s been like this for weeks now, shadowing me through the apartment with an anxious attentiveness that borders on obsessive, whining softly whenever I groan or shift too abruptly, pressing her nose against my belly and then looking up at me like she’s trying to ask me something.
Kal is less dramatic about it but no less present, stationed on the floor beside the couch with his chin on his paws, one ear cocked in my direction.
I’m watching something on TV. I couldn’t tell you what it is.
Some cooking competition where people are yelling about soufflés, and I’m not absorbing a single second of it because my entire conscious awareness is occupied by the fact that my body has become a hostile environment that I’m trapped inside of.
My breasts ache against the soft fabric of the paternity shirt Hyunwoo bought me, the material brushing my nipples with every breath and sending little sparks of irritation through my chest. They’re enormous now, straining the front of the shirt, heavy and full in a way that makes lying on my stomach impossible and lying on my side only marginally better.
My nipples are dark and swollen and so sensitive that even the shower spray makes me flinch.
I don’t recognize any of this. Not the belly, not the breasts, not the way my face has rounded out or the way my hips have widened or the way my center of gravity has shifted so dramatically that I walk like a penguin navigating an ice floe.
I haven’t seen my own feet in weeks without bending sideways.
I am nine months pregnant and I am thoroughly, completely, bone-deep done with the miracle of life.
My mouth is dry. I want juice. The mango blend that I’ve been drinking by the gallon this trimester, the one Hyunwoo keeps stocked in the fridge because I go through a carton every two days.
Getting it requires standing up, which requires a series of movements that have become increasingly humiliating as my belly has grown.
I lean forward, bracing my palm on the armrest. Machete lifts her head, watching me with concern. I shift my weight, plant my feet, and push upward with a grunt that comes from deep in my diaphragm, my abs—what’s left of them—straining against the mass of my belly as I try to lever myself vertical.
A sharp pain lances through my lower back like someone drove a hot spike into the base of my spine.
“Fuck,” I gasp, freezing mid-stand, hunched at an awkward angle with one hand flying behind me to clutch at the seizing muscles and the other gripping the underside of my belly for balance.
The pain trickles outward from the epicenter, shooting down through my hips and up into my ribs, and I can’t straighten, can’t sit back down, can’t do anything except stand there bent like a question mark and pant through it while Machete whines urgently at my feet.
Hyunwoo, who’d been sprawled across the opposite end of the couch scrolling through his phone with one leg dangling off the edge, sits up so fast his phone nearly flies out of his hand.
His eyes lock onto me, hypervigilant like he’s been for the last several weeks, his alarm clear as he notices my pain.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, already on his feet, one hand reaching for my arm. “Is it the baby?”
“Everything,” I groan through gritted teeth, still hunched, still gripping my back where the muscles are locked in a vicious spasm.
“Everything is wrong. It all hurts and I’m miserable and I want this baby out of me right now, immediately, I don’t care how.
” I suck in a shallow, unsatisfying breath and add with genuine despair, “But mostly I’m just fucking thirsty and I can’t even get off the goddamn couch to get a glass of juice without my spine trying to divorce my body. ”
Hyunwoo’s mouth twitches, not unkindly, the concern in his eyes softening. “Sit back down,” he says, guiding me by the shoulders with careful hands. “Relax. I’ll get it.”
I slump back against the cushions with a groan, my hand still pressed to my lower back where the spasm is slowly, grudgingly releasing its grip.
The baby chooses this exact moment to do something inside me that feels like a full gymnastics routine on my bladder, a series of kicks and rolls that make my belly visibly shift and ripple under my shirt.
Machete noses at my free hand until I give in and scratch behind her ears, her tail thumping once against the cushion in approval before she settles her chin back on my thigh, her body pressed warm and solid against my side.
Hyunwoo comes back with a glass of the mango juice, cold enough that condensation beads on the outside, and sits beside me on the couch.
He helps me sit up enough to drink, one hand braced behind my shoulders while the other finds the small of my back and starts rubbing slow, firm circles into the knotted muscles there.
The pressure of his palm against the worst of the ache draws a moan out of me, and I lean into his hand, chasing the relief.
“Better?” he asks after I’ve drained half the glass.
“No,” I snap, because I’m tired and grouchy.
“My hips feel like they’re separating. My pelvis aches.
My hole has been sore for days because the baby’s sitting so low that there’s constant pressure on everything down there from the inside, and my back hasn’t stopped hurting since last Tuesday.
” I take another long swallow of juice and add flatly, “I’m nine months pregnant, I’m enormous, and I’m thoroughly done. ”
Hyunwoo hums, his hand still working circles into my lower back, his thumb digging into a particularly stubborn knot near my spine that makes me hiss and then sag as it releases.
“I did read somewhere about specific massage techniques and stretching exercises designed to help prepare the body for birth,” he says, his tone thoughtful the way I’ve learned to be deeply wary of.
“Things that loosen the pelvic floor, ease the pressure on the hips and lower back, help the muscles around the birth canal relax and soften in advance of labor.” He pauses, his thumb pressing into another tight spot.
“Supposedly makes the whole process significantly easier and less painful when the time comes.”
I eye him over the rim of my juice glass with suspicion. I have been burned by Hyunwoo’s “research” more times than I can count. “I’m not doing any exercise at this point,” I say flatly. “I can barely walk to the bathroom.”
Hyunwoo grins, and there it is, that gleam in his eyes that means he’s already three steps ahead of me and enjoying every second of it. “You won’t have to do anything,” he says. “I’ll take care of it all. You just have to lie there.”
He takes the glass from my hand and sets it on the side table, then shifts on the couch to face me fully. “Come on,” he says, his voice dropping into that low, warm register that my body responds to whether I want it to or not. “Let your alpha tend to you.”
Before I can mouth off he’s scooping me up, one arm hooked under my knees and the other supporting my back, lifting me from the couch with an ease that’s frankly impressive given that I currently weigh about as much as a small refrigerator between the pregnancy weight and my existing muscle mass.
I loop an arm around his neck for balance.
At this point dignity is a distant memory, and let my head rest against his shoulder as he carries me through the apartment.
His cologne fills my nose, and underneath it his scent, warm and familiar and grounding.
Machete and Kal trail behind us to the bedroom doorway, their nails clicking on the hardwood, and Hyunwoo nudges the door shut with his foot before they can follow us in.
He sets me on the bed carefully like he has every time he’s handled me in the last trimester, lowering me onto the pillows like I’m made of glass, adjusting the support behind my back until I’m propped at a comfortable angle.
Then his hands go to the waistband of my sweatpants and start pulling them down.
I frown. “What kind of massage requires me to be naked from the waist down?”
Hyunwoo winks, reaches over to the nightstand, and grabs a bottle of massage oil, the expensive kind, warm vanilla and almond that he’s been using on my stretch marks for months.
He pours a generous amount into his palm and rubs his hands together until they glisten, the scent of it filling the room.
“Just lie back and relax,” he says. “Trust me.”
I surrender. I’m too tired, too sore, and too desperate for any kind of relief to mount a proper defense. I settle back against the pillows, my belly rising between us like a small planet, and let Hyunwoo spread my legs apart as he positions himself between my thighs.