Chapter 21 #2
I pull his shirt off and run my hands across his chest, his stomach, the ridges of muscle.
He responds to my touch the way he always has, with a slight catch in his breath, his eyes going darker.
He's so responsive, it's almost unfair. Some men you have to excavate; Hamish is the opposite.
Everything he feels stays right at the surface, available, and when I touch him, he gives it all back.
We lie down together, side by side because front-to-front at this point requires engineering precision that neither of us has the patience to manage.
He pulls me close and kisses me properly, deep and slow, his hand cradling the back of my head.
I dissolve into it the way I always have, that specific Hamish kiss where the rest of the world just stops existing.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, thumbs stroking my cheekbones, and I can feel him noticing the moment my shoulders drop.
He watches for that. I've realized over the months of this pregnancy that Hamish tracks my tension the way he used to track the ball—constantly, peripherally, adjusting his entire approach based on where it is.
"I missed ye so much in London," he says, low. "Every night in that flat, all I could think about was this. Ye, here. The way ye smell after a shower. The sounds ye make when ye're falling asleep."
"I know," I whisper, because I felt it, too. The condo without him is just rooms.
"And then ye go and tell James McCormick that he's lonely and manipulative, on speakerphone, in front of yer entire office, and ye quit and eat a donut.
" His eyes are bright, fierce. "D'ye have any idea what that did ta me?
I'm standing in a studio wi' Malcolm screaming in ma ear and all I can think is, that's my wife. That woman chose me."
"I chose you because you're kind."
"Ye chose me because I'm persistent and ye ran out of ways ta say no."
"Also that."
He kisses me again, deeper, his hand sliding from my face to my neck to my shoulder, easing me back into the pillows.
"I want ta show ye somethin'," he murmurs against my collarbone.
"What?"
"How proud I am of ye."
He moves down my body, kissing a trail from my throat to the swell of my breasts, pausing there, tongue circling one nipple while his hand cups the other, gentle with the tenderness but not treating me like glass.
Then lower, lips brushing the taut skin of my belly, lingering where our daughter sleeps.
"She's lucky," he whispers against my skin. "Her mum is the bravest woman I ken. Always growing. Always turning toward what's right, even when it costs ye."
Then lower still, and his hands part my thighs with a reverence that makes my throat tight. He settles between my legs, green eyes dark, and looks up at me.
"Ye carried everything today. My turn ta carry ye now."
His mouth finds me and the first touch is so slow, so deliberate, that my back arches off the pillows.
He reads me the way he reads a pitch—with total attention, adjusting to every shift in my breathing, every flex of my thighs.
I watch his auburn head between my legs over my big belly and think: this man flew across an ocean, performed for millions, went back on live air after hearing his wife quit her job and told his uncle off, and now he is here, on his knees, making me feel like the only thing in the world that matters.
Because to him, I am.
His tongue finds the rhythm that undoes me and my hands find his hair, fingers tangling in the damp curls as he moans against me, a low vibration that sends a shudder up my spine.
When I come, it's a long, slow dissolve, warmth rolling outward from my center, my legs trembling, my breath caught between a cry and a laugh. He stays with me through all of it, his hands on my hips, steadying me. When the last wave passes, he presses his forehead to my inner thigh and exhales.
"That," he says, voice rough, "is ma life's work."
"Making me come?"
"Making ye happy. When ye relax like that, when yer whole body lets go and I can feel the tension leave ye, Amy, that's everything. That's better than any goal I've ever scored. It's the only achievement that matters ta me."
"You're comparing my orgasms to football."
"Aye, and yer orgasms win. Every time."
I pull him up to me and kiss him, tasting myself on his lips, and something in my chest cracks open. Not with pain.
With room.
When he slides into me it's from behind, his chest warm against my back, his arm curved around my belly, and the relief of it is almost as intense as the pleasure.
I've needed this. Needed him close. Needed the weight of everything to be replaced, even temporarily, by the weight of his body against mine.
He moves slowly, deliberately, his breath against my ear, one hand tracing circles on my hip, the other threaded through mine on the pillow.
His heart beats against my spine, steady and fast, and every time he pushes deeper, there's an ache that has nothing to do with my back.
This ache is entirely about how much I love this man and how impossible it is to hold the full size of that feeling inside a single body.
"Right there," I whisper, and he adjusts, because he always adjusts.
Hamish McCormick in bed is the most attentive, generous, tuned-in version of himself.
Which is saying something, because every version of Hamish McCormick is tuned in.
But this one pays attention to every shift, every sound, every micro-movement, and responds as if my pleasure is a language he's spent years becoming fluent in.
He is a man of many tongues, so to speak.
Just then, he murmurs something in Gaelic against my hair. I don't know what it means. I never ask. It sounds like a prayer.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, his hand on my belly, my head on his chest, the ceiling fan turning lazy circles.
Boston evening light comes through the window, gold and dusty, and for a few minutes, nothing hurts and nothing's complicated and we're just two people who like each other an unreasonable amount.
"So," Hamish says. His voice is that low, easy rumble he uses when he's about to say something he's been thinking about for a while and has decided this post-sex window is the safest time to deploy it. "Wi' the new arrangement, ye can work from anywhere, aye?"
"Mmm."
"So ye could work from London, fer instance. During the season. We'd find a flat near the studio, somethin' wi' a garden, and the bairn would have room ta crawl around, and ye could do yer calls in the morning while I'm at work, and ma mum could visit easy, and—"
"Your mum could visit easy," I repeat, and he hesitates.
"Aye. Among other benefits."
I roll onto my side and prop my head on my hand. He's lying on his back, one arm behind his head. He looks relaxed, but his jaw has that micro-tension it gets when he knows he's stepped onto uncertain ground.
"Hamish, I love you, and I would live in a yurt with you if that's what our life required. But I want to be here. In Boston. Near my parents and my sisters and Shannon's renovation chaos and Carol's bento boxes and Tyler's Skibidi toilet obsession and Dad's quiet wisdom and Mom's... everything."
"Aye, but it's only fer the season. September ta May. We'd be back in Boston fer summers."
"The baby will be born in July. You want to move a six-week-old across the Atlantic?"
"People do it."
"People also eat gas station sushi. That doesn't make it wise."
He laughs, soft and genuine, but underneath it I can feel the pull. He wants his career. He wants his family. He wants me close. He wants his parents to know their grandchild. These wants don't conflict with mine, exactly. They're just geographically incompatible.
It's the only way we're incompatible.
"I'm no' sayin' we have ta decide tonight," he says.
"Good. Because I'm not deciding tonight."
"Tomorrow?"
"Also no."
"Next week?"
I put my hand on his face.
"We'll figure it out. We always do. But right now, I want to be here. In this bed, in this city. In this condo with the emphysema radiator and the cursed plush and the crib we assembled using more profanity than hardware."
"I didna think ye can use the word fuck as duct tape, but ye sure do give it a go."
"It should have worked."
"Aye. All right, pet." He turns his head and kisses my palm.
"All right?"
"All right fer now. No decisions."
We lie there, his hand on my belly, my back starting its low hum again. I shift to find a position that doesn't make my sacrum scream, and settle for a compromise that involves two pillows, a rolled towel, and Hamish's thigh as a bolster.
"Yer back hurtin' again?" he asks.
"It's fine. Gym soreness."
"Ye said that yesterday."
"And it was true yesterday."
He kisses my forehead.
"Goodnight, Bronwyn," he whispers to my belly. "And goodnight, Bronwyn's mum, who is stubborn and beautiful and willna admit she's sore."
"Goodnight, Bronwyn's dad," I murmur, "who thinks three Scottish flag emojis and great sex will make me change continents."
"Great sex did make me change continents," he murmurs, then laughs into my hair and pulls me closer. The baby kicks once, a slow, rolling thump, and my back throbs. Hamish's breath evens out, and the Boston night settles over us, warm and uncertain.
We'll figure it out. We always do. But not tonight.
Tonight, I curl into the man I love, our daughter between us, the future unsettled, my back aching, and I let it all be unresolved. It's harder than any crisis I've ever managed.
Coyote told me I could put the fear down. She didn't say anything about the confusion.
I think that part, you just carry.