Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A COUPLE OF MONTHS LATER
Sadie
I ’ve been getting more introspective over the past couple of weeks. More into things like mindfulness and gratitude. I even meditate, just for around ten minutes a day because any more than that and I get restless and distracted, but those ten minutes do me a power of good. Staying as determinedly calm and peaceful as possible is surely only going to help the baby grow healthy and strong, and that’s all I want in the world. Everything else is just noise.
Even the theft on my account. The investigation has stalled, as I was warned it might by the police and my old bank, but at least they believed me and didn’t take back the money they’d refunded. I’ve switched over to a new bank, one with a much more user friendly and security conscious app and a better handle on customer service. And, although it’s frustrating as fuck not to know for sure that whoever did this will be found and charged, hopefully that’s the end of it.
I’m taking the time to appreciate the little things. Like now, in the shower, I imagine the hot water in Leo’s wet room rinsing all my irritation clean away. The water comes from two shower heads and is the perfect temperature as it drenches me, and the suds from my shower gel are soft and fluffy as marshmallow. I stroke them over my bump, which feels so huge now I’m in my third trimester and will only get impossibly larger. I smile as my little wriggler nudges at my hand from inside me, a little foot letting me know it’s there and awake. The very first kicks were like nothing I could have imagined, like the most magical bubbles. Watching Leo’s face light up more than I’ve ever seen before a couple of weeks later, when he was finally able to feel it too, is something I will never forget. He dropped to his knees and murmured words of encouragement and love against where he’d felt it, and the baby loved it, moving even more to show off to Daddy.
There’s a rush of cold air behind me chilling my wet skin as the door opens, and I smile as I sweep my wet hair over one shoulder. In seconds, the back of my body is warmed by the front of Leo’s, and I feel his erection pulse against my lower spine. I angle my head so I can kiss him, sighing happily as he cups my jaw to hold me in place. He’s insatiable, flatteringly so, to the point where I wonder if he’s going to miss my bump when our child is born. He runs his other hand over it, so gentle and careful, and images of him cradling our baby just as carefully flit into my head.
I definitely want to recreate that famous shirtless-man-holding-a-newborn photo from the nineties with my Leo.
Gently but insistently, he places my hands on the wall in front of me so I’m braced against it. “Open your legs a little wider,” he whispers against my lips as the water keeps soaking us both. The moment I do, he lines up and pushes all the way inside me in one breath stealing thrust, the force at odds with how tender he’s being. The contrast is almost viciously hot, so much so that I’m pushed closer to the brink than I have any right to be, given that we’ve only just started.
I undulate my hips, squeezing and rubbing his dick inside me just where it needs to be to get me off, and he growls his approval. “Fuuuuuuck, that feels amazing,” he murmurs in my ear. “Keep doing that…”
I couldn’t stop if my life depended on it. It makes the feeling build until it pulses through me like waves, a plateau different from an orgasm but no less intense. I can do nothing but bask in it as warm water keeps cascading down over my hair and my body in individual caresses, and I wait for it all to climb higher, get me higher, please, more …
Leo reaches around and rolls my clit between his finger and thumb, and my orgasm bursts so furiously it’s almost unbearable, each throb pulling hard on not just Leo’s cock, but the core of me. I’m vaguely aware of him shouting out his own release, but I’ve been reduced to pure sensation, and I can’t decide if I’m more wrung out or refreshed.
Refreshed, I decide with a smile as he kisses my neck, licking a few of the droplets off my skin.
After work, we grab dinner at a new Thai restaurant a few streets away from the parlour, where I order two main courses, and then we head to the centre of town for our first ante-natal class. Leo matches his pace to my slower one, because going up and down the hilly streets with an extra few pounds strapped to your middle - and after a shit ton of food - is hard work. His arm is dangling around my shoulders, and I’m holding that hand and kissing his thumb now and again, making him grin. I love how proud and happy he looks, how happy he’s been since that wedding kiss. Minor hiccups notwithstanding, anyway.
I love that it’s all because of me.
“Can I run something past you?” he says as we stroll.
I look at him curiously. He sounds serious and…maybe hopeful? “Sure.”
He looks around at all the different buildings along this street. There’s a handful of big name stores, but around here, it’s mostly independently run businesses - second hand grunge clothes, tiny art galleries, trinket shops for the tourists, that kind of thing - and a few empty lots. “What if I opened a second parlour?”
My eyebrows hit my hairline. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, but with a difference.” He starts getting enthused, his eyes bright and his other hand moving as he speaks. “What if we let out the chairs to newly qualified tattoo artists and help them get set up? Mentor them and shit?”
“So they’ll already have their qualifications? They won’t be apprentices?”
“Not apprentices, no, but we can train them up and show them our ways of doing things, and set them on the road to being able to run their own businesses, if that’s what they want. Offer them the chance to work for…I don’t know, a Wishbone franchise, but they’d be their own bosses, and once they’re ready, we can free up their chair and move them to another different parlour in our name. The idea is still taking shape in my mind, but…what do you think?”
I mull it over for a few seconds, and I can feel him figuratively sitting on his hands waiting for my response. “I think it could work,” I agree. “I think it needs ironing out, and I think it’s going to be a challenge, but I think you of all people can pull this off.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “ We , maybe?”
I frown. “How do you mean?”
“I mean,” he says, looking strangely shy, “would you be interested in partnering with me on this? Take a big role in making this happen with me? Because I think you’d be brilliant.”
Wow.
It fully hits me that Leo has total and absolute confidence in me and my abilities. I already knew that, really, but when someone offers you a partnership, a serious role within their business, it underlines that point like nothing else ever could.
“What would that look like to you?” I want to make sure I fully understand what he has in mind before I jump all over him squealing ‘yes’ at the top of my lungs. Well, not jumping, I’m much too galumphing for that these days, but I’d get my point across.
“Whatever you’d like to do, I’m sure we can brainstorm together and make it happen. I think you’d be terrific at teaching them, and I also know that I want you in the interviews. You’d be able to suss out who’s a genuine contender and who…isn’t.” He grins. “With one notable exception, you’re a great judge of character, and you won’t tolerate any arrogant shit from some young upstart punk.”
I give him a wry smile, knowing exactly who the exception was and totally unable to refute it. “I don’t know how much money I can contribute towards this, especially after the investigation, but I can try - ”
“It’s not about that,” he cuts in smoothly.
“No, but as a point of pride - and common sense - I want to put something towards it.”
He considers my words. “Common sense. OK, I’ll have a chat with my lawyer, and see what she recommends.” He stops in the street, holding both of my hands. “Are we doing this?”
“I think we are.”
His face breaks out into an almighty beam, and he somehow manages to lift me a few inches off the ground in one of his trademark bear hugs that I never want to do without. “Fuck yeah, Sadie Stewart is my business partner!”
Leo
“ Fuck no?!” I can’t believe what I’m seeing here.
It doesn’t seem at all right to me that ante-natal classes, sessions for pregnant women , are being held in this dusty, dirty old classroom with plaster crumbling away from the walls as we speak. This old primary school has been scheduled for demolition for over a year now, but nothing has happened yet, and I guess it’s cheap enough for the local health authority to use it while it still stands.
I can appreciate the need to keep the costs low, but there are limits, and this is one of mine.
“Leo,” Sadie warns me in a low voice, but I see her biting her lip as she looks at the plastic chairs they’ve provided. And she’s not the only one, uneasy and disgusted expressions passing over the faces of the other people here. There’s barely enough chairs for everyone, and many of them have broken backs or uneven legs.
It smells like bleach and dust in here, and the floor is covered in thick scuff marks and what looks like old black gum sticking to the tiles. It’s unacceptable, and I’m not prepared for my Sadie to continue having classes here. She deserves better. Everyone here deserves somewhere at least clean and tidy, and without parts of the ceiling missing.
“‘Scuse me, Pumpkin,” I mutter, and walk over to the two women at the other end of the room sorting out paper handouts and setting up a projector. I give them a big smile; it’s not their fault. “Hi, are you both running the class today?”
One of them, a middle aged woman who reminds me of Eli’s mother to look at, gives me a big beam. “We are. Hello, there.”
“Hi, Leo Mills,” I introduce myself, shaking her hand. “I was just wondering, are classes here every week?”
The other woman, who looks a bit harassed, presses her lips together. “Unfortunately, yes.” She gives me an apologetic grimace.
“Well, I think we can do better than that,” I say, whipping out my phone. “I’ve been looking at a few commercial lots in town. There’s one in particular I have in mind. If you like, you can use it free of charge.”
“ Free? ” They look at each other warily. “I mean, we’d have to run it past our manager, but…”
“Are you sure you’re definitely planning on buying one?” The second nurse seems sceptical, like she’s been let down too often to blithely accept things on face value.
I grin. “Give me your contact details, and I’ll get it sorted. You both deserve a nicer place to run classes than this.” I hand her my phone, and she gapes at me.
“You’re serious.”
“I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t,” I assure her. “It might take a month or two to organise, but it’ll happen.”
I’m not sure which one of the two of them has the bigger smile, but it makes me more determined than ever to do something. The National Health Service could use it for anything they wanted, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll get a place up to spec and they can have at it. If nothing else, the room can be a community resource for the town. Classes, meetings, anything, all for free or with the most minimal fees.
I head back to Sadie, who’s watching and grinning, shaking her head fondly. “You, Mills, are the kindest soul I know.”
Warmth spreads through my chest. I didn’t do this for praise, but anything that makes Sadie look at me like that is worth any amount of my time and any effort I might expend. “It’s nothing - ”
She stops my mouth with a kiss. “No it isn’t. Stop doing that. You did a really nice thing. Or at least, you will.”
I can feel my face heating up. “Woman, it’s just money and a few phone calls to my lawyer.” I shrug. “Since I can help, why wouldn’t I? Anyone would do the same.”
“No,” she says seriously, “they wouldn’t.” Her eyes travel around the room, and her mouth curls sweetly in amusement before she gives me the sort of kiss that would normally have me lowering her onto the nearest flat surface and ripping her clothes off.
“What was that for?” I murmur against her lips.
“Just marking my territory.” She chuckles quietly. “Most of the mums and a couple of the dads in here are checking you out. But,” she shrugs, and lifts on tiptoe to run her tongue from my jaw to my temple. “Licked. Claimed. Mine.”
Ain’t that the truth.
When we leave the class, we don’t hold hands.
We don’t say anything to each other.
We just…walk. Slowly and gingerly, in the direction of the car, trying not to freak out at everything we just heard.
I kind of want to beg Sadie’s forgiveness for putting her in a position where the only way out of it is to either force a watermelon through a rabbit nostril, which might get stuck and need a suction cup attached to get it out , or have seven fucking layers of skin and flesh and whatnot sliced open so the baby can be lifted out by hand.
Oh fucking Jesus, what if I puke or faint? Or both? What if I puke on her ?
I take a deep, steadying breath. I can’t do that to her. She’s going to need me to be cool, calm, and collected, and who the hell am I to complain when she’s going to have her vagina stretched as wide as they demonstrated with the plastic models.
“Shit a brick,” I’d breathed in shock when I saw the dilation models. I’m not an imbecile, I know a baby’s head is a pretty large thing to have in your business, but there’s a real difference in actually seeing it physically represented, rather than the vague idea you have in your head about sizes.
“Feels a bit bigger than a brick,” a second time mother we were sitting next to helpfully informed us. Sadie, my poor darling, bit her lip and looked a bit white at that point. “I thought I was dying, it was awful . The worst experience ever. But you come back for more. Hoping this one will go better.” She laughs like it’s freaking hilarious . “It’s worth it, though.”
Please, shut up , I begged her telepathically, and fortunately, she said nothing further.
We reach the car, and I look at Sadie. She’s off in her own little world, staring at the car door and grimacing. I am not going to be a problem while she’s doing this. I’m going to be her rock, damnit, and hey, like the nice nurses said, women have been doing this for as long as the human race has existed. It’s doable.
It is .
I don’t care how the natural childbirth video made it look. God almighty , that made me queasy. I’m sure somewhere amid the crying and the blood and the goo and the screams of pain, the miracle of life is a beautiful thing. But fuck a duck, does it have to be so…
I don’t even have the words.
“Burgers,” Sadie says suddenly.
“Sorry?”
“I want a shit ton of burgers. One of every type on the menu. And a massive portion of hot, greasy chips. And a coke. And some ice cream.”
“Consider it done.” It’s the least I can fucking do.
So, on the way home, I drive twenty miles out of my way to this amazing burger place by an old-timey theatre we used to go to sometimes, and we both get seven different types of burgers each. And fries. And cola. And vanilla ice cream, which Sadie smears with the onions and cheese and pickles in her quarter pounders.
“It’s gonna be fine,” she decides through a mouthful. Her determined look dares me to disagree with her.
“Oh, totally,” I agree, infusing my voice with all the certainty I can muster.
“They always show the worst case scenario.” She swallows, and then immediately takes another huge bite. “Mine will be totally different. Better. It’ll be great .”
“Of course it will.” I stuff my mouth full of food, over and over, because crisp, salty chips make everything OK.
“Absolutely.” We don’t look at each other. We just keep filling our mouths.