I didn’t think it was possible, but her face goes even harder. “Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought. You have no idea how hard it is to have a baby, let alone two at a time.” She turns her scowl on Max. “How are you going to let her have your babies without being married?”
“They aren’t his,” I blurt before Max can respond. “I slept with someone else and got pregnant. This isn’t Max’s fault.”
She presses her hand to her chest and sinks into the chair across from me, and I think, I am going to kill my mother. This might really kill her. So much for finding an easy way to break my news.
“Could I speak with my daughter alone, please?” She’s looking out the window again. Apparently, she can’t tolerate the sight of me.
Max squeezes my shoulders, and there’s so much in that tiny gesture. He’s saying that he’ll be here if I need him, that he loves me, that he’s proud of me. Then he presses a kiss to the top of my hea
d and goes to the kitchen to give us some privacy.
“What will people think?” Mom says as soon as we’re alone.
I shrug. “I spent my whole life worrying what people would think. You taught me that. Since I was ten years old, I wondered if I was too fat for people to like me, believed I had to make up for it by being kind, by pretending I didn’t have any feelings of my own. I can’t tell you the number of decisions I made just to please you. I am so over what ‘people’ think, because ‘people’ really means you, and you should love me unconditionally. Screw-ups and all.”
“I do.” Her eyes well with tears, but she pushes out of her seat and turns her back to me. “I just want to protect you from bad decisions.”
I’m not surprised when she leaves, but just because you expect something doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Max must have heard the bell over the door because he’s beside me, pulling me against his chest and stroking my hair before I even realize I’m crying.
By the time Liz comes in the back door, I’ve settled down but I’m sitting in Max’s lap, snuggled against his chest.
“Go,” she says, pointing to the ceiling. “Go back upstairs and get to sleep or screw like rabbits or whatever you have to do, because it’s way too early for people to have to look at that.”
I grin. “You look like you just rolled out of some guy’s bed.” And she does. In jeans and a man’s white button-up shirt, she looks, in fact, like she crawled out of bed and scrambled for something to wear. I arch a brow. “How’d it go last night?”
She crosses her arms. “You can’t prove anything.”
Max and I laugh, but then I sober when I tell Liz, “We’re calling off the wedding. We told Mom this morning.”
She flinches. “But you guys look so happy.”
“We don’t have to get married to stay happy,” Max says.
“Take off your dress,” Max whispers behind me.
A thrill rushes through me at the command. It’s been a week since Cally’s wedding, and every night, Max has come to my apartment when he gets off work. Some nights he has Claire and we hold her and feed her and generally spoil her rotten. And some nights it’s just him and he takes off my clothes and does these amazing things to my body.
I obey. I pull the black sundress off over my head and let the fabric spill to the floor.
He takes me by the shoulders, and I feel his eyes on every inch of me as he slowly turns me to face him.
He tilts my chin up with his fingertips and lowers his mouth to mine. Our kiss isn’t easy or sweet. It’s not the coaxing kiss of seduction or the lazy kiss of long-time lovers. No, this kiss is a cocktail of need and regret and desperation. It’s the hard kiss of two people grasping on to something they thought they’d lost. It’s the demanding kiss of lonely hearts offered a second chance. It’s lips and tongues and teeth, and before it’s over, my arms are wrapped around his neck, my legs wrapped around his waist, while he hoists me up and carries me to the bed.
He settles me on the edge, and I lie back and let him look his fill. In the last two weeks, my breasts have grown firmer than normal with pregnancy, and they’re extra sensitive when he grazes my nipples with his fingers.
“So fucking beautiful,” he whispers.
He trails a hand between my breasts, over my belly, and circles my navel with his thumb. I can’t believe I ever doubted his attraction to me. It’s everywhere—in his touch, in his eyes, in the way he talks to me to turn me on.
I reach for him. “Come here.”
He pulls off his shirt and unbuttons his jeans, pushing them and his briefs from his hips in one fluid movement. But when he’s nude, he doesn’t settle over me. He lowers to his knees and places his face between my parted thighs. I love his face between my legs, but I had an especially lonely day, and I need him close to me tonight.
I urge him up, and he kisses me one last time before climbing up my body and settling on top of me. I draw up my knees, and he slides into me with one long, hungry movement. His lips find mine as he pumps. His hands tangle in my hair.
“I’ve thought about this all day,” he whispers in my ear. “Getting inside you, feeling you wrapped around me, making you come.”
I whimper under him, and he hooks his arm under my knee and drives into me farther, deeper, harder. “Please,” I murmur.