Bare devotion, p.14
Bare Devotion, page 14
She snuggled deeper under the light comforter, relishing the first Saturday she’d had to sleep in and not need to run to the bathroom because she was morning sick. “Barely.”
“Can I come in?”
She opened her eyes and looked at the wall opposite the queen bed. Her back was to the entryway. “Sure.”
When she lifted her head and sat back against the headboard, Henry walked in, carrying a tray with hot tea and breakfast. “You went to the house to get the dishes.”
“I did. Don’t worry, I washed them all with hot water. They’re clean.” He set the tray next to her on the mattress. He stood up so quickly she wanted to ease his mind that she wasn’t going to bite.
Which immediately made her face hot. Morning sex had been some of their best.
“I thought we’d go do something today.”
She took a sip of the tea. He’d made it with a little bit of honey, just like she did. “Together?”
“Yes.” His eyes were a troubled dark sea-blue, and she felt another door in her heart creak open.
“What were you thinking of?” She stretched her calves by pointing and flexing her feet, started to nibble on the toast that he’d smeared peanut butter over. Her favorite. There was no sense asking him to relax and sit down, as there was no chair in the room, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t have him sitting on her bed. A silly, fragile line, but a boundary she couldn’t cross. Not now.
“I think we should go for a long walk or bike ride, your choice, and then maybe end up at the botanical gardens or zoo.”
She started to laugh and then coughed as the toast caught. “What? You mean like a date?”
“No, no. I mean like spending time together to start to figure out how we’re going to co-parent the baby.” He placed both hands on his hips, and she saw where his jeans sagged at his waist, revealing the darker hair that led to the lush growth around his cock. Who needed a botanical garden?
Stop. Sexy. Thoughts.
“Well?” He was staring at her, frustration in his gaze.
“I don’t think we can all of a sudden become best friends again after...after everything.”
“Again? Do you really think what we had, up until a month ago, was a best friend deal? Because I don’t.”
Ouch. She put down her toast and picked up the warm tea, needing some kind of comfort after that arctic slam. “Wow. You know, your friendship conversation skills could use a little polishing, counselor.”
“Don’t do that, Sonja. Don’t go back to the legal flirting stuff. That’s against the ground rules, remember?”
“Flirting has nothing to do with it. Replay what you just said to me.” She watched his face as he did; Henry always had had total memory recall. His smug frustration morphed into stony remorse.
“Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh, but besides the typical friendship where I tell you about my day and you tell me about your time talking to Poppy on the phone, where was the deep part of it?”
At the word “deep” all she saw, all she felt, was how Henry’s weight blanketed her whenever he thrust deep inside, filling her more completely than any other man.
“You’re thinking about sex, Sonja.”
“And you’re not?”
“This is my point. While we obviously share some kind of cosmic physical connection, we don’t have as much to show for our almost three years together as we should. You were right, getting married wasn’t the smartest thing we ever decided to do.”
“Whoa—wait, where’s my phone.” She overacted looking for it, cupped her ear with her hand. “Say that again, for the record.”
“Funny.” He smirked, and she remembered how much she hated this expression on him. “That doesn’t mean I agree with how you decided to put a stop to it.”
“But you agree it may have been for the best.”
He nodded, his eyes on the floor. “Yes.”
At any other time, in any other disagreement with Henry, she’d crowed when he had to admit he messed up. It was rare to ever hear him admit fault, and she knew a lot of that had to come from how he’d been brought up. When your parents shower you with conditional love that requires you’re the perfect obedient son, it’s pretty damned impossible to learn how to graciously admit defeat, no matter how small.
But to hear him say he agreed their wedding, their marriage, was a mistake. It still hurt.
A little wave of nausea hit her, and she laid her head back against the headboard, needing the firm grounding.
“The baby hormones?” He saw she felt sick.
“Yeah.” Not really. This was the fucking sad hormones, the hormones that were sobbing as they realized their best sexy dancing with Henry’s hormones were over.
“When do you want to leave? For our walk?”
“Whenever. Take your time getting up. I’ll be at the house.” He left the room, and she heard him puttering in the next room and at the kitchen sink before the soft slap of the screen door reached her ears. He’d locked the main door behind him, as he always did.
Henry was a perfectionist when it came to taking care of her lately. It was the baby, his child. Her child too. No longer their child, though, not when his or her mom and dad didn’t have a future together. Her brain knew Henry was right, that this was the right thing to do. To build a foundation they’d use to rear this child in the best way possible. To shower it with the love they no longer gave to one another. Had they ever, though? Had she been so strung out on the constant, inimitable sex with Henry that she’d been blind to the fact that the time between the sheets was about all they shared?
Henry was only a few hundred yards away, at the main house. Her family was local, and her best friend had just decided to stay in NOLA permanently. And yet, she’d never faced loneliness like this before.
Chapter 13
They picked her favorite park, at least that’s what she told him. He drove and let her chill out in the passenger seat of his pickup. He’d had it since his first successful case when he’d started out with his dad’s firm.
“I can’t believe you still have this thing.” She’d rolled down her window, and the air was making her earrings sway, the freshwater pearls he’d bought her for her birthday last year. At least she hadn’t tossed everything he’d ever given her into the trash.
“It works better than anything else out there. And you have to admit, it’s paid for itself ten times over since we built the house.”
“And now we’re rebuilding it.” She wore a peach top and black workout pants.
“Yup. You know, I didn’t ask you, but are you up for this?”
“The walk or the talk?”
He grunted a laugh. “Touché. The walk. It’s not too hot, and I have a case of water in the back. But if you think it could hurt the baby, just say so.” Damn it, he should have thought about it before dragging her out of bed so early. She’d looked pretty beat last night, and it had been hard to let her go to sleep without following her into the room and lying next to her. He’d had to fight to stay on the foldout.
“The baby’s fine. I’m fine.”
“I want to go to the next appointment. Shouldn’t you have had it by now?” He needed to know all he could about Sonja’s and the baby’s health.
“I told you, I had the initial one, to make sure I was pregnant, while we were, um, right after the wedding. I’ve scheduled the next one, where he’ll do the first ultrasound, for the beginning of next month. My doc prescribed prenatal vitamins, which I’ve already picked up and take. I’ve always taken vitamins and I love orange juice, so the folic acid part is cool.”
“Spina bifida.” He could list a lot of other birth defects he’d read about in her baby books, but didn’t want to freak her out, in case she hadn’t read that far.
“Yes, among other things. Have you been researching pregnancy, Henry?”
“A little.” He signaled and pulled into the main entry of the park, gave the teller his credit card. “Where to first?”
She told him where to drive after he got his receipt and the ticket to let them out of the parking area later. “Over there, that’s a great place to hike, but I don’t want to be near the water right now. Too many mosquitos.”
“Right.” He didn’t say a word about the Zika virus. It terrified him. Pulling into the nearest empty spot, he parked as far from the water as possible.
“Henry, I’ve sprayed myself down with pregnancy-safe anti-bug stuff. I’m wearing longer pants, and it’s still early in the season. The baby’s safe.”
“You can’t promise me that.” The words flew out of his mouth before he felt the punch of his fear.
“I can’t promise you anything, Henry.” Her eyes were large and luminous as the sun hit them through the truck’s sunroof.
“I’m not asking you to.”
They got out of the truck without speaking. Henry wondered if he needed a damn muzzle for his mouth. Since he’d found out she was pregnant, it was as if a cork had popped on the genie lamp of his emotions. Feelings he had zero control over.
If he were brutally honest, it’d been like this since she’d left him at the altar. You had a part to play, too.
“You’re quiet.” She spoke as she walked, her head high and shoulders back. Eyes ahead, anywhere but on him.
“Just absorbing the natural beauty.” The green Spanish moss-draped trees towered over them, and the soft mossy ground they trod on hushed their steps.
“See this?” Sonja waved her hand in front of him, laughing. The bullshit flag—she loved doing this.
“I get it. And I’m not BSing. This place is incredible.”
She looked around and breathed in deep. Her breasts had gotten larger, the nipples more pronounced, and he was in awe at how they pushed through her workout bra and her T-shirt as if it was the middle of winter and not a warm spring morning.
“Stop looking at my boobs, Henry. We’re forging a friendship, I thought.”
“You’re right. It’s just—”
“I know, they’re bigger than you ever imagined. That’s going to have to be your problem. What do you want to talk about?”
He wanted to keep talking about her breasts, her body, how the pregnancy only made her all the more beautiful. Not because he was some kind of misogynist dick, either. Sonja was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, and he knew with a visceral certainty that if they lived two lifetimes he’d never meet anyone like her again. But if he shared his thoughts with her, she’d tell him to fuck off.
“How are your folks doing?” Safe topic, her family.
“Good. My parents are loving the Caribbean, and my sisters are busy with their lives, still hoping they’ll find Mr. Right sooner or later. My older brother, Tyson, is hanging in there—he’s determined to keep playing the field. I know it’s none of my business.” He saw the concern in her eyes. “My little brother is still my baby brother.”
“He’s never going to settle down as long as he has his looks and money.” Sonja’s youngest brother was a professional football player who’d been lucky enough to get recruited by the Saints and was enjoying his local celebrity to the max.
“No, probably not.” She adjusted her pink baseball cap. “Daddy’s upset with him, of course. Says he’s got to stay grounded.”
“He’s not off the rails that bad, is he?”
“No, but you know Daddy. He doesn’t want his kids to make the mistakes he made.” She got quieter, harder to hear.
“You’ve never told me anything about your childhood except that it was fun and loud. Didn’t you ever have a rough time? Being a minister’s kid had to be rough on all of you at times, right? I mean, they say preachers’ kids suffer the most and often are wild childs.”
“Gee, Henry, I don’t know if you could have shoved more stereotypes into one sentence if you’d planned it.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not that far off. I played the role of the eldest daughter for a long time. Taking care of my sisters was never a problem. My older brother was always busy with school, and my baby brother was off playing sports or hanging with his friends most of the time.”
“And you spent lots of time at your grandmother’s.” He liked Edwina; she was how he pictured Sonja would look in five decades. Beautiful and strong.
“Yes, but not as much as you think, not when we were really young. Grandma was working full time still, and she was still raising her younger kids on the weekends. We saw her mostly during the school breaks. It wasn’t until high school that she started to stop in a lot.”
“When your mother and father went through their hard times.”
“Yes.”
“What was it, exactly?” She’d never said. He’d assumed that either one of them had stepped out of the relationship, or that financial troubles had affected them.
“My father got involved with one of the church members. She was a married woman whose husband traveled for his business. My mom was working long shifts at the hospital, heading for tenure at the university.” Sonja wiped perspiration off her forehead, her breath even with her steps. He loved seeing her with the backdrop of the bayou forest, the way the sunbeams that struck through the canopy hit her skin and set it aflame.
“You’re staring again, Henry.” She met his gaze, and one side of her mouth tugged down, mirroring her raised eyebrow.
“Friends are allowed to appreciate beauty, Sonja.” His voice was huskier than he intended. He looked away, at the peeling bark on the tree trunks, the birds flitting overhead, the worn path. Anywhere but at her. Because he had to play this cool, easy. No sex. No mention of sex. No sign of arousal. Fuck, he was certain she’d noticed his erection, his cock straining against his cargo shorts.
“So your dad had an affair. What did your mother do?”
Sonja shot him a sideways glance. “What do you think she did? She screamed and ranted and threatened to cut his balls off with her scalpel.” Sonja paused, hands on her hips, her face tilted up at the treetops. “That was tough. You know that screaming cry, the wail that can come out of someone at a funeral?”
“Um, yes.” He’d seen his best friend in college’s mother cling to his casket at his funeral. He’d died of alcohol poisoning.
“You have? Where?” She tilted her head, then held out her hand in the universal “stop” signal. “No, hold that thought. Sounds like you’ve got something to tell me, then, too. So back to Momma. She took about a month to not growl whenever Daddy was around. It seems funny now, and when you see her as the cool-as-a-cucumber surgeon she is with her patients, you’d never believe the shit she put him through. Not that he didn’t deserve it.” She pierced him with her stare. “He deserved it sure as shit.”
“I believe you—I don’t disagree.”
“Well, he immediately felt terrible, once the truth was out. I think he’d convinced himself it was all okay because he and Momma weren’t getting along, Momma was always busy with work, never anything closely resembling a traditional preacher’s wife.”
“How did they meet?”
“College, but I don’t know a lot of details there. They never talk about it, but for the record, my birthday is only seven months after their wedding date.” She grinned, a flash of white wrapping him in the healing power of her humor. “So my God-fearing father and science-brained mother found themselves knocked up and in need of a preacher.” She giggled.
“They didn’t have to get married. It was in the eighties, for God’s sake.”
“They loved each other. Momma did say that she knew she’d met her future husband the day he walked into the campus bookstore with a V-neck pullover that had the football team’s insignia on it.”
“She didn’t follow the school team?” Henry was in awe of Sonja’s family’s athletic genes. Her father had played football in college, as had her brother, the professional running back.
“Hell no. You can barely get her to watch my brother play in the NFL. All she sees is how much damage could happen to him. She’s petrified of concussions, of course.”
“That’s what a mother does, sees all the risks.” Too late, he heard what he’d said. “I meant, physical harm not—”
“Chill. I know what you meant. Although it’s apropos, isn’t it?” Her eyes were steady, the loving peace she carried with her enveloping them both. God, he’d missed this. “Your mother is looking out for her son.” So they were going there—his parents. “I get that part. But that’s about it.”
“My mother doesn’t see you as an inherently bad person. It’s all about the threat she thinks you bring to all she’s imagined for me. The fact that my folks pretty much disowned Brandon for not becoming a lawyer and for, God forbid, deciding to be a boat builder was the first clue they’d gone off the rails. Looking back I see how they’ve cocooned themselves into their little social bubble.”
“Your mother sees me as the woman who’d end her hopes of a long line of perfectly white Boudreauxs.”
“I have no defense of her behavior, Sonja. Both of my parents are assholes, and I’m sorry for the pain it’s caused you.” And would continue to, as she was now forever linked with them due to the baby in her belly. Their baby.
“Trust me, they’re not causing me any pain. Not now. They think they’ve gotten their way—the wedding is off. But when the baby comes...”
“We’ll deal as it happens. And unless they’re willing to accept you as the mother of their grandchild, and their grandchild as a full-fledged family member, then I’m done.”
“You’re done?” This woman knew him better than anyone. She knew the loyalty he couldn’t shake, the sense of responsibility he had toward his parents.
“Yes. No kid of mine is going to ever have to put up with their racist views or their rigid view of how things ‘should be.’” He stopped, not sure if he should tell her the more important part. “And, for the record? I was marrying you regardless of their opinions, or whether they showed up for the wedding. I stopped caring about their feelings a long time ago.”
