I CAN’T STOP WATCHING IT.
My phone glows in the unlit music room as I play the video over and over. I only recorded a few seconds of today’s ultrasound. It’s just this little smudgy sack in a grainy pool of Jell-O. There’s not even any sound other than us breathing and Dr. Allister’s voice. There’s no heartbeat. No head or feet or fingers. No little peter.
Peter? I can’t say dick now? I’m already censoring myself in my head. I guess peter is better than wiener or some other kid-appropriate name for cock. I’m already thinking like a father.
A father.
Shit. I’m gonna be a father. I am a father because I bet this child couldn’t feel any more real to me if she were already here.
It’s a girl, by the way.
All I’ve felt since Kai told me she was pregnant is joy, wonder, amazement. I can’t even assign names to all the emotions that washed over me in that examination room. For the first time since today’s appointment, fear and doubt creep in. What if I screw this kid up the way my parents screwed up on me? How much therapy would that take? Anything could happen. I Googled the first trimester, and Kai is more likely to miscarry over the next couple of months than at any other time during her pregnancy. Three minutes with that little blob, and I’d already do anything to protect it. To keep it. The same staunch protectiveness I feel for Kai instantly extended to our little blob.
“You okay?” Kai whispers from the doorway.
A wedge of darkness yields to the moonlight pouring in just beyond the wide windows, silhouetting her slim curves. The hem of my Jim Morrison t-shirt caresses her legs. She crosses one foot over the other, leaning her head against the doorframe.
“Why are we whispering?” I ask just as quietly, adding a smile that she slowly returns. “Come here.”
I open my arms and wait for her to cover the few feet between the entrance and the piano where I’m seated. She settles on my knees, and I kiss her hair when she leans into me. I can’t help it. One hand strays to her left ring finger, touching the glittering sign to the world that she belongs to me. My other hand covers her flat stomach holding our little secret. You can’t see it, but my baby’s in there, and it makes me feel a hundred feet tall.
“You couldn’t sleep?” she asks.
“Too wired, I guess. Thinking about the baby.” I scan her expression for any signs of the same excitement that has me out of bed at two o’clock in the morning. She’s pulled that blank mask over her feelings. I’m not having it. I’ll spend the rest of my life digging around in that pretty head and excavating her heart. I don’t want to leave anything unspoken between us. Not ever again. We’ve been there and done that, and I want to give her everything. I’m only asking her for one thing in return.
Everything.
“If I ask you a question, will you be honest with me?” I tuck silky strands of dark hair behind her ear.
“Of course.” In the faint glow of moonlight, she lowers her lashes before looking back up at me, waiting.
I cup her chin and brush my thumb over the lushness of her mouth.
“Do you want this baby?”
I’ve surprised her. Her eyes widen and then drop.
“I want this baby, yes.” I will her to lift her eyes back to me and she eventually does. “In about three years.”
I asked for that. We always say we want honesty until the truth slips in like a dagger between our ribs. I draw a sharp breath like she stabbed me.
“What are you saying? You want . . .” I can’t even string the ugly words together. I can’t even imagine that word anywhere near my baby.
“No!” Shock flashes across her face. She cups my face with both hands. “Oh, Rhys, no. I wouldn’t. This is our baby. It never even crossed my mind. I promise.”
I knew that. I know that. I believe her, but for just a second . . . relief steals over me, loosening the coiled muscles in my shoulders and neck.
“That came out wrong.” She shakes her head and looks up at me, eyes earnest. “Really wrong. What I meant was I didn’t want this now.”
She traces a line from my neck and over my chest before blowing out a short breath.
“It’s like I don’t want this to happen now, but I do want our baby.” She scrunches up her face. “I know how that sounds, but I’m trying to be honest with myself and with you.”
“I know.” I catch her hand and link it with mine to rest on my chest. “Keep talking. It’s okay.”
All she has is moonlight to see my face, but she scans my eyes and expression until something satisfies her that I mean it. That she doesn’t have to hide from me.
“You know that my whole life, especially the last five years or so, felt like this series of stops and starts. Like as soon as I have any momentum, something blocks it. Something delays it.”
Her fingers tighten around mine, squeezing to emphasize her next words.
“I was on birth control for a reason,” she says. “I didn’t want to have a baby right now. I’m coming off Luke’s tour, finally with Prodigy, featured on one of the biggest albums of the year with Grip’s song that’s about to drop. And I was up next. We were launching my solo career next.”
“And we still can, Pep.” I stroke my knuckles over her cheekbone. “We still will.”
Later.
I don’t say the word out loud, but it somehow clangs as loud as a cymbal between us. She hears it. She knows it. It’s the truth.
“Look.” I tip my head back to consider the ceiling for a second before looking back to her, trying to match the unflinching honesty she offered me. “There’s a lot we can do before the baby comes. We’ll find the best producers for you to work with. Start getting songs together. And we can record throughout your pregnancy. You can be in the studio the whole time.”
“But . . .” Kai plucks the unspoken word right out of my head. She waits for me to say what we both know I have to say.
“But I don’t think we’ll have the songs recorded and the videos done before you start showing,” I continue. “And with dance being such a huge part of your brand, we’ll need you in the best shape of your life for those, and for the tour. You got a taste of how grueling world tours are, but that was just opening for Luke. This would be your own show, with multiple sets. A different city every night. And I feel strongly that we’ll get the most momentum if your world tour launches not too long after the album release.”
“And since I can’t do the world tour until after the baby is born, you’d want to wait on the album release.” Her eyes find mine in the dim light. “Right?”
Right.
We stare at one another, each of us weighing our words. Waiting for the other to speak. She finally does.
“Are you telling me this as my baby daddy,” she asks with a touch of lightness, even though her eyes offer no levity. “Or as my boss?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, because if you’re saying this as the father of my child, then you’ve been heard, and I’ll take your opinion into account.” She folds her bottom lip into her mouth. “If you’re saying this as the head of my record label, then I don’t have much choice, do I?”
There’s no right answer. It’s in this moment that I realize just how much therapy must have helped me. Love is not control. I don’t want to control, Kai. I’m in a position of power over her, and I don’t want it. I love her so much, I hate being the one holding the power to take away what she wants.
“So baby daddy or boss?” she whispers.
I thought there was no right answer, but when I look in her eyes, I see there’s no wrong one either. Unconditional love bounces back at me. No matter what I say, we’re together. We’re getting married. We’ve having a baby. We’ll launch her career. Everything will happen when it’s supposed to as long as it’s us.
“Both.”
Regret and resignation wrestle in her eyes before she nods and kisses my lips lightly.
“Kai, there’s so much we can do.”
“But I was ready to do everything.” She presses her lips against emotion. “To finally do it all now. And then in two years, three years, sure, we’d start a family.”
“Time will fly,”
“That’s much easier for you to say than it is for me to do.” She closes her eyes and swipes at the lone tear escaping over her cheek. “I don’t know if you can understand this, but all these emotions are warring inside me. I don’t feel one more or less than the other.”
She swallows and strokes her thumb over my hand still linked with hers.
“This baby, our baby,” she leans forward until her lips float over mine, her breath cool on my lips, “Your baby inside me is the greatest joy I’ve ever had.”
“You mean that?” My free hand winds into the hair tumbling past her shoulders, spearing into the heavy mass at her nape.
“Yes, I mean it.” She sighs and reaches up to grip my wrist. “But at the same time, I’m so disappointed. You have to give me the space to be disappointed, Rhyson. To regret another missed opportunity, another delay.”
I nod because I can do that.
“Don’t ask me not to be ambitious,” she adds earnestly. “Not to want to perform and to be the best artist I can be. Don’t ask me to not want that.”
“Kai, that’s all part of what makes you the woman I’m crazy about.” I press her a little closer. “Remember what we said? That we want to be known?”
I wait for her to nod, to recall the promises we made on the other side of our mistakes a few months ago. We hurt each other out of insecurity and mistrust, but we vowed to live our lives truly known, if by no one else in the world then by each other.
“I know you,” I whisper, holding her eyes and wishing for more light so the shadows can’t hide anything from me. “I see you, baby. I live you.”
She grins at our own way of expressing that.
“I live you too.” Her eyes seek mine to find the answering emotion that has to be there on my face because it’s too massive to remain trapped inside of me. It must be spilling into my expression like a silent confession. “So with all that said, for the record, I am excited and amazed that we did this, that we made this baby together. I saw our little blob today, and I just . . . I just already love . . . her or him.”
“It’s her.” I slide our hands from my chest to rest between us and press into her stomach. “That’s our little girl.”
“You can’t know for sure, Rhys, and I don’t want you disappointed if it’s a boy.”
“I wouldn’t be disappointed, and we’ll know soon.”
“You wanna find out?” she asks shyly.
“Hell, yeah, we’re finding out.” I scoff at even the notion of not finding out. “We need to know if we’re planning for a boy or a girl. There’s names. We have to get the name right. Nothing stupid or weird. Or Southern.”
“Southern?” She laughs and sputters, all fake offended. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Oh, you don’t, Kai Anne?” I give her my “really” face accompanied by my best imitation of her Southern drawl.
“I thought you loved my name.” She can’t even hold the laugh back long enough to look affronted.
“Of course I do.” I kiss her nose. “I just think we can do better.”
I wince when she pinches me.
“Ow!” I snatch her closer and start tickling. She almost flips us both off the piano bench squirming and straining away from my fingers. The more I touch her, the less it’s funny. The less we laugh. I go from searching out the spots that will make her squeal, to searching out her lips. She wraps her arms around my neck and dusts kisses across my cheeks, my nose, my chin. Affection gathers inside me until it brims over. She’s my best friend. My whole world spins on this girl. She’s my axis. I’m not sure how it happened, but she’s the most essential thing in my life, and I’m humbled that she chooses to spend the rest of her life with me. Floored that she’s having my baby.
She finds my hand, linking our fingers and bringing them up between us. “If I ask you a question, will you be honest with me?”
I asked her that earlier, and she answered with fearless honesty. It’s not as easy as it looks when you’re staring down the barrel of that question.
“Yeah.” I nod and run my palm over her silky hair. “Of course.”
“What’s going on with your hand?” She squeezes my right hand for emphasis.
Shit. She would ask me about the one thing I really don’t want to talk about.
“Kai—”
“Tell me.”
I slump against the piano, impervious to the discomfort of the keys digging into my back. I spread one hand over her hip to anchor her to my lap, or maybe to anchor myself.
“It’s not quite right.”
She doesn’t respond right away. When I glance up at her face, I see all the reasons I didn’t want to tell her. The guilt and devastation. I know she’ll blame herself for this, and I don’t want her to do that. Did it feel great slamming my fist into a brick patio? No, but I would do it again and again if it meant protecting her from scum like Malcolm and Drex. I’d cut it off if I had to.
“And that’s why you gave Bristol such a hard time about playing next week in Vegas.”
“Pep, it’s not—”
“How not quite right?” Her eyes land on our hands linked together.
I pull my right hand from hers to curl and uncurl a fist.
“Maybe some loss of dexterity and control, which is huge for the way I play. Maybe the casual listener wouldn’t hear it, but I do.”
“Would I?”
I can’t help but think about how I “hear” our love. The same way I “see” music in colors with my synesthesia, I hear our love like a song. The connection between us hums like a melody through my blood. I’ve never felt so in tune with another person, like there’s a frequency we discovered in the wild for just the two of us.
“Would I, Rhys?” she asks again when I don’t answer right away. “Would I hear the difference?”
“Probably.” I hope she’ll drop it, even though I know that’s futile.
“Let me hear.”
Shit.
“Pep, it’s late.” I rise up a few inches from the bench with Kai still cradled against me. “I have to be up and in the studio all day tomorrow.”
She wiggles out of my arms and plants herself on the bench at the piano.
“Rhys, play.” Her slim hand encircles my wrist, and she tugs me down beside her. “Please.”
My hands are poised over the keys, but I hesitate. Music has been the one thing that made me exceptional. This instrument is what made me exceptional. I play many instruments, but the piano is where it all began. Where I’ve always shone brightest. The scariest thing in my world is mediocrity.
“What should I play?” I finally ask, sliding my eyes to the curves and lines of her profile.
“Play something I’ve heard before to see if I hear . . . the difference.” Her eyes search mine in the barely lit inches separating us. “Play my song.”
Despite the heaviness of my heart and the soreness of my hand, a gravelly chuckle scrapes in my throat.
“Which one? They’re all yours lately.”
She laughs and lowers her lashes like the truth makes her shy. Nothing inspires me more than Kai. Every song on my next album somehow ties to her, to our life together. To our past. To our future.
“‘My Soul to Keep.’” She drops her rumpled head to my shoulder.
“I’ll play if you sing it with me.”
She tenses beside me, telegraphing her typical reluctance to sing in front of me before she nods against my shoulder.
From the first notes, I hear the deficit. When I was young, I didn’t truly appreciate my gift. It came so easily at first I thought it was magic until I started instruction, started polishing a gift that was very much in the rough. And after all those years, all that was dazzling, at least to my ears, feels reduced to a mere glimmer. I didn’t realize how completely this defined me until it was threatened.
No one but me has heard the difference. My fingers falter because I can’t stand for anyone to hear, to know that I may have lost something I foolishly took for granted. The ease of perfection. I don’t want Kai to hear. As soon as I stop, she presses my fingers back to the keys, narrowing her eyes at me.
“You said you’d play if I sang with you.” She lifts one dark brow. “We’re just coming to the first verse. Why’d you stop?”
“Do you hear the difference?” I ask softly, shifting my eyes to my hands hovering over the keys. My right hand looks the same, but something hasn’t healed that the doctors assured me should have by now.
“Maybe.” She shrugs her slim shoulders. “You’ve barely played anything. Are we gonna sing or what?”
“Pep.” I drop my hands to my lap.
“Rhyson.” She covers them with hers, leaning forward and around so I’m forced to look at her. “You said you wanted to be known, but you won’t even play a song you wrote for me? What if it were me? What if I was the one keeping something this important from you?”
She’s right. I remember what that felt like. When I discovered she’d cut me out of the sex tape fiasco, I felt betrayed. Yes, because she lied, but also because she didn’t trust me to be able to handle anything and not walk away.
Without acknowledging that she’s made her point, I start from the top with the few measures of instrumentation before the words come in. I begin, and she joins in.
I was lost before you found me, or maybe I found you
Maybe it was fate or kismet, or something much more true
It could have been an answered prayer, a sacred certainty
All I know is what we have now. I’ve got no plans to leave
Not an ocean, not forever
Nothing wide or deep
Will ever end this love between us
My soul is yours to keep
The arrangement requires her voice to vault from sweet, husky alto to a soprano that soars, all the while weaving in and out, our voices dancing then sparring. Her harmony, companion to my anchoring melody. An unquiet silence follows the final note. Though I’m done playing, though we’ve stopped singing, the sounds left an impression in the air around us. My ears won’t let go, clinging to the memory of our voices together. I wonder if Kai still hears it too.
“So . . .” I clear my throat. “Did you notice any difference?”
“Yes, I was much more relaxed than the last time we sang together,” she says with a straight face. “I’m getting better.”
“Pep, come on.” Her words coax a grin out of me even as I wait for the verdict.
“It’s not that bad, Rhys.”
“Not that bad?” I gape at her. “I was ‘not that bad’ when I was three years old. Is anything as mediocre as ‘not that bad’?”
I shove my fingers into my hair. Damn. It’s even worse than I thought.
“You didn’t let me finish, prima donna.” She traps my hands between hers. “You sound magnificent like you always do, but I know what you mean. I hear what you’re saying. It’s subtle, but I spent too many nights on my bed in Glory Falls listening to your album not to detect even the smallest change.”
“So you do hear it?” I knew I wasn’t imagining it, but to hear her say it sinks my heart a little more.
“Like I said, it’s subtle. I don’t think most people would notice. And it probably is just dexterity. Hopefully something more therapy can address. Maybe see the doctor before we leave for Vegas?”
“Can’t.” I shake my head and lace our fingers together. “He’s in Poland for the next two weeks.”
“Who goes to Poland?” Kai grimaces, I have to laugh at her expression.
“I hear Poland’s a perfectly beautiful place.”
“I’ve never been. You can take me some day.” She allows a bit of a smile on her lips. “We’ll go see him when he gets back from Poland.”
“We?” I tilt my head down to search her eyes.
“Yes, we. I honestly think it’s something that can easily be fixed.” Kai climbs onto my lap to rest her forehead against mine and hang her arms over my shoulders. “But I’m still trying not to feel guilty about this, Rhys.”
“Baby, no.” She’s so petite my two hands almost span her entire back. “Don’t do that. Don’t think that. That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you.”
“I know, but . . .” She swallows and squeezes her eyes closed. “If I hadn’t . . . God, that one night has caused us so many problems.”
That one night with Drex has caused us a lot of problems—a lot of pain—but I don’t care as long as I get to spend the rest of my life with this girl. She’s worth anything.
“So can I come with you to the doctor?” Her breath whispers over my lips.
“Yeah. You know why?” I smile against her mouth. “Because everything is easier with you.”
“Easy?” She teases me with her eyes, slipping her hand between us to wrap around my ever-hardening dick. “This doesn’t feel easy. It feels pretty hard to me.”
She grinds into me, a slow, deep move that marries her heat to my hardness. I stifle a groan, and my cock strains against my sleep pants. I was really trying to be good tonight. My hands smooth down her back, edge into her panties to stroke over her ass.
“What’d Dr. Allister say about . . .” I open my mouth over the silkiness of her throat, tonguing the hollow at the base.
“About what?” Her words melt into a moan as I twist a nipple between my fingers. I slide my mouth up to her ear, sucking on her earlobe.
“About fucking,” I drop the word in her ear, absorbing the shudder of her slim body against me. I bend to bite her nipple through her shirt.
“We’re good,” she gasps. “We’re fine. I mean, we can.”
Her hands plunge into my pants, and she drags her finger deep between the cheeks of my ass.
It should not feel that good, but damn it really does.
“Let me eat your pussy,” I whisper to her hotly, my mouth watering.
“Let me suck your dick,” she whispers back, her eyes teasing and taunting and promising.
“Okay.” I slump my back against the piano and let her go. “You twisted my arm.”
She slides off the bench and between my knees. I lift my hips just enough for her to shimmy the pants down over my thighs and around my ankles. Her mouth is like a wet furnace around me, scorching the sensitive head. She sips at the drops leaking from the tip. Her moans reverberate around my cock as her hands work my balls. There’s no finesse. No technique. No checking to see if she’s pleasing me. Just her own raw hunger. I recognize it because that’s what I feel every time I taste her. She’s back and forth. Up and down. Feasting on me, lips stung and red, stretched around me. Eyes closed tightly and brows pinched together like she can’t suck it hard enough, fast enough. Her tilted eyes open and peer up at me like a little cat lapping the cream.
Did I say I had power over her?
She has all of it and she knows it. Her hands splay over my thighs, pushing and spreading me wider as she sinks deeper, her head bobbing slow and then fast. Setting her own pace, she exercises supremacy over me as I dissolve from the inside. Fisting her hair, I send my cock deeper until the tip slips into the tight black hole of her throat. I can tell it’s almost too much. A tear slides from the corner of her eye, and a mixture of the juices from her mouth and my dick saturates the corners of her lips. It’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen. My balls tighten in warning.
“Babe,” I gasp and pull out. “I don’t want to come in your mouth.”
“Whatever you want.” Her eyes, wide and willing, tell me she means it. “You know that.”
I’ve been storing this fantasy in the back of my head ever since I heard she’s pregnant. Thinking about the first time I’m inside her knowing she’s carrying my baby. I slide to the floor beside her, pressing her back into the thick pile rug. I slowly ease up the t-shirt, revealing first a pair of the panties I bought her. I trace the wet spot her pussy leaked through the shell pink silk.
“Sucking me off turns you on?”
I know it does. She’s told me it does, but I love seeing the evidence for myself. She just nods and opens her legs wider like the gate to a city eager to be conquered. She has these subtle ways of directing me. I rub circles over the sensitive skin inside her thighs, and then suckle the soft spots behind her knees. She is my delicacy. My sweet, fragile treat. By the time I reach the little pink panties, she’s twisting and writhing. I lay my lips against the wet circle left by her arousal and nudge her panties aside with my nose. I draw in the sweet muskiness of her scent.
“God, Pep,” I groan. “Even your smell is addictive.”
“Rhyson, baby.” A subtle roll of her hips brushes my lips against her wetness. “Please.”
I ease up past the waistband of her panties and have to stop at her stomach. I kiss the taut skin of her waist reverently, dipping my tongue into the shallow well of her bellybutton. I flick a glance up to find her eyes soft on me.
“We’re having a baby,” she whispers, working her fingers into my hair.
I know she’s disappointed that we’ll have to adjust her debut release schedule. I have no doubt she’s conflicted about it, but right now, all I see is joy reflected back to me.
“Thank you, Kai.” My voice is husky with passion and gratitude.
“If you really want to thank me . . .” Mischief and desire shade her dark eyes.
I grin and knead one breast under the t-shirt while slipping two fingers inside of her. Oh, my God. She’s soaking wet and tight. With my whole hand, I massage the juices all over her pussy and then trail my finger down to the puckered entrance between her cheeks. She goes completely still. I do it again, rubbing her wetness over that tightly rimmed mystery.
“Has anyone ever had this, Pep?” If she says yes I’ll probably lose my shit.
“No,” she whispers, her eyes holding mine in the moonlight.
I press my thumb against this last frontier.
“When can I have it?”
She gulps, but her eyes never leave me.
“I’m yours. You know that.”
That is so the right damn answer. Not tonight, though. The first time we do that, I’ll take my time making sure she’s ready. If I want her to do anal more than once, I better get it right the first time. And I already know if I get in there, once won’t be enough.
My thumb shifts back to her clit, circling and pressing and pinching, all the while rolling and kneading her breast. Her eyelids fall. She slaps a palm over her forehead and bites her lip, trapping a moan in her mouth. Her orgasm quakes through her, and her thighs tremble. I want that. To feel her shaking and tightening around me. I press her knees back as far as they can go until she’s wide open, the thick pink lips a tempting exhibition between her legs.
“You’re sure this is okay?” Even though the doctor said it was fine, I find myself worrying about the baby because I already know how hard I’m going to fuck her. “I can try to be gentle.”
“You better not be.”
Her breathy answer snaps my control. I anchor her heels around my waist and push inside. She’s so small, so tight, but she takes it all every time. The only thing better than that first thrust is the second and then the third. And, oh God, that fourth one. I pull her legs over my shoulders and insinuate myself deeper. Her body obliges every swollen inch of me. I’m fucking her like an animal in blind heat. We moan in unison, surrendering to the erotic toil of our bodies.
“Pep, this is . . .” The words get lost in the hurricane churning between us.
“Yeah, it is.” She arches her back off the floor, and her eyes roll back. “Baby, I’m coming again.”
I peel the t-shirt over her head, catching the sleeves at her elbows and trapping her arms over her head. Her breasts, small and perfect with those raspberry nipples, the subtly muscled stomach, the elegant rib cage bearing the scripted prayer. My eyes drop to where we’re joined. I watch myself come out just a little, coated with her juices. Seeing that triggers some atavism in me, some ancient instinct to claim. I thought this first time with the baby would be poignant, but there’s a savage edge to it. My eyes flicker from the golden canvas of her body to her eyes. She knows me so well.
“Whatever you want, Rhyson,” she encourages. “You can have. You can do.”
That unquestioning acquiescence is all it takes. I jerk out of her body and roll my hand up and down my dick, almost collapsing from how good it feels. I spend every ounce, spraying her stomach and breasts. Patterning her torso with my love and possession. I run my fingers through the thick, warm cream, working it into her skin. I check her face to see if I’ve totally grossed her out, but her cheeks go a deeper pink. Her breath comes faster, bouncing her breasts with the furious in and out of air. Her eyes drop to my cock in my hand, and she licks her lips, again signaling what she wants from me.
I lean up until I’m right over her mouth and rub the tip of my cock over her lips, painting them wet and shiny. Her little pink tongue darts out to swipe across her lips to taste me. I don’t care that she is wet and sticky with my cum. I throw myself down on the rug beside her and pull her into my chest and tuck her head under my neck.
“Too rough?” I ask quietly into her wild hair.
“Hmmmmmm.” Her tongue darts out to lick across my neck and shoulder. “What do you think?”
I kiss her hair and roll my palm over one strong, smooth leg.
“You love me?”
“I adore you.” She rests her head on my chest, her eyelids drooping over her sated gaze. “You know that.”
“Good. Because you’re stuck with me for life.”
“For life isn’t long enough.” She snuggles closer, her voice fading with sleep. “Promise me forever.”