CHAPTER 16:
JUNIPER
Twins. Twins. Twins.
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. How? Why? God, what must Ben be thinking now? I wasn’t even paying attention to the nurse anymore. I heard the word ‘twins’ and nothing else mattered. Tears were silently rolling down my cheeks. I kept brushing them away, playing them off as happy tears, but in actuality they were ‘I’m-freaking-the-fuck-out’ tears. I’d been preparing myself for one baby, not two.
Finally the ultrasound was over. The doctor came in one more time to talk about everything. I pulled myself together long enough to get through the rest of the appointment.
“So, I’m going to want to see you every two weeks. You’re healthy and your babies are healthy, but since you’re carrying twins we consider the pregnancy ‘high-risk’ and will want to take extra precautions. We want you in here every two weeks until you’re in your third trimester, and then I’ll want to see you weekly.”
Blah. Blah. Blah. Really, I was just counting down the seconds until I could get the fuck out of this room. The doctor finally finished talking by asking, “Any questions?”
“No,” I said politely. “Not really.”
“Yes,” Ben jumped in to say. Then he proceeded to ask a million and one questions. He wanted to know about my morning sickness and if that was normal, about the foods I should be eating, about how much exercise was safe, about which pre-natal pills I should take, about pre-term birth, etc. All his rapid-fire questions were both surprising, and frankly, overwhelming.
When his questions finally ceased and we could leave, I rushed out of there like someone had lit my ass on fire. “Juniper, slow down,” he tried to tell me, but I ignored him and ran. By the time I hit open air and sunlight, tears were cascading down my face. I started hurrying down the sidewalk, rushing in no particular direction. I only needed to get away.
Ben wasn’t far behind me. He caught my arm. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” I cried, still walking.
“Yes, I do,” he said softly.
“No, you don’t. I don’t even know what you’re still doing here. Because you can go.” My feet slowed. We’d run out of sidewalk and there was nowhere left to go but straight into the middle of the street. “You can run for the hills, and I won’t even blame you. You said it yourself, that you weren’t even sure about us. Me having twins just makes this—” I gestured between us. “—that much more impossible.” I inhaled a few times, barely able to meet his eyes, in full blown panic mode now. “Don't worry about me. I'll figure all of this out on my own.”
“I don't want you to figure it out on your own.” Ben's intense blue eyes stared down at me, strain on his face. “I want to figure it out together.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. But I can’t really fight what I’m feeling for you.”
What? He couldn’t fight what he was feeling for me! I swallowed, the rest of the world ceased to exist. The traffic on the street, the baking humidity, the perspiration trickling down my spine—all of it suddenly faded into the background. Even the twins, for a small moment, disappeared from my mind.
“There’s stuff you still don’t know about me,” he went on. “And I’m sure likewise with you. But I want to try this. Us. I think it deserves a chance. Don’t you?” He spoke so confidently, like nothing else mattered.
“I’m going to be a whale,” I reminded him. “Seriously. Huge.” Hell, my stomach already seemed to be growing by the second. With twins, I'd be twice as big.
“I don’t care.”
I huffed. “I’m going to get even more moody and hormonal than I am now.”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
Sighing, I tried another angle. “I’m way too old for you.”
“Okay.” He laughed. “Now you’re being ridiculous. Five years isn’t that big of a difference. There really isn't anything you can say that's going to change my mind.”
There was one more obvious thing. I had to put it out there because it was the most important thing of all. “They're not you're babies. And everyone is always going to know that.” I felt my cheeks grow hot as I said it. I almost felt guilty saying it. As if the reminder was cruel. Because Ben had been here for me from the start. Quinton didn't even know they existed. In some ways, Ben was already more of a father to the twins than Quinton.
“Does that matter to you?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Then I don't care what anyone else thinks. I don't care that they're not mine.”
I felt more hot tears slip down my face. I'd run out of arguments and reasons why we shouldn't be together. Not gonna lie, having twins still freaked me out, but as Ben waited on me to answer his original question, it didn't seem quite as scary. The love that I’d already started to feel for him multiplied and expanded.
“Okay,” I told him, yielding.
“Okay?” The look on face, like pure happiness, was something I’d remember for the rest of my life. “Did you just agree to be my girlfriend?” he asked, his mood instantly becoming more playful.
“Yes.”
With the pads of his thumbs he brushed the tears off my face. Then he pulled me in against his chest for a hug. He felt warm and safe, his smell and his touch becoming this comfortable, familiar thing. Could Ben be the one? A dad for my kids? A man to spend my life with? These questions suddenly popped into my head. These questions were things I’d never even considered for myself. Even on the day Quinton proposed I hadn’t consider them—which, in itself, should have been a red flag. But I couldn’t help these questions from formulating in my mind. And now that they were up there, they were stuck there.
“I don't want you living with Rhett,” Ben said against my shoulder.
I groaned, pulling out of his arms. What the hell. We were back to his issues with Rhett again. I still didn't understand. “Seriously.” I glared up at him.
“I have two more weeks until my probation period is over and then I'm free. I don't know where I'm going to live, but it won’t be with my parents. I want to live with you.”
My heart thumped. My mouth went a little dry. I could barely contain the excitement I felt.
“We could get an apartment. We could rent month-to-month rather than signing a lease if you’d like. You know, test out how it goes, see if living together works. I’m tired of learning everything about you through Rhett. I’m tired of him taking care of you. It has been beyond decent of Rhett to do everything he's done so far, but I want to be the one there for you. What do you say?”
I said the only word that would formulate on my lips. “Yes.”
* * *
Over the next two weeks, Ben and I saw each other only in the evenings. He was working all the time, but he'd bring me dinner each night before he had to hurry home in time to make his curfew. Often Rhett was there or we'd be rushed because I had band practice to get to. It seemed there was always something that interrupted or cut our time short. And I didn’t know why, but I'd developed a shyness with Ben. When we were only friends I never felt so breathless and out of words around him. Even when he saw me naked I never felt this way. But I felt it now.
I'd often look at him, my thoughts automatically going to our brief moment of intimacy, which would make my entire body heat up and my cheeks burn. I didn’t know how to break out of the shyness. And today was the day, the day we were finally moving in together. Maybe that was my problem. I was terrified that this wouldn’t work out. And I needed him. My kids needed him. If this didn’t work, what the hell would I do? I didn’t like putting that kind of pressure on something so new.
With his whole body, Ben laid on the air mattress, trying to push all the air out faster. “You’re being quiet again,” he commented, flopping on it repeatedly with his weight. If I wasn’t as anxious as I was, then this would have been hilarious to watch.
“I’m fine. Just ready to go see the place you found.” I had no idea what sort of shape the apartment Ben had rented would be in. All I knew was that there were three bedrooms. He’d told me that if I didn’t want to stay with him in his room then I could stay in the third room.
I still wasn’t sure what I’d be doing tonight. Not that I didn’t want to, I just wasn’t sure what I should do.
Ben finished deflating the mattress. Then he folded it at record speed. Once that was taken care of, he grabbed my trash bags I’d packed with my stuff, and we headed outside for his car.
“Were your parents fine with you moving out so quickly?” I asked.
“They’re just happy I decided to stay in North Carolina.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t known he might leave the state. “Where would you have gone?”
“California. Carrie Stone, the elderly woman I lived with while everyone thought I was dead… she cried when I told her I wasn’t moving out there after all. I had planned to live with her again for a little while until I found a place out there. Maybe once the babies are old enough to travel we can go visit her. She’s the kindest, funniest old lady you’ll ever meet.” Ben loaded my bags in the backseat then came around to open my door for me.
A little dumbstruck, I climbed inside and buckled. I waited as he walked around to his side. He hopped in the driver’s seat.
“You stayed for me,” I whispered. Suddenly his tattoo, the one on his chest of the compass pointing west, made sense. The shy, nervous, ‘I-have-rocks-in-my-stomach’ feeling intensified. I’d disrupted all his plans.
“I stayed for me, too,” he said, his eyes meeting mine briefly before he started the car.
We sat in silence as he drove. Whatever he’d found wasn’t close. It was almost thirty minutes before he finally stopped the car. And it wasn’t in front of an apartment building either. It was a house. It wasn’t beach front, or big, or new construction. But it was a house!
“The owners have had it on the market for over a year. Fair warning,” he commented as we left his car and walked together for the door. “It isn’t great. But it was really the only thing I could afford. That we can afford. It’s unfurnished, which is the worst part. We’ll have to slowly add furniture. Ellie said she and Nathanial have a few old things we can have. We can go by her house tomorrow and see what she has if you’d like.”
“Okay.” I was anxious for him to open the door.
He unlocked the front door and we went inside.
I could see why the place hadn’t sold. It had wall to wall wood paneling, popcorn ceilings, and forest green carpeting in the living room. It was clean though, the kitchen surprising large, and the downstairs bathroom had been updated.
Next Ben took me upstairs to the bedrooms. “I spent all the commission money I’ve made so far on the beds. I figured that was the best place to start. Next month we can buy silverware and plates.” He laughed, making light of everything, but I could see the anxiousness on his own face. He wanted to please me.
I wasn’t just pleased, I was fucking floored. Seriously floored by everything he’d done. In the master there was a queen-sized bed, with new bedding, and I couldn’t even speak to tell him how nice I thought it all was. Then he showed me to the next room. As he pushed open the door, utter shock vibrated through me. There were two identical cribs set up, one pushed against each opposite wall. The sight of the cribs made me want to drop to my knees, overcome with emotion. I exhaled several choppy breaths just trying to wrap my mind around everything.
“There's a twin bed in the third room. I figured I could sleep there and you could sleep in the master. Or...” He trailed off, fidgeting with the car keys that he still held in his hands. “…whatever you want to do,” he finished, eyeing me. “You okay? Did I go too far? I knew I should have let you pick out what kind of cribs we bought. I wanted to surprise you, but I wasn’t sure. Juniper?”
I was on the brink of tears. Yet, my lips were tingling, my skin itching, and my body aching—all of me on edge. It felt like the house was entirely too still, Ben and I so completely alone, and all I could think about was the queen bed a few feet away in the other room. I had the sudden desire to ‘christen’ our new place. To finally cross that last line with him. To show him with actions everything my heart felt.
“We should share the master,” I decided, my voice coming out incredibly hoarse, raw with emotion. “I don’t want you sleeping on the twin. I want you sleeping with me. All of this is wonderful—the house is wonderful. You’re wonderful.” He stood so far from me. So, I said the one word that could sum up everything I was feeling and everything I wanted from him. “Truce.”
Neither of us had called a truce in the past two weeks. And it was way overdue.
“Fuck, yes,” he muttered. The sudden crassness of his words surprised me, but what was more shocking was the way he confidently walked to where I stood, on the opposite side of the room, and he scooped me up in his arms.
“Ben,” I yelped at the sudden motion of being picked up. He must have been a mind reader because he carried me out of the babies’ room and back down the hall. He brought me into our room and carefully set me down on the edge of our bed. Maybe he’d been thinking the exact same thing as I had, about wanting to ‘christen’ the new place. Whatever he was thinking, he was teasing the hell out of me. His lips brushed against my lips, the touch feather-light, slow, and lingering. Then suddenly he yanked my shirt over my head.
“Ben!” I squealed, playfully. I hadn’t expected that.
He answered by kissing me deeply. His fingers worked to unclasp my bra, and he quickly tossed it somewhere across the room. “I’ve been waiting for two weeks to be alone with you. Rhett is the biggest fucking cock-blocker on the planet. He’s always around.”
I laughed, because it was true about Rhett, but I hadn't realized he'd been wanting to get me alone so bad. That shyness I’d been feeling toward him melted away.
He tugged off his own shirt, discarding it, before moving to take off my shorts.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, tenderly kissing the inside of my thigh as he slid my shorts down, “I know which line I can’t cross.” He meant sex. But the thing was, with him, I no longer feared sex. He wouldn’t hurt me the way Quinton had enjoyed hurting me. And my body ached for him, all of him.
When my shorts were gone, he began kissing in an upward path. I gently tugged on his hair, stopping him before he could get carried away planting kisses. Because those kisses were getting dangerously close to where my body had started thumping like mad.
“Ben,” I whispered, debating over my choice of words. “I’m not afraid anymore.”
“Of?”
“Of sex. Quinton was never nice or gentle with me. But I know you wouldn’t be the same. I trust you. I want you.” I bit down on my lip. “I want you inside me. If you’re ready, I’m ready.”