I needed to decide what was best for the baby, and suddenly all this relationship bullshit of whether I was going to wait for him or not seemed so unimportant. I never expected pregnancy to put so much in perspective. At this point, I never wanted to see him again. His bedroom no longer stirred me on the inside, it just made me sad I had no one to talk to because I used to tell him everything in these four walls. Maybe I’d missed him so much in the beginning because I was lonely. And then it occurred to me…
You never once told him you loved him.
I had always had an issue with the word love. While he’d expressed he’d fallen in love with me last year, I had tried and convinced myself I’d felt the same way. But I could never bring myself to say it. Now I was really glad for it.
Cutting my thoughts short, I heard Heath’s door open and his heavy footsteps down the hallway. It was Saturday and he was still getting up at six in the morning. He never slept in. I heard him clear his throat and rummage around in the kitchen, probably starting up the coffee maker.
I wasn’t usually a morning person. I’d been sleeping in until noon some days because the pregnancy had exhausted me. But this morning in particular I felt pretty good. I jumped out of bed and joined him in the kitchen. I was taken aback at first when I saw him in nothing but his boxers. He was shirtless, his upper body indented with lines from his bed sheets. I admired his body for a moment, taking in the broad shoulders and narrow hips. He worked out at home a lot. I’d noticed some weights stacked to the side of his room once when I was waiting for him to get ready to take me to the shops. Almost every night, even when he came home sore and tired beyond belief, I’d hear him grunting up a storm next door, lifting and counting the reps as he went. He was a machine.
And he looked absolutely divine.
“Morning,” I said with a timid smile.
He turned around, surprised by my company. “What’re you doing up, sleepyhead?”
“I’ve been up for a while.”
“Morning sickness again?”
“Yeah.”
He frowned. “Shit. Nothing we can do about that?”
I’d practically stolen his laptop the last week or so, looking up everything that had to do with pregnancy. I even had an update emailed to me every week to show my peanut’s progression.
“They say crackers help,” I said.
“We don’t have crackers?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you put that on the shopping list?”
“Forgot, I guess?”
He shook his head as if I’d committed an atrocious crime and turned to the fridge. On it he’d stuck a piece of paper and pen up a while back, telling me that it was the shopping list and to write down anything I needed. He took the pen off and wrote down crackers in big bold letters before shooting me another glare, muttering, “I’m going to get you a big fat fucking bag of crackers and you’re going to sit your fat ass down on that couch and eat a pound a day. Got it?”
I laughed at his stern words and pulled out a bowl from the cupboard. “Yes, master, but you can’t be telling me I’m fat.”
“Why?”
Pouring cereal into my bowl, I responded, “Because you just don’t go around telling pregnant people they’re fat! You have to be a gentleman, or endure a well-deserved kick in the balls.”
Living with Heath alone had done well to our friendship. Just two weeks in and we were joking it up. The weird awkward tension from before had lessened, although I did find myself still feeling it at times.
“I think if anyone calls you fat they’re going to need a head examination,” he replied, chuckling.
I scowled at him over my shoulder. “I’ll have you know I’m getting a bump!”
“On the head maybe?”
I gasped and he laughed. “No, I swear I am. I was feeling it in bed earlier.”
“You were feeling yourself earlier? That’s pretty explicit info, Allie. If you’re so comfortable telling me that, maybe invite me in next time?”
I laughed, not realizing for a moment how flirtatious that really was. “That’s not what I meant!”
“Oh, right. You were feeling a non-existent bump. Now I would rather the explicit stuff.”
“It’s there. I’m not delusional.”
He raised a brow and looked down at my stomach. I was wearing another one of Ryker’s large shirts and probably looked like I was swimming in it.
“I don’t see shit,” he said.
“Well, it’s kind of hard to when I have this huge thing on.”
He smiled, those dimples like little craters in his face. I couldn’t handle looking at him when he smiled. It made me flush. So I kept my eyes drawn to the ground and playfully put a hand to my lower belly. “I swear, Heath, I’m getting a bump. It’s really hard and solid.”
When I felt his presence nearing me, I went to step back but realized I was already against the counter.
“Show me,” he said with interest.
Show him? Bloody hell. Why did that feel weird to do? It technically wasn’t, though. I mean, I’d seen pregnant women showing people their bumps all the time. In fact, some people took it upon themselves to touch them without even asking for permission.
This was nothing, I told myself. Absolutely nothing.
Still unable to look up at his tall frame, I lifted my shirt up and showed him my lower stomach. I had to pull down my pyjama bottoms a tad. I waited for him to react. To say something. But he was quiet, and it made me suddenly conscious.
“See it?” I asked, trying to sound playful.
“No,” he answered, disappointed. “I really think that bump is on your head, Al.”
Al.
Ugh. I wanted to set that nickname on fire.
Annoyed, I grabbed his hand – surprised for a second by how ridiculously hot it was – and placed it on my lower stomach. I hadn’t realized what I’d done until his palm was flat against my skin. If I thought the silence before was heavy, I had another thing coming. This one dragged on for an excruciating time. I finally willed myself to peek up at him and met his intense gaze. Now that we were locking eyes, I couldn’t just look away. I felt drawn to him.
“Feel it?” I asked a little breathlessly, but I could hardly hear the sound of my voice when my heartbeats had suddenly spiked and were pounding in my ears.