His parents were very heavily involved in our lives because of the girls, and now our other two. But still, those girls were ours. They were mine. I didn’t want to give them up when I didn’t have to.
Meaning, we had a whole lot of chaos in our house. And soon, I would be driving a van if he wasn’t careful.
“I don’t want to drive a van,” I pleaded.
I’d done the van thing. Felt supremely uncool in it and trade it in within a month.
We were in a Suburban right now. They didn’t make anything bigger than a Suburban with the seat capacity that I needed. And, just sayin’, but the back seat was a joke. It said it seated three, but with both big girls in the back, that middle seat was near nonexistent.
So in reality, it only seated four comfortably. Six being the number of people that I had in my vehicle when Will was in it with me.
Adding one more would…
But then he did that swirl thing with his lips against my neck, making me temporarily forget how much I hated anything that had to do with thinking about a fifth child.
“Just one more, baby girl,” he pleaded. “Please.”
“No, thank you, Daddy,” I teased, taking to calling him ‘Daddy’ since that was what the kids called him. “I like our family just the way it is.”
Especially since we had to be super, duper careful.
The only thing that worked on me birth control–wise was an implant. An implant that I did not have yet because my uterus hated me. In the beginning, I’d tried other birth control devices besides condoms, since those always seemed to not happen when we were in the throes of passion. The pills caused me to ache deep in my bones—a side effect that we both hated equally since it made me want to have sex at the amount of a negative five.
The NuvaRing, apparently, was one of those devices that worked well… if I could keep the sucker in. But it fell out more than it stayed in, and that was what happened when I found out that I was pregnant for a second time.
Apparently, I hadn’t had my NuvaRing in in a while—three weeks a while—meaning that I got pregnant without my knowledge.
Next step was an actual implant. Something in which I hadn’t been able to get because each time I got an implant, my arm got infected. And when we tried to do the IUD, my uterus cramped so bad for days that my doctor decided to take it out and try again in a month.
A month that ended next week.
Meaning, I wasn’t protected, and if I said yes to what he was asking, I’d end up pregnant since I didn’t have a goalie protecting the end zone.
There was no doubt in my mind.
“I’ll give you anything,” he teased. “Anything.”
“Anything?” I perked up. “What’s anything?”
“That new deck you wanted? It’s built,” he promised.
I licked my lips. “A new deck? You know how big of a deck I want.”
“I’ll give you the biggest deck I can manage,” he rumbled. “A deck meant for Home and Garden Magazine.”
“I like really big decks, though, Will. I don’t want you teasing me,” I whined.
Hell, this wasn’t about a deck.
All I needed was to hear how serious he was.
And him offering to build me a deck meant he was really serious. Mostly because the only ‘free’ time that Will had was on the weekends. Weekends were when he wasn’t working, and wouldn’t be working until Monday, unless there was a murder in our quiet city.
Something that hadn’t happened all that often since Scott was caught.
Scott, who was discovered to be behind two other murders before he’d tried to kill me.
We’d learned this from Scott’s psychiatrist. Something that Brianna had known and had left her husband for. Yet hadn’t felt the need to report.
Still, to this day six years later, I couldn’t believe that Brianna had hidden a killer. I couldn’t believe that she’d known that he was out killing people he didn’t like while she was out solving murders. Hiding the fact that she was harboring a crazy motherfucker at home.
Six years of lies, craziness, and cover-ups. Six years of dating other men to hide her crazy one at home who liked to watch her fuck other men that he hated, then killing them.
Six years of…
“What about if I offer to never make you take Spencer to another baseball practice?” he teased.
“Now you’re playing hardball,” I accused. “Will. Another baby means another nine months of my crazy, hormonal self.”
He started to run his hand up the length of my thigh, curving it under the loose fabric of my shorts until it came to a stop at the crease of my hip.
“Please,” he begged. “Just one more.”
I sighed and spread my legs wide, allowing him to fall between them where he was meant to be.