“We’ll see if Skylar wakes you up. I’m not going to wake you up to cook if you’re up with a baby all night long.”
“You’re wounded. Let me take care of you, dammit,” she says, playfully stern, before pecking me on the lips.
“Wounded, my ass.” I let my hand slide down so I can grope her ass. “Go to sleep.”
“What will you do to me if I don’t?” she teases.
I can’t help grinning, shaking my head at her as I
close my eyes. “Insatiable.”
“Your fault. You teased me forever.”
“I did not tease you forever, I teased you very briefly. I just teased you hard.”
“So hard. Fifty years into our marriage I’m still going to be convinced I have to earn dick privileges.”
Grinning, I tell her, “Sounds good to me.”
She swats me in the stomach, then curls closer. “Good night, Sin.”
“Good night, Laurel.”
51
Laurel
Skylar woke me up twice during the night. Both times, Sin woke up, too. Both times, he laid there watching while I fed and soothed her. I apologized that she woke him up, but he didn’t seem to mind. I imagine it must be weird, maybe even a little haunting, witnessing something like this again. Surely he saw it plenty when Ellie was the baby. He clearly adored Ellie, whether she was his or not. It breaks my heart for him, but it also reassures me that my baby will never be less loved for not being biologically his.
When Skylar wakes me up the following morning, Sin is already gone. It’s later than I thought it would be, and Skylar has a fresh diaper, so Sin must have changed her before he left. God, he’s great. I feed Skylar a bottle and then we laze in bed for a little while longer. She’s only a few months old, so she can’t do much anyway. I rub her belly, tickle her toes, count her gummy little grins, and snuggle her. She doesn’t flip her shit on me at all, so Sin must be right, she must have smelled my fear the first time.
There are no toys here, except for the mirror one in the diaper bag, but I remember that I bought a board book the day Rafe took me to the bookstore, so I dig it out and read it to her.
After I read her a story, I snuggle her against my chest facing forward and pose both of us peeking over the book, snap a selfie, and send it to Sin.
“You’re lucky there’s a baby in you already,” he informs me. “If not, I’d put one in you tonight.”
I send him a winking emoji. “Promises, promises.”
“Keep it up, we’ll have six,” he tells me.
I laugh. “Be kind to my vagina!”
“Oh, I’ll be kind to it all right.”
Even though Sin would kill me, and I’m pretty sure I convinced her not to immediately board a plane to Vegas last night, I take a screen shot and attach it in a message to Carly. “See why I want to marry him?”
“OMG, where did you get that adorable baby?” she demands.
“One of Rafe’s cousins. Babysitting,” I say, for simplicity’s sake. I’m trying to warm her to Sin, and while my sister is no goody two shoes, I’m not positive telling her my fiancé technically orphaned this child yesterday is a great way to accomplish that.
Much the same as we avoided talking about Rafe when I was trying to make it work with him, Carly avoids talking about Sin. It makes me nervous, but I tell myself she will get over it. I don’t know if she’ll love Sin—that may have been a bit of an oversell—but once she sees how happy he makes me, I know she’ll see the light. Once she sees the way he looks at me like I’m the only woman in the world, she’ll lose her skepticism. She just hasn’t seen us together yet, that’s all. I called her up and told her I was marrying someone she has never met, and she understandably freaked out. I get it. A month ago, I would have probably had the same reaction, because I had never experienced anything like that before. I don’t think Carly has, either. She and Vince didn’t fall hard and fast the way Sin and I did, their relationship is completely different. Sin and I consume each other. Carly always stays in control.
I wonder if that’s okay. I wonder if she ever gets to feel the way I feel. Knowing she and Vince are happy together, I never really put much energy into dissecting their dynamic, but now I sort of wish my sister understood the depths of my feelings. Am I crazy?
My mind drifts to Mia. I’ve seen the way she and Mateo look at each other, and even though I should probably let Rafe be the one to tell her since she is more his family than mine, right now I need more than my sister’s opinion. Maybe I have lost my mind. Maybe even Mia will tell me that.
So I text her, “I need to tell you something.”