I don’t want to lose the closeness we’ve shared, don’t want to lie in my cold bed at night wanting him, burning for him like those nights when he doesn’t come to me for one reason or another.
I feel guilty about the baby too. Because I’d dreaded the thought of ever getting pregnant with Martin’s child while I was so overjoyed about this one. I didn’t always feel that way. In the beginning, it’s all I wanted, was to have a child with the man I thought I was in love with, the man I’d married and planned to spend the rest of my life with.
That’s before I came to know him, the real him and not the man he’d portrayed himself to be in order to get me into his clutches. It didn’t take me long though to see through the façade. Not once we were married and living together. It would be hard to live with someone for almost a year and not see their true self no matter how well hidden it was.
By the time our first anniversary rolled around, I was already way beyond disgusted with the man I thought had refined manners and a good upbringing but turned out to be little more than a pig. What’s worse, the great love I thought he bore me turned out to be nothing more than his need to have everything someone else wanted.
I’d caught the eye of one of his colleagues, and because I was beautiful enough, smart enough and considered a great catch, he’d put his bid forward approaching me one day before his friend had planned to. That and so much more had soured me towards him and the marriage I was buried in once I learned the truth.
Still, the whole world saw him as my husband, so what must they be thinking about my relationship with his brother? How can I show my inner joy to anyone, including his family, just a few short months after burying him, without seeming crass and heartless?
And now there’s this wedding. I’d put in my last bid effort to get Gavin to see reason, but I knew before going in that he’d nix the idea of a low-key wedding. He seems to have a point to prove, and I’m not going to be the one to tell him that it’s pointless, that I don’t even think about his brother as often as I should.
The only time my ex crosses my mind these days is when I’m giving thanks that he’s no longer in my life. I hate that he’s dead I don’t have it in me to wish death on anyone, but I wake up every morning thankful that he’s no longer a dark cloud hanging over my life.
Epilogue
GAVIN
“I’m pregnant.”
‘Thank fuck; it took you long enough to tell me.” I kissed her nose and twirled her around.
“You knew?”
“I think I knew the second I got you pregnant.” I put her down in the hotel room where we were spending the night before flying out for our honeymoon the next day.
“The question is, why did it take you so long to tell me?” She blushed and played with the buttons on my tux. “Tell me!” I lifted her chin with my finger and looked into her eyes. Those eyes that can never hide anything from me.
It’s almost six months to the day since she moved in with me, and if I’m counting right, she should be about three months along. I’d guessed the night we made love after I put my ring on her finger that it was the night I finally bred her.
It wasn’t doggie style like I’d imagined, but it was just right. I don’t know how or why I felt so certain about that night, but it was in my gut. Afterward, when she didn’t say anything that first month or the second, I started looking for clues on my own.
I’m not sure how she missed it, or how she didn’t think I would notice, like the fact that her breasts were already bigger and were way more sensitive to my touch. Or the way she’d turn green at certain scents that never use to bother her before.
Then, of course, there was the added heat to her pussy. I didn’t bring it up because I figured she either didn’t know or was keeping it for a reason. I didn’t worry about those reasons, not anymore, because I was sure of her feelings for me now.
After she’d opened up to me about what her life was really like with him and I’d shared some of my childhood horror stories with her, we’d formed a kind of bond, like survivors of the same train wreck.
I saw it in the way she looks at me, the way she flies into my arms when I walk through the door like she hadn’t seen me for weeks instead of just a few hours. And most of all, I see her new feelings for me in the way she clings to me when we make love. Or the way she bosses me around when we fuck. She does have her own ideas about what she likes.