Page 306 of What We Brave
That knot breaks loose in my chest. Not the terror. Something underneath it. Something warm that I've been sitting on since the two pink lines appeared.
I reach up and wrap my hand around Laine's wrist. Pull her forward until her forehead presses against mine.
"I don't know how to do this," I say. And it's the truest thing I've ever said. I know how to take broken things and make them whole. I know how to sand and plane and joint and finish. I don't know how to build something from nothing. Something brand new. Something that's half her and half one of us and completely, terrifyingly alive.
"Neither do I," she says.
"I took a babysitting course in eighth grade," Reid offers. "So I'm basically the most qualified person here."
Laine laughs. Wet, broken, beautiful.
She sits down on the floor between us. Her back against my chest. Her legs tangled with Reid's. My arms around her waist, hands flat against her stomach.
Reid leans his head against her shoulder. His hand comes down on top of mine.
We sit there. Three people on a bathroom floor with a pee stick on the counter and the whole world rearranging itself around us.
"I'll build a crib," I say. My voice is rough. Thick. "I'll build the best damn crib in the world."
Laine's hand covers mine. Presses it harder against her stomach.
56
REID
7 Years Later
Laine's thighs are shaking around my hips and I'm trying to make this last.
It's been three-fucking-weeks of sick kids passing a stomach bug between them like a relay baton. Three weeks of middle-of-the-night sheet changes and pedialyte runs and sleeping in shifts. Then falling into bed too exhausted to do anything but pass out.
But the kids are healthy. The kids slept through the night. And Blake woke us up at six with coffee and a look that saidI locked the door.
Now Laine's stretched out between us, her head in Blake's lap while he plays with her hair, my hand tracing lazy circles on her stomach. Morning light through the curtains. The house quiet for once.
"I missed this," she murmurs.
"Which part?" Blake's voice is low. Intimate. "The sleeping in, or...?"
"All of it." She arches into my touch as my hand drifts lower. "The quiet. The touching. You two looking at me like that."
"Like what?" I ask.
"Like you're starving."
"Three weeks, sweetheart." Blake's hand moves from her hair to her jaw, tilting her face up toward him. "We're not starving. We're dying."
Blake talking during sex used to be rare. Like he thought he didn't deserve to ask for things. Now he makes demands and it's hot as hell. But like in a platonic way. For me. Because, yeah, still no sword-crossing happening here.
I lean down and kiss her stomach. Then lower. She sighs.
"We could fix the starving problem," I murmur against her skin.
"That's the plan."
"No, I mean—" I kiss her hip bone. "Permanently. Another baby."
Blake laughs softly. "Dumb fucking segway."
