It was hard to believe that in a few months’ time I would have a second little girl to love. I might need to build a bunker if she was as tenacious and outspoken as our firstborn. As soon as Marla read the doctor’s note aloud with the ultrasound photos to match, Celeste and I both swooned. Iris was elated and loudly declared that her baby sister was going to be a dancer just like her. I certainly hope so. Watching Iris dance was my favorite pastime.
“Alright, let’s head on back,” Marla agreed with Iris and Nana. The two servers who volunteered to stay and help immediately stepped forward to start clearing the table as one by one our friends and family left. Everyone stopped to give us one last hug and congratulations on their way out the door, including the recently retired Chief Hillsborough and his wife.
Maggie and Zeke flew in for the occasion and shuffled out after Marla and the kids to help her get them settled at her place for the night. Celeste and I hadn’t had a moment alone in quite some time, so tonight was a real treat.
“So another girl,” my wife gushed as we walked hand in hand out to the car. A soft breeze blew, the temperature quickly dropping now that the sun was going down. Days were starting to get longer. Summer would be here before we knew it and we could go on our annual summer vacation. This year we were going to Greece so that we could enjoy the beaches of the Mediterranean and Celeste could stay off her feet. I didn’t want to force her to walk all day when she would be that far along in her pregnancy, but I still wanted to spoil her with a trip to a new place. I promised Mr. Hendricks I would give her the world and ever since I got her back, I kept that promise.
“What should we name her?” I asked after we pulled out onto the county highway leading back towards our house. Distracting her was my main intention because I knew she was apprehensive about returning and facing the horrible memories of what Desiree had inflicted on her. Hopefully, my surprise worked in my favor.
Her long hair had returned to its natural brown, as wild and untamed as my girl. It danced now across her face with the wind from the open window. Therapy had done wonders with helping Celeste reconnect with the person I always knew her as: a sweetheart with more kindness in her pinky toe than most people had in their entire being. She smiled constantly now, for which I was grateful, and her work at the hospital gave her a sense of purpose that I knew she couldn’t have achieved if we stayed in River’s Run. Everything worked out exactly the way it was supposed to, even when it meant we had to start over in Boston.
“What name would you pick?” asked Celeste, my favorite shy smile tugging at her lips. Her skin glowed in the setting sun, and I had to catch my breath once more at how beautiful she looked.
“Annie Marla Madden,” I answered immediately.
She chuckled in surprise. “That was fast!”
I shrugged, flipping on the blinker to turn onto the dirt road back to the Hendricks family home. “It’s the name I picked out when I first realized I loved you.”
Celeste sat up straighter, peering at me quizzically as if she didn’t believe me.
“Well, okay, ‘Marla’ is something I’d choose now, not back then,” I admitted. “I just always saw you reading classic novels where the women had names like ‘Anne’ and ‘Elizabeth,’ so my thirteen year old brain thought that was what we should name our daughter.”
I could tell she was fighting a smile.
“Annie,” she mused. “I like it.”
I parked the car and went around to Celeste’s door to open it. Phillip had been in charge of the contractors here for the past several months who worked around the clock to restore everything to the original design from when Celeste and I were kids. The exterior had a fresh coat of paint, new shutters, and a new porch railing. Gardeners had returned the yard to its floral glory, the colors muted in the dim twilight. String lights hung from the large tree back to the corner of the porch. A soft glow illuminated the old tire swing Phillip’s team managed to salvage.
Celeste stopped short at the sight of the house, her jaw hanging open. “Is it just me or does this look…” Her voice trailed off and I let the uncertainty hang in the air.
Weaving my fingers through hers, I led her inside through the front door. Candles and white roses were on every surface of the foyer, the living room, and the kitchen beyond. Everything had been restored so that no traces of Desiree or her children remained. I also asked Phillip to incorporate some of the elements of our home in Boston, so there were already large portraits of us and the kids on the walls. The effect was cozy and welcoming. Exactly how I wanted it.
Celeste’s face was priceless. Silent tears streamed down her face while her free hand covered her open mouth. Eyes darting everywhere at once, she tried to drink it all in.
“Wes…” she finally gasped.
“I didn’t want anything here to trigger you,” I explained softly. “This has always been your home, and she never had any right to take it from you. We can gut the place and renovate it completely, if you’d like, but I wanted you to start with it being as close to home as you remembered. I only want you to be happy,” I finished.
In response, Celeste threw herself at me. The salt from her tears tasted bittersweet on my tongue and I groaned. She grabbed both of my hands and placed them on her breasts, already engorged from pregnancy, and shimmied the straps of her dress off her shoulders. It fluttered to the floor in a silky puddle, leaving her hard nipples in the palms of my hands. She didn’t have on a bra or panties.
“Goddamn it, woman, you’re gonna keep getting pregnant if you keep doing this to me,” I wailed, my mouth descending on one of her nipples. My tongue circled around the peak while my other hand reached down between us to find her drenched.
Celeste wasted no time. Within seconds, my belt was undone and my jeans were sliding down my legs. We both almost fell as I stumbled out of my boxer briefs, cock ready to cut steel. She yanked my shirt violently over my head in our frenzy. Hands caressed everywhere; I needed to feel every inch of her skin.
It was rare for us to have time alone like this. Between both kids, Nana, and our jobs, sexy time was often reduced to a scheduled ritual once or twice per week that we had timed down to six minutes tops—the longest amount of time we could ever count on before life got in the way. Right now, getting to really explore her gorgeous body, to lavish her with all the attention I always wanted to give, was my idea of perfection.
I scooped her up, bride-style, and carried her over to the couch, placing her on the arm and then pushing her back to lay against the throw pillows at an incline. Looping both knees over my shoulders, I kneeled between her legs and entered the pearly gates of heaven when I tasted the sweetness waiting for me between her thighs. My tongue speared her, causing her thighs to clamp so tightly on my head that I could no longer hear. Unless she gave me a brain aneurysm, I wasn’t stopping.
I moved my attention to her clit, suckling on it like a mint. Three fingers replaced my tongue, working in and out in a heated frenzy to stretch her walls for me, and her thighs squeezed harder. I lapped at her release when a tiny orgasm rippled through her.
Celeste yanked hard on the roots of my hair, drawing my attention away from her sweet pussy. Once she made eye contact with me, she swung her legs over my head to clamber off the couch altogether, pulling at my shoulders so I would sit down. Instantly, she straddled my lap, sinking onto my erection with a cry worthy of a Viking raider. I let her set her own rhythm, too entranced by the sight of her giant titties bouncing in my face. My mouth settled on one to pucker the skin in wet, languid kisses, leaving hickeys in their wake. The caveman in me roared with delight over marking my territory. Like her last name, wedding ring, and my baby growing inside her wasn’t enough. None of it ever would be.
Her moan went straight to my dick. Taking the other nipple in my mouth, I sucked and nipped, snaking my hand under the bump to rub her clit. It was the equivalent to dropping the atom bomb because an orgasm strong enough for me to feel ripped through her. Pussy walls gripped my cock so tightly that I saw stars as I thrust my hips to pound my release inside her.
Dazed and happy, Celeste slumped against me, both of us a sweaty, spent mess. “I love you so much, Wesley,” she murmured against my neck.
“For my whole life, sugar bee,” I whispered back.
This was the life my father tricked me into believing I didn’t deserve and would never have. I was the lucky bastard who got to grow old with the love of my life by my side. Celeste and I would get to retire to this very home, the house that Mr. Hendricks left for us, so that we could rock out on the old porch swing while our grandchildren and great-grandchildren played in the yard around us. We’d line the walls with more photos of our adventures around the world, reminiscing about all the lives we changed as a nurse and prosecutor.
I wish I could go back and tell my thirteen year old self how remarkable things would be. That all the anger and the hatred would one day go away, letting so much love and joy filter in through the cracks. I would thank Mr. Hendricks all over again for guiding me in the right direction for the kind of husband and father I wanted to be.
For now, I sighed contentedly, nuzzling my wife’s hair and gently rubbing her belly where our little Annie was cooking. This was life as it should be.
The End
