He didn’t pull away. He shifted to his side and bundled her into his chest, their bodies still locked together, the aftershocks still too staggering to fight.
“Fillette,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Christ.”
She rested her cheek against his heart, its familiar, reassuring gallop.
That was how Maggie found them five seconds later as the back door opened.
Ava heard the key in the lock, had time to say, “Oh, shit,” and then her mother was standing over them.
“Oh,” Maggie said. She didn’t sound surprised or scandalized. She turned her back to them, busying herself with closing the door and setting her grocery bags on the counter.
Ava hated rolling away from Mercy, but she did, scrambling for her jeans and sweater.
“Mercy, I take it you’re feeling better,” Maggie said, her back still turned to them.
He sat up and leaned back against the legs of a kitchen chair, adjusting his shirt and sweatpants. He stretched his legs out before him, wincing a little as the left protested. “Yes, ma’am. A lot better.” He sent Ava a wink as she clasped her bra and shoved her arms into her sweater.
“Good,” Maggie said. With perfect timing, she turned back just as they were both decent. She propped one hand on her hip and fixed Ava with a motherly look. “Please tell me you at least told him that you’re pregnant.”
Ava gaped at her. “How did you…?”
“Oh please. I’m a mother. I know these things.” She turned to Mercy, still sitting on the floor. “She told you?”
It was the first time he’d really grinned – impish twinkle, bright flash of teeth – in eight weeks. “Yeah. She did.”
Maggie glanced between the two of them a moment, expression softening. “Congratulations.”
**
“Are you happy?” he asked that night, in the enfolding dark of her – their – bedroom.
Ava sat against the headboard; Mercy lay on his side, his head at her hip, drawing aimless patterns across her bare stomach with his fingertips. His head shifted a little, so he could see some scrap of her face in the dark, the pillow rustling. Incoming light from the streetlamp painted him in shadows and triangles of orange. His face looked young, and wondrous, and hopeful.
“About the baby?” She was realizing he would always seek her reassurance on that front. His great worry was that she’d wake one morning thinking she was too good for him, and resent him. Silly man. “I’m elated,” she assured, soothingly, sifting her fingers through his loose hair, tracing the shape of his skull, the shell of his ear. “Our second chance,” she whispered.
His hand smoothed flat across her abdomen. From wrist to middle fingertip, it fit perfectly across the span between her hipbones.
“If it’s a boy,” Ava said, “I want to name him Remy, after your dad.”
She saw his lashes flicker. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I think that’d be nice, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“We’re going to be okay,” she assured, finger-combing his hair. “I know it.”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a contented sigh, his breath tickling across her skin. “Do you know how much I love you? I mean, do you really know?”
She felt the thickness in her throat, the pricking in her eyes. “Yes. I know.”
“I’m going to do the very best I can for you. Both of you.” He wiggled his fingers on her stomach. “However many of us there end up being. It may not be worth a damn, but I’m going to do it.”
“I know that, too.”
He shifted, rolling onto his stomach, settling between her legs. The light carved deep shadows along the high wings of his shoulder blades, the ridge of his spine down his too-thin back. She felt his breath against her, warm and damp. And she gasped at the first touch of his lips, and then his tongue.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, eyes half-closing, as she watched the shadows move across his back and endured the exquisite torture of his mouth between her legs.
