“You think I’m going to let you leave this couch once you’re round and heavy with my kid?” His voice drops low, like gravel scraping over glass, and his eyes heat the same way they do every time I talk about my belly getting bigger. I swear my husband is so obsessed with my changing body it borders on feral. “Baby, I’ll rub every inch of you for the rest of our fuckin’ days. There ain’t a single part of you that doesn’t belong to me. These feet. This belly.” His hand moves to my obvious bump, pulling my leggings down over the soft swell. Then he touches every one of the stretch marks that have appeared on my left side, like he’s mapping them in his mind. “These too. I love every part of you even more than I did before.”
I don’t know how he always knows what to say to make me feel like the most beautiful thing in his world.
Tears prick my eyes, and I blink rapidly to clear them.
I will not cry.
I’ve already cried twice today—once over a cat reunion video and once because we were out of yoghurt. Both times Casey kissed me, told me to jump in the shower and by the time I finished my yoghurt was waiting on the kitchen table.
“You’re legally obliged to say that. We’re married.”
“The only thing I’m legally bound to is my obsession over you,” he counters.
I don’t speak for a moment, just lost in the feel of him, in this peaceful moment that seems so at odds with the gruff man he is.
He’s talking about how much he needs me, loves me, wants me, when a flutter beats along my left side. I place my hand over the spot.What the hell is that?It feels like air bubbles moving around inside me. I swear if I have gas?—
I feel it again.
It’s not gas. It’s…movement. My heart swells bigger than I thought possible. It’s our baby.
My hand flies to my side as I sit up and wait to feel it again.
“Lex?” Panic threads through his voice. “What’s wrong?”
I breathe—or try to. “I think… I think I felt the baby moving?—”
I don’t finish before his hand is on my stomach, pushing mine aside and then we wait. The seconds drag on, the silence heavy.
Casey scans my face, and I’ve never seen the look he’s wearing right now. Like his world is in front of him. Like it might disappear if he blinks too long.
“Is she doing it?” he asks after the quiet drags between us.
I frown and shake my head. “No. And she?”
He shrugs. “I just gotta feelin’ it’s a girl.”
The idea of him with a daughter is enough to melt my ovaries. “She’ll never be able to date,” I tease.
“She can date—after I vet her boyfriends.”
“And threaten them?”
He snorts as if it’s obvious that’s going to happen, then moves his palm to the side of my bump. “She’s gone quiet.” His disappointment shreds me.
“Don’t get stage fright on me now, kid,” I murmur, gently pressing my fingers against my stomach, as if I can make our child react to my touch. Seconds drag into minutes, neither of us moving, just in case. “Maybe I imagined it,” I say eventually.
He rubs his thumb over the stretch of my skin. “It’s only early in the second trimester and already our kid is causing trouble.”
I laugh. “Did you expect anything different, considering she’s ours?”
If our daughter was dealing with a jerk like James, Casey would bury him so deep even archaeologists wouldn’t find him.
If Casey knew I’m being harassed…
I lock that thought down. James has backed off. Everything is fine right now.Don’t borrow trouble.
The baby flutters again, and I drag his hand to the spot. “Did you feel it?”
