mom and talked to her for hours out on the deck. When he came back inside his eyes were red, but he seemed more at peace.
I tried to hide everything pregnancy-related from him, working to not freak him out, but one morning he came into the bathroom where I was silently hanging my head over the toilet.
“Jesus.” He kneeled down beside me. He gathered up my hair and rubbed my back while I barfed. Then he crouched in front of me and pressed a cold compress to my face.
“Thank you.” I sat on the floor, looking up at him.
“Is it always that bad?”
“Not always. Some mornings are better than others.”
That night, when I came home from work, there was a pile of saltine crackers, ginger ale, hard lemon candies and an array of herbal teas sitting on the island.
Mica was doing everything possible to keep me safe. He went on walks with me. He went grocery shopping with me and carried the bags. One night I found him researching portable fetal heart rate dopplers. Another day he came home with a portable blood pressure monitor. He bought me a smartwatch so he could track my heart rate on his phone. When he left for away games, Zoey would show up the night of, suitcase and cat cage in hand.
“You don’t have to keep on doing this.” I opened the door wide for her and Ikea. “We could just tell him you stayed over.”
She reached up and gave me a hard hug. “He thought you’d say that, and he made me promise we wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, what about your life? You can’t keep babysitting me.”
She gave me an impish smile. “You have better food at your house.”
“Is that your party line?”
“When my life went to shit and nothing was right, it was Mica showing up at my place, helping me build furniture and checking me for a pulse. I would do anything for him. Ryan would too.”
That made me misty-eyed.
So, at the end of the day, I didn’t say a word. The guy was dealing with his fears the best he could, so I didn’t tease him or fight him on any of it. I took all his requests seriously. If he asked me to take my blood pressure every morning, I obliged. If he filled my water bottle for me, I drank the whole damn thing. If he wanted to carry my grocery bag that weighed only two pounds, I let him. He was by my side, and that was all that mattered.
The only thing Mica refused to do was touch me. Every kiss I tried to deepen, he kept chaste. When I snuggled too close, he eased his hard body away from mine. I tried to entice him by prancing around in lingerie. His eyes tracked my body, and his hard-ons were more than evident, but he would not come near me.
He hugged me, held my hand, cradled me while I slept, but he was as chaste as a nun when it came to any more baby-making business.
I knew what was going on. He was afraid of hurting me or the baby. I didn’t want to make him talk about it, because the guy had already been stripped emotionally in the last few weeks. Forcing him to talk about more of his feelings was exactly what he didn’t need.
What he needed was some hot, intense sex. A lot of it.
I decided to rely on my old friend, vodka. I invited Ryan and Zoey for dinner and I poured a lot of wine. Then, when I served a blueberry cheesecake—because lately, I seemed to love anything cake—I brought out the vodka. Ice cold, a premium brand.
My sober self enjoyed watching Mica loosen up and relax. He and Ryan told story after story about hockey, each of them getting funnier and more outrageous. When I sent them home in a cab, Zoey’s cheeks were flushed hot pink and Ryan was so shit-faced he could barely walk.
Mica wrapped his arms around me and kissed my forehead. “Mmm, thank you for tonight. I needed that.”
That wasn’t all he needed.
I felt like a villain about to take advantage of my prey. I waited until he was fast asleep, snoring softly beside me, before I slipped out of bed. I changed into a racy teddy made of sheer black lace with a tiny see-through thong designed to showcase the goods, not hide them.
I kneeled beside him, debating where I wanted to start. I delicately pushed