“Thank you, darling. Oh, and there’s chocolate cake here I made this morning. I’ll make some tea for you two to have with it while you’re here.”
We end the call and I walk into the bedroom where Havoc’s sitting on the bed putting his boots on. “As soon as you’re done with this snake, we’re coming back here to finish what we started. When Mum offers you cake, you say no.”
He looks up at me. “What cake has she made?”
I groan. Mum’s cakes are amazing, and Havoc is an addict. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not having any tonight.”
He finishes lacing his boots and stands. “It’s my birthday, Carla. I’m having cake.”
“You’re choosing cake over my birthday present?”
He bends his mouth to mine to claim a quick kiss before saying, “No darlin’, I’m choosing both. First the cake, then your pussy.”
I grip the shirt he’s put back on, moving into him. “Have we reached the point in our marriage where you choose food over sex? Like, do I need to work on this?”
His arm is around me before I know it and he’s got me pressed hard to his body. “Baby, you don’t need to work on any-fuckin’-thing. If there’s ever a choice to be made, you know there’s not a chance in hell of food winning.”
I smile up at him, taking in the face I love and the eyes that never fail to see the things others don’t. The little things I try to hide from the world, but that Havoc will never not see.
This conversation is one of those things. I’m bantering like I’m joking about him choosing food over me, and mostly I am teasing, but Havoc knows my heart and all the patched-up cracks in it. He knows that while I feel secure in our marriage, those old scars sometimes hurt and cause self-doubt to flare. He knows that the damage my father did when he walked out of my life can never be fully erased. It will always lie deep in my soul and sometimes require my husband’s love to soothe it.
Havoc never falters.
He never grows tired of having to reassure me.
His love is patient.
It’s the kind of patience that I know will help our daughter grow into a woman with a deep faith in herself. And the same kind of self-love that I’ve learned to give myself thanks to her father.
He narrows his eyes at me when I don’t respond straight away to what he said about never choosing food before me. “Your thoughts are drifting away a lot today. What’s going on?”
I’m aware we need to get to Mum’s place to save her from the snake, but since it’s not a life-threatening snake, I take this moment to be with Havoc. With each passing year, I feel stronger about living in the moments and not rushing them.
“I want us to think about having another baby,” I say softly.
His eyes search mine, filled with love and care and all the things that are Havoc at his core. I’ve never met a man more thoughtful and kinder than him, and right now, he’s giving me his all. “We took ten years and a fuckload of help to get here. Are you sure you wanna go down that track again?”
A tidal wave of emotion sweeps across my heart and soul. And before I know it, tears form in my eyes. Havoc would do anything to have another child. Anything but wanting me to go through what I went through to have Ruby.
It took us many years and five rounds of IVF to have a baby.
It cost us money we didn’t have.
It cost me a job I loved.
It’s been days, weeks, months, and years of tears and uncertainty and hell on my body.
We agreed never again after Ruby was born, but lately I can’t stop thinking about wanting to add to our family. I always wanted to be a parent, but I never imagined that having a child could feel so right; that it could feel like the thing I was put on this earth to do. I also never imagined loving my husband more while watching him be a father.
I smile through my tears. “I was made to be a mother.”
He takes that in. I see him process every beat of it. I also see him struggle with it. “Yeah, baby, you were.” His voice is rough. Raw with his own emotion. “But fuck, I don’t know if I have it in me to watch you go through IVF again.”
Havoc is the toughest man I know. He’s the kind of guy who would quite literally go to the ends of the earth for those he loves. Fear either doesn’t live in him or just doesn’t affect him in the way it does most people.
Except, it does live in him because I live in him.
Havoc fears bad things happening to Ruby or to me.
