Page 43 of Accidentally in Love

He made a grossed-out face. “Doesn’t that hurt the baby?”

I groaned. “Fuck, I did an awful job when I gave you the sex talk.”

“No?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, buddy. Sex doesn’t hurt the baby. There’s a… ahh… mucous plug.”

A look of horror crossed my brother’s face. “EWWW!”

I smirked. “It’s not gross, Dec. It protects the baby. Which is great because their Mama is insatiable right now.”

“Gross.”

“Dude, she woke me up for sex last night.”

“TMI.”

“Seriously, if you got here five minutes earlier, you would have been a major cockblock.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, we heard you in the shower. Gross, bro!”

I shrugged. I couldn’t help it this morning when Avery was feeling self-conscious about how big she was getting. I wanted her to know she was sexy as fuck to me, so of course, I went down on her in the shower. I didn’t care that our siblings were downstairs, being the nuisances they both always were. If they hadn’t barged over here, we would have had shower sex.

“Should have called before you came over,” I said to him.

He shoved me, but I laughed.

“Are you serious about the plan you texted me last night?” he asked.

I nodded.

“You hate Christmas. You only ever put up the tree at my insistence.”

The reason I hated Christmas? Our parents died in a car accident after coming home from a Christmas party. Christmas wasn’t the ‘holly jolly’ season for me. Christmas meant pain and being reminded of everything I lost. Talk about ironic. I was going to marry the woman who was Drakesville’s unofficial Queen of Christmas.

Avery loved Christmas with her whole heart. She loved the cheesy Hallmark movies, the decorations, and even the carols. I joked she made more Christmas cookies than the town bakery. She loved the holidays, and if she was going to move in here and become my wife, I wanted to bring it to life for her. Even if it gave me painful memories of the worst night of my life. I’d sacrifice that for her. I hadn’t exactly told her why I hated Christmas so much.

“Avery loves Christmas,” I said.

Declan sighed. “Dude, I know you’re allergic to feelings, but you have to tell her how you feel.”

“Come on, I think the tree’s in the attic,” I said to my brother, hoping to distract him from this conversation.

“Don’t change the subject!”

I fixed him with a glare. He shook his head and let the argument drop.

We walked up the steps in silence, and I pulled down the stairs to get up to the attic. I followed him up the steps into the cramped space. He searched for the tree while I looked for the decorations.

“I think I found it!” Dec called from the back of the attic. He slid over an oblong box, and I inspected it. Ornaments, but no tree.

“Just the ornaments.”

I went down the steps and put the box on the floor.

“Do you think maybe she’ll want a real tree?” he called down to me as he stomped around, searching for the fake tree.

“Nah. She uses an artificial one.”