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I hadn’t meant to blurt that out—especially in mixed company—but this book was seriously messing with my head.
Rylee frowned. “Like right now?”
“Jesus, man.” Dare shook his head. “Seriously?”
Kelsey glanced back at me with one eyebrow raised. “You need to ease in with that book. Maybe read a chapter a day or something. It can be overwhelming.”
“I was on the first chapter. It’s terrifying.”
“Why?” Rylee scooted closer to me on the seat, and only then did I realize she wasn’t belted in. “What page are you on?”
“You need to be safe.” I shifted her back and leaned over her to grab her belt, notching it securely around her.
“Aww, that’s sweet.” Kelsey sounded pleased, but Rylee’s expression held no similar joy.
“Give me that book, Gage.”
I was already back skimming the page I’d been on. “Sometimes there’s leaking. I mean, what? Are you planning on breastfeeding?”
“Is this really necessary right now?” My brother sounded strangled.
I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same.
I’d been so calm and collected about this whole baby situation. Sure, I’d had my own private moments of flipping out. But ignorance was surely bliss, because holy shit, I’d had no clue of what this would actually entail.
Forget the whole eighteen years thing. Just the process of getting the baby out of her sounded like a horror show.
“This is why men don’t endure childbirth.” Kelsey surprised me by reaching back to pat my leg. I wasn’t sure how she managed it, because she was heavily pregnant herself and shifting around couldn’t be that easy. “Women have been doing this for centuries. It’s natural. In the old days, women used to go out in the woods, squat down by the river, and just let it fly.”
Dare met my gaze in his rearview mirror and I wasn’t sure which of us looked more wide-eyed. And he’d gone through childbirth before with his ex-wife.
“Shit, I’ll have to be in the delivery room?”
“If I have to be in there, so do you.” Rylee snatched the book back from me while I was lost in mental torment. “You play, you pay, pal. Just the circle of life. Also, my nipples aren’t leaking.”
“Mine do sometimes. But it’s rare,” Kelsey assured Dare as he cast her a sidelong look. “I still haven’t fi
gured out how I feel about breastfeeding. It’s such a personal choice.”
“You don’t have to tell them about it,” Dare informed her.
But Kelsey shrugged. “Eh, no shame in it. Why, at Baby Rama today, a woman just pulled out her breast in the stroller aisle and fed her kid. It’s a beautiful, natural thing. Just requires that cow balm stuff because when they crack, sometimes there’s bleeding and—”
I tuned her out for my own sanity. Also, she was my sister-in-law. I really did not need to think about the state of her nipples, whether or not she was speaking in hypotheticals.
By the time Dare dropped me and Rylee off at her apartment, he was obviously more than ready to drop Kelsey off at home and run back to the shop to hide in the comfort of broken carburetors and ailing transmissions. Anything was better than discussions of mucus and aching nipples and callused feet.
I still wasn’t sure what the last one had to do with pregnancy, and I didn’t want to know either.
Rylee went straight into the bathroom in her apartment and didn’t come out for a while.
So, with more than a little trepidation, I picked up the book again. I would have to learn this stuff, right?
Besides, if Dare could deal with all of it, so could I.
Kelsey had said it was beautiful and natural.
Just like sex.
