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Beside him, Aiden nodded in agreement. “Irish Spring is right. This was only a first pass. If it happened to work, great. If it didn’t take?” he shrugged. “We’ll get em’ next time.”
“IrishSpring?”Connor sniffed. “Like the soap?”
“That’s right.”
The two of them stared each other down for a moment but eventually relented, probably on my account. Using his teeth to tear at the strips of white tape around his wrists, Aiden began unwrapping his gloves.
“Hey, we’re not done yet,” said Connor. “What are ya doin’?”
Tucking it under his chin, Aiden pulled the first glove off. “Taking a pretty girl out for a late lunch.” He smiled at me. “Hungry?”
“Starving, actually.”
The sound of tearing tape came in stereo this time, as Connor began unwrapping himself feverishly.
“Not without me you’re not.”
Twenty-Six
JORDYN
Lunch with the guys was sweet and fun, but the specter of failure weighed heavily on my shoulders throughout the day. By evening, Elliot returned home happy and in an exceptionally good mood. The rest of us didn’t have the heart to tell him what we already knew.
I disappeared into the bathroom and took the tests… and each was negative. Shoulders slumped, I brought them out fully expecting Elliot would want to analyze each one. He would study the little white circles for the faintest signs of lines, or plus signs, or the word ‘positive’, or whatever it was supposed to be. To my surprise he didn’t even look at them, he only gave me a hug.
“Jordyn it’s only our first try,” he said gently. “We have plenty of other shots, and all the time in the world.”
Relief surged through me. His happiness hadn’t diminished even the slightest, and I found myself tearfully hugging him back. The others joined, and soon I was full-blown crying. But they were tears of release. The kind of tears that flowed at the end of a marathon, simply because you were glad all the training and buildup were finally over.
I went to bed that night feeling better about the whole thing, but still disappointed. I’d never thought about failure. I’d always assumed I could get pregnant easily, and that we’d succeed on the first try.
But Jocelyn…
A cold feeling stole over me as I stared listlessly at the ceiling. My sister’s infertility problems were wholly different. She had scarring from fibroids, and I had none. We’d done the tests. It wasn’t a genetic problem, so it shouldn’t matter.
Then again, I was her twin. There were times growing up when the two of us knew things we couldn’t possibly know. Times when we were separated, and somehow each had the sense of what was happening to the other.
Like the night of the crash…
I thrust all thoughts of my sister aside and focused back on the matter at hand. It would be another six weeks or more before we could try again. The IVF cycles were staggered like that, to give the body a chance to recover. That meant six more weeks of hormones. Six more weeks of pregnancy-inducing meds.
Six more weeks of the guys, walking around with their shirts off.
Working out at the gym with you.
And now, boxing each other… practically naked.
I inhaled sharply, letting my hands move downward and spread out over the warmth of my lower belly. Maybe it was hormones or maybe it was the guys. Or maybe it was just the fact I hadn’t been with anyone in such an unreasonably long time.
But damn, I was hornier now than I’d ever been in mylife.
I got up and paced the bedroom, wondering what they were up to. Realizing that it was almost midnight and all three of them were likely in their beds, slumbering away.
Familiar thoughts roamed my head, completely unbidden, driving me crazy. And this time I let them. They were dirty thoughts. Wicked thoughts…
Thoughts that were unprofessional and unbusinesslike, no matter how I wrapped my head around them.
I didn’t fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning, and even then I drifted off to incredible, fantastic scenarios and ideas. I woke up very late. Rushed to work as quickly as I could get there, only to mash up or shatter virtually everything I touched, even the simple little intro projects that I taught to the beginner classes.
