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Over the phone.
On the calls that he made.
How surreal is that, huh? I waited for years for him to make one phone call, just one, and he never did. While I know why now, it still hurt back then. It still made me cry. But this entire last week, he called me every single night. Just before going to sleep. And every single night, he demanded that I tell him a story. That I tell him what book I was reading and give him a point-by-point description of what’s happening.
And I did.
Maybe because all my badassery was used up in keeping this huge secret from him.
Whatever it is, I’m still glad that I’m holding strong.
That I’m keeping a piece of me to myself and thinking about me for a change.
Although as I said, it’s hard. And seeing him here, unexpectedly, isn’t helping anything.
And neither is it helping that he keeps staring at me and staring at me. At how I’m holding Halo. At how I’m rubbing her back and just naturally rocking her in my arms.
When he looks up though, I have to take a step back.
Because his gaze, pitch black and burning, is a force of its own. It has its own impact and energy, and I know, I can feel it down to my marrow, what he’s thinking.
I know exactly what he’s imagining.
Me with our baby girl.
His baby girl.
And gosh, my womb clenches so hard at that, so fucking hard, that it takes everything in me to not press my hand on my belly. It takes everything in me to not press my thighs together and rub the hurt that he’s causing between my legs.
“Ledger,” Callie says. “Are you listening to me? Put down the cupcake.”
At my best friend’s voice, I remember that we’re not alone — of course we’re not — and I jerk my eyes away from him.
Even though I’m not looking at him, I can still feel his eyes on me and I blush.
God, please don’t let Callie see this.
I sigh in relief when I feel him turn away from me and focus on his sister. Instead of doing what she asked him to, he takes off the liner and pops the whole thing in his mouth as a response.
“You’re going to pay for that,” she snaps at him.
Again, his response is to swallow the cupcake down and throw her a smirk.
Which only makes her angrier. “Stay away from the cupcakes, okay? These are not for you.”
Shrugging, he goes, “Might as well, I guess. Didn’t feel it.”
“Didn’t feel what?”
“The cupcake.”
“What?”
“You’re losing your touch.”
She puts a hand on her hips. “I’m not.”
“Being married to that motherfu —” Then, “brother pucker is making you worse by the day.”
Callie glares at him. “First of all, good job on reining yourself in. But that still doesn’t mean you can call my husband names. And second, get out, okay? If you hate my cupcakes so much, you’re not allowed to be in this room.”
But Callie’s baby girl has other plans.
Because by now she’s caught on that her favorite uncle is here and she’s creating a ruckus.
“I think she wants me.”
At his voice, I have to focus on him.
And I can’t believe he’s still looking at me in the same way.
He’s still looking at me like I’m… already pregnant. Or if I’m not then he can’t wait to get me that way.
He can’t wait to put his baby in me and watch me play with her one day.
Thankfully Callie still doesn’t catch anything because she goes, “Yeah, she goes crazy when Ledge comes around. You’d better just give her to him and he can take care of her. So we can focus on the baking.”
After her rant, Callie goes back to her mixing bowl and starts working on another batch of cupcakes. While I abandon mine and walk over to him. Something that shouldn’t be so difficult, putting one foot in front of the other, but it is because he’s tracking my movements.
When I finally reach him, I have to look away so I don’t tremble as much as I’m doing while loosening the sling from around my body. Once it’s loosened enough, I hand still-squirming Halo over to him. Last time when we did that, our fingers had hardly touched and now I know it was because he was deliberately keeping himself away from me.
Not so much now.
Now he touches not only my fingers but also my forearms, the underside of my elbow.
He even goes so far as to graze his fingers across my waist and my hips, and while you could say that it’s perfectly normal to touch those parts of my body while I’m handing a really wiggly baby over to him, in this case it was completely unnecessary. Because Halo is already secure in his arms.
I take a step back then.
