“You didn’t like me when we first met?”
“Oh, I more than liked you. One look, baby. One look at that arse in that skirt and the way your tits jiggled when you walked had me hooked. Your skin? Your skin is amazing, Sarah, but your face . . . I watched you walk away from that bar and mentally begged you to turn around, and it was as if you heard me. You stopped exactly like someone called your name, and you turned around and looked at me. The moment I saw your face, I was yours. From that moment on, my heart’s only beat for you.”
We both stopped moving and just stared at each other.
“I heard you,” I told him quietly.
“Heard me?”
“In my head. You said that you mentally begged me. Well, something inside me heard you. I felt a pull, and I couldn’t walk away. It was as if I had no choice. I had to turn around.”
He wiped tears from beneath my eyes that I didn’t even know were there and lent his forehead against mine. Our bodies were pressed so tightly together that when the baby kicked, I knew he felt it. He was still smiling as he moved his mouth to mine again before crawling down the bed and kissing my belly. Holding his weight off me with his elbows, he moved back up and pushed my boobs, which were getting to be beyond a manageable size at that stage, together and stared down at them.
He lowered his head and sucked hard on my nipple.
“Is there milk in them yet?”
“Could be.” I combed my fingers through his messy hair and watched him, trying to read his next move as I held back a smile. “You keep sucking on them like that then you’re soon gonna find out.”
He got right back to it, causing a strange tingle in my womb, which led to a practice contraction.
“Shit.” He pulled away and looked up at me. “There is.” Sure enough, I had milk on the tip of the nipple he was just sucking.
“What’s it taste like?” He dove back in for more before looking back up at me to answer. “It’s like watery milk but sweet.”
The baby gave me a swift kick under my ribs and then another to my belly, finally drawing Liam’s attention from his mission. We both saw the baby’s limbs pushing against me and laughed.
“He’s not happy I’m eating his dinner.”
“Well leave her dinner alone and come eat me instead.”
“No. No way. I did not just hear that. Seriously? She’s pregnant and in a bloody hospital bed. Get the fuck off her.” I peered over Liam’s shoulder to where my brother was standing in the doorway, holding a takeaway bag in one hand and shielding his closed eyes with the other.
“Will you shut the door? I’m naked under here.”
“Nope, not making this any better, Sunshine.”
Luke turned around, obviously with his eyes still closed as he walked straight into the doorframe. He mumbled a few garbled swear words before saying, “Get the fuck off my sister, Del. I’ll be back in five minutes and you both better be dressed.”
We spent the next five minutes laughing so hard it took another ten to put our clothes back on.
When Luke came back, the boys drank beer and we all shared the Chinese that both Liam and Luke brought with them. We sat and talked about nothing for a couple of hours. Because one beer led to four beers, Liam ended up spending the night at the hospital with me again. When I got up to go to the toilet at around five in the morning, I knew something wasn’t right. My head spun, the room tilted, and my legs refused to hold my weight.
“Liam,” I called out as my vision faded around the edges, and I had just enough time to wrap my arms around my stomach before I hit the floor.
***
I woke up to an empty room. It was the room I was in yesterday, but something was different, something had changed, and I wasn’t sure of exactly what. I had a catheter in the back of my hand with both blood and saline dripping through it, and there was a blood pressure cuff around my arm, which made me jump when it started to tighten.
The door opened, and Kim, one of the midwives I had gotten to know walked in.
“Where’s Liam?” My throat was dry and sore, and I squinted at the sound of my own voice. It didn’t sound like mine.
“Ah, you’re awake. Hang on, and I’ll let him know.” She turned around and left. Liam was through the door less than a minute later.
His hair was all over the place, his shirt was a rumpled mess, and his eyes had dark circles under them.
“What happened?” I started to cry—confused and scared. My belly hurt as I heaved out a sob, my emotions morphing to panic and sheer terror. I put my hand to my flat belly. That single moment when I realised my baby wasn’t there would stay with me for the rest of my life.
Liam grabbed my hand away from my belly and kissed it.
“It’s fine. It’s fine, bub. We’ve got our boy.”
My whole body was shaking, and no matter how many times I blinked, I couldn’t see Liam through the tears. “Liam.” I managed to choke out on a broken breath.