The Plan (Off-Limits Romance, #4)(33)

I’m so glad I hurt for her, if nothing else, but God, it’s not an easy thing.

In half an hour, I’m good for the pharmacy, so I jog back there, order a few prints, and then head home. For the first time in a few weeks, I write several thousand words. By afternoon, I’m wrung out, but I feel a little better. I ride my motorcycle to get the pictures, and I put them everywhere.

My girl is beautiful and perfect. I tell myself, as Trick-or-Treaters start to ring the bell, that she’s so lucky. She has three parents who love her. I put on my vampire cape and grab the bowl of candy I bought last week. When the doorbell rings next, I stand up. And shut my eyes, and try to breathe. But I can’t breathe, and so I have to take one of those stupid fucking pills.

I get a shower, where I jerk off to thoughts of Marley, and then later, I hear her upstairs. It’s cold in here tonight. Just fucking cold down here. I hate this fucking house.

I go back to my green room, where I got such good words today, and throw some curtains open, letting moonlight in. Under the heavy duvet, somehow I manage sleep.



*

Marley





I wake up on the couch—still wearing my fuzzy, green alien costume, complete with antennae—to the sound of someone groaning. Before I sit up, I know not just that it’s Gabe, but also that he’s upstairs. I also know that when I stand up, I’ll go through the door that separates our living space, and I will find him.

Not because it’s the smart thing to do, but because I really have no choice.

That’s what this comes down to for me, I realize as I walk, on quiet feet, toward the door. It’s not that I see logic in caring for him, it’s that I simply don’t know how not to. Knowing what he’s likely dreaming of makes it even more impossible not to go to him. And so I do.

I walk into the hall around the stairs and follow the sound of heavy breathing to a dark bedroom with one window thrown open. The room is cool, and Gabe is sleeping in a giant bed, tangled in the covers.

I stand and watch him for a moment, trying to understand how he still feels like mine. When I found out he was with someone else for six years. He made a child with someone else—or so he thought. He’s a little girl’s Daddy—or thought he was. My heart squeezes, and Gabe groans softly into his pillow.

I step closer and put my hand on his bare back.

“Hey… It’s me, Marley. You’re dreaming. Gabe.” He moans. “You’re only dreaming.”

“Gen?” he whispers.

“Just Marley.”

He opens his eyes, and for a moment, as he lays there on the pillow, they are round and vulnerable. “Marley,” he says softly.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, folding my arms around myself. “I heard you and felt bad.”

He sits up in one motion, throwing the covers down his bare chest, so they pool at his waist. With one big hand, he rubs his eyes, then lowers his arm to fix his unreadable eyes on me. A long moment passes, during which Gabe looks at me and I let myself be looked at.

“You shouldn’t have come in here,” he says.

“I know,” I whisper.

“What does it take, Marley? What will it take you to understand that you should stay away?”

I hate the way he looks at me, the way his eyes and mouth seem to condemn. The way it makes me feel…unwanted.

“I don’t know if I can understand—I’ve just always been like this with you.”

“You have to be different.”

“Why?”

But I know the answer. I can feel the answer crackling between us. It’s because he isn’t different. No more than I am. Gabe is no different, so he needs me to be.

“It’s to protect you, Marley. I tried to explain it to you. Do you want to be used?” He looks gravely serious. My stomach tightens.

“No,” I whisper. But is that even true? I look at Gabe there in the bed, at his huge shoulders and his heavy pecs, at his ripped abs and what I know is underneath the sheets, and I remember his thumb over my clit. How alive I felt. How emotional. I think about the sterile environment of IVF, and then I think of Gabe’s thick cock.

I change my answer. “Maybe I do.”

“Why would you say that?” He looks livid as he crawls from bed, pinning the sheet around his hips and turning toward the door. “This is not a game to me, Marley. Do you know what I have to offer you?”

I shake my head as I blink at him.

“Nothing. I can offer you nothing.”

“That’s not true, though.” The words are out before my brain vets them: a tangle of potentiality and strange intentions dropped right at his feet.

“How is that? What are you talking about, Marley?”

“You have something you could offer me,” I whisper.

“What?”

My eyes fall down his abs, lingering on the hand that’s near there. Near his dick. “I want a baby.”

“What?” He looks at me so strangely, I lift my hand to touch my antennae—and find my hair is bare. I press my lips together, telling myself to say it again. It’s not unreasonable or crazy.

“I want a baby, Gabe. I want to be a mother. You remember how I’ve always wanted kids. I didn’t fathom that I’d be thirty-three and not a mother. Last year,” I breathe, “I did IVF—to make a baby by myself—and I did,” I say in a voice that shakes. “I got pregnant…with a baby girl.” I blink back the tears that spring, hot and stinging, into my eyes. “I was pregnant…but I lost her. It’s not super easy for me to conceive, and frozen sperm…it doesn’t work as well.”