Addicted After All(16)

“You open it,” Lily whispers to me, rerouting my attention. She pushes the envelope in my hands.

My stomach tightens, but somehow, I force my joints to work. I tear the seal and unfold the white paper. My pulse races like I’m about to jump off a building and make a speech in front of a packed stadium. I can barely read the typed letters at first. They blur together, and it takes a few extended seconds to piece them apart.

She studies my expression for a long moment and says, “It’s a boy.”

I am flooded with temperatures below zero, and I pass the paper to her, so she can verify what she already knows is real.

Her eyes travel eagerly over the words and then she delicately folds the paper.

“You can smile, Lil.” Please smile.

A tear rolls down her cheek.

No. I lean forward and cup her face in my hands. “Lily. I’m happy.” Somewhere. In all the good places that belong to her. There, I know I am.

Her lips are chapped as she licks them, and she glances back at the paper to reaffirm that we’re really having a boy.

I wipe her tears that fall. “Say something,” I breathe. Smile, Lil.

“I’m…really, really happy.” Her voice trembles. And then she laughs into a smile, one that’s half-pained. For me. On the precipice of two polar opposite emotions.

“It’s better this way, with a boy,” I whisper, her glassy eyes flitting between me and the paper. “You have to believe that I believe it.” All I want is to sense her joy and rid the tar that’s seeped from me to her. I ruin most things I touch, and she’s the best thing I have left.

She nods repeatedly, trying to accept this as truth, and then I kiss her, desperation drowning my veins, my bones, my very fractured soul. A noise ripples through her throat. She clutches to me the way that I do to her—our bodies promising things that our words can’t.

I inhale sharply into a deeper embrace, my tongue tangling with hers. Her chest merges with mine, my hands disappearing in her short hair beneath her hat.

There are moments with Lily where I feel like we’re one person. Where we share every sensation that bites our skin.

No one is in the kitchen but us.

And yet, they are. I become aware of this fact the moment Rose shouts something loud in French.

Lily and I abruptly part.

Rose is pointing at us while she yells, and Connor is quick to shout back, the seriousness of the conversation illuminated the moment Connor grips her wrists, clutching her so she stops flailing around.

Lily and I rise quickly to our feet. “What’s going on?” Lily asks the only person who would know besides the couple fighting.

Ryke has a hand on Daisy’s thigh while he watches Rose, his brows hardened. “She’s saying that she can’t do it,” he translates. Daisy clicks off her phone and sets her camera aside.

“Do what?” I frown. She can’t be that scared to have a boy.

“See the gender,” Ryke clarifies. “Connor is telling her that she needs to stop acting like it’s not happening.”

Lily’s mouth falls and her head whips between her sister and Ryke. “And?” she prods. Having a translator is nice, which begs the question…

“Why haven’t you done this before?” I snap.

His hand rises on Daisy’s thigh, who swings her legs that dangle off the counter. “Because it hasn’t been f*cking important before now. You don’t want to hear the things they say to each other on a daily basis. Fucking trust me.”

Yeah, I do.

Lily rocks forward on her feet. “What did Rose say?”

Ryke listens for a second. “That it doesn’t matter if they find out the gender now or when the baby is born.”

Connor breathes heavily, more emotions coursing through his features: anger, concern, determination—things that he usually conceals. He speaks again. In French. They’re in their own world. Kind of like the one Lily and I were just in. Blocking out our surroundings for one serious moment.

Ryke continues to translate, “He says, don’t you want to prepare in any way that you can?”

Rose jerks in his grasp and snaps back.

“She says, I can’t prepare for a baby, no matter how much I read and study. I’ll never be ready.” A weight drops in the room with that truth. It’s a fear I think we all share, but Rose has never liked kids, so it’s different for her, maybe. I don’t know. I shake my head. It goes beyond having a boy, having a girl—it’s just having a child at all.