I spend the morning online, catching up on emails. Corey has forwarded a few interviews, something that’s never been requested of me. A lot of the questions are similar, wanting to know why Verity hired me, what I plan to bring to the table, how my past experience has put me in the position to write for her. I copy and paste a lot of the answers.

After lunch, I focus on developing an outline for the seventh book. I’ve given up on finding one, so I work on building the novel from scratch. It’s hard because I’m exhausted from last night. I’m unsettled. But I try not to think about last night.

It’s afternoon when I smell tacos. It makes me smile, knowing he’s making them because I requested them. I’m sure he’ll save me a plate like he always does. I’m just not in a position where I feel comfortable eating dinner with them when April has Verity at the table.

I spend the next several minutes thinking about Verity, wondering why I’m so scared of her. I stare down at the drawer that contains her manuscript. One more chapter and I’ll stop. That’s it.

So Be It

It had been six months since they were born, and I still wished they didn’t exist.

But they did, and Jeremy loved them. So I tried. Sometimes I wondered if it was worth it. Sometimes I wanted to pack my bags and leave and never look back. He was the only thing stopping me from going through with it. I knew a life without Jeremy was not a life I wanted to live. I had two options:

Live with him and the two girls he loved more than me.

Live without him.

They were a package deal at that point. I hate myself for not using birth control. For thinking I could do this and everything would be alright. Everything was not alright. Not with me anyway. It was like my family existed in a snow globe. Inside, everything was cozy and perfect, but I wasn’t a part of them; I was just an outsider looking in.

It was snowing outside that night, but the apartment was warm. Even still, I woke up with chills. Or tremors, really. I couldn’t stop shaking. The nightmare I’d had was so vivid, I felt the effects of it for hours after I woke up. A nightmare hangover.

I dreamt of the future, of the girls and Jeremy and me. They were eight or nine years old. I wasn’t sure because I didn’t know a lot about kids and what they look like at each stage. I just remember waking up and feeling like they were eight or nine.

In the dream, I was walking by their bedroom. I peeked inside and couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Harper was on top of Chastin, covering her head with a pillow. I rushed over to the bed, terrified that it was too late. I pushed Harper off her sister and pulled the pillow away. I looked down at Chastin and then slapped my hand over my mouth with a gasp.

There was nothing there. The front of Chastin’s face was smooth, like the back of a bald head. No scar. No eyes, no mouth. Nothing to smother.

I glanced at Harper, taking in her sinister expression. “What did you do?”

And then I woke up.

My reaction wasn’t to the dream. It was to how much it felt like a premonition. And how much it gutted me.

I hugged my knees, rocking back and forth on the bed, wondering what this feeling was. Pain. It was pain. And…heartache.

I had felt heartache in my dream? When I thought Chastin was dead, I wanted to fall to my knees and weep. It’s exactly how I felt when I thought of the possibility of Jeremy dying. I would lose all function.

I sat there and cried, the feeling was so overwhelming. Had I finally connected to them? To Chastin, at least? Was this what it felt like to be a mother? To love something so much, the thought of it being ripped away from you causes physical pain?

It was the most I had ever felt since the girls had been conceived. Even if I only felt it for one of them, it still counted for something.

Jeremy rolled over in the bed. He opened his eyes and saw me sitting up, hugging my knees. “You okay?”

I didn’t want him to ask me that because Jeremy was good at getting my thoughts out. Most of them, anyway. I didn’t want him to know this one. How could I admit that I’d finally fallen in love with one of our daughters without also admitting I had never loved either of them to begin with?

I had to do something. Preoccupy him so he wouldn’t ask too many questions. I knew from experience that Jeremy couldn’t get the truth out of me if I had his dick in my mouth.

I crawled down him, and by the time I was positioned over him, my mouth ready to work, he was already hard. I took as much of him as I could take.

I loved it when he moaned. He was a quiet lover, but sometimes, when I really caught him off guard, he wasn’t so quiet. In that moment, he was euphoric. And I wondered, before I came along, how many other women had coaxed noises out of him? How many other pairs of lips had been wrapped around his dick?

I let him slide out of my mouth. “How many women have sucked your dick?”

He lifted up onto his elbows and looked down at me, perplexed. “Are you serious?”

“More like curious.”

He laughed, dropping his head back to the pillow. “I don’t know. I’ve never counted.”

“That many?” I teased. I climbed up his body and straddled him. I liked it when he jerked beneath me and gripped my thighs. “If it’s not an immediate answer, that means it’s more than five.”

“Definitely more than five,” he said.

“More than ten?”

“Maybe. Possibly. Yes.”

It’s odd how that didn’t make me jealous, but two infants could leave me seething. Maybe it was because the girls were currently in his life, but all his past whores were just that…in the past.

“More than twenty?”

He raised his hands to my breasts and cupped them. Squeezed them. He was getting that look on his face that was my cue I was about to be fucked. Hard. “That’s probably a good estimate,” he whispered, pulling me to him. He brought his lips close to mine and stuck a hand between us, rubbing me. “How many guys have licked your pussy?”

“Two. I’m not a whore like you.”

He laughed against my lips and then rolled me onto my back. “But you’re in love with a whore.”

“A former whore,” I clarified.

I had been wrong about the look he had gotten in his eye. He didn’t fuck me that night. He made love to me. Kissed every inch of my body. Made me lie still while he teased me and tortured me, when all I wanted to do was suck his dick. Every time I tried to move, to take over, he would stop me.

I don’t know why I got so much pleasure out of pleasing him, but I liked it more than being pleased. That’s probably defined in the love languages or some bullshit. My love language was acts of service. Jeremy’s love language was getting his dick sucked. We were a perfect match.

He was moments from climax when one of the girls started crying. He groaned, and I rolled my eyes, and we both reached for the monitor. Him to look at them. Me to turn it off.

I could feel him growing softer inside me, so I pulled the plug out of the back of the monitor. We could still hear the cries coming from down the hallway, but I was certain I could drown them out if he’d just resume where we left off.

“I’ll go check,” he said, trying to roll off me. I pulled him back to the bed and climbed on top of him.

“I’ll go when you finish. Let her cry for a few minutes. It’s good for them.”

He didn’t seem comfortable with that, but once my mouth was back on his dick, he accepted it.

I’d gotten so much better at swallowing compared to the first time I attempted it. I could feel him ready to come, so I pretended I was gagging. I don’t know why, but that always set him off, thinking I was choking on his cock. Men. He groaned, and I forced him farther down my throat with another gurgling sound, and then it was over. I swallowed, wiped my mouth, and then stood up. “Go to sleep. I can deal with it.”

I actually wanted to deal with it this time. It was the first time I’d ever felt anything other than irritation at the thought of having to feed them. But I wanted to feed Chastin. Hold her, cuddle her, love her. I was excited when I approached their bedroom.

But that excitement turned to irritation as soon as I saw that it was Harper who was crying.

How disappointing.