Sound of Silence(16)

Everything changes. The darkness behind my eyes brightens as I squeeze my lids together just to feel him pressed tightly to my aching breasts. A mimicked pant escapes in a burst when he withdraws just enough to drag in air. We're consumed and possessed. The world narrows to two bodies longing for more than this night will bring.

Caden is greedy, but he gives as much as he takes. I like kissing him, a lot. Too much for it to continue, so I press against his shoulders. Then I groan and curse as my stomach erupts in a fireball. He breaks away, dazed. A second passes, and I buckle forward. 

"Dear, Jesus." It hurts. Bad.

"Okay," he says, and I look up to find his hands in his hair. "Yeah, this is happening."

I stare through his shock as my own inches down my spine at the same time as my water breaks. "Caden."

His name, my voice, or reality spurs him into action. He scoops me up, one arm under my knees, the other on my back. "Piper?"

"Caden," I cry and arch through another burst of pain.

"You're having a baby, sunshine."

Tears return, and I cry. I sob into his neck out of elation, and fear, and sadness, and hope. But mostly fear when another pain takes me. They're coming too fast. "The hospital. I have a bag at home."

"No time for that. St. Mary's is thirty minutes away," he says, rushing the last ten feet to his Chevy parked in the lot. "Come on, Gus." Caden whistles, but the pup is on our heels and scampers up and in to the truck as soon as the door is opened.

Caden sets me on the seat, tugging the belt over and around my stomach. I cry out and grab the dash. Hot pokers in the gut are easier than a spreading pelvis. What the fuck?

He tips my chin and our eyes lock. "Breathe, that's it," he says and I follow his pattern. "Slow, deep. Okay?"

"It hurts."

He smiles, and I want to hit him.

I grab his T-shirt instead and pull us nose to nose. "This shit isn't funny."

I growl when his damn grin widens. Then I curse him as he slams my door and smacks the hood in apparent excitement while rounding it to find his place behind the wheel. The contractions double up, folding in on themselves.

Time blurs. We drive. He digs his phone out of his pocket and calls Cara, telling her to find my doctor. His hand takes mine, and then his encouraging words are lost to my filthy ones. He comments on the scope of my vocabulary and teaches me new terms as the waves become faster and more intense.

"Caden," I scream his name into long syllables as my body takes over with a sudden, desperate urge to push. He's on the phone; an ambulance is on the way, he assures me, but he pulls over at the same time. Spitting gravel and his own expletives, he peels to a stop and hops out, and then he's at my door with a bag in tow from his trunk. Where's Gus? I swivel my head to find him watching from the driver's seat, but fuuuck. I moan through a contraction as Caden tugs my legs toward him and lowers my back to the rippled leather.

"What are you doing?" I pant and cry all at the same time.

"I've got you, sunshine. Everything's fine; this is not my first delivery."

"What? No," I groan in denial through a new round of get-it-the-fuck-out-of-my-vagina pain. Mortification comes and goes and comes around again when he strips me of my soiled panties and peaks up above the sundress he pushes past my thighs.

"Filthy girl," he says, his eyes twinkling in the overhead light. "We're going to talk about this."

That fucking piercing. I do my damnedest to kick him. He laughs and then gets serious, holding my legs as I push and pause when he tells me to do so, through minutes of pain and pressure and then relief when it ends in a rush. Time is suspended as we both become a panting, crying mess of stunted disbelief. All I see are Caden's arms, taut with stiff actions, a flick of his wrist, and his look of sheer bliss as a baby's wail breaks into the night.

Hope and tears rush into Caden's eyes as he holds up the tiniest person I've ever seen, only to lay him on my breast. "Say hello to your son, sweet Piper."

Emotion floods out of me as I live through the most beautiful experience of my life. One moment alters the course of many. And in this crazy, impossible, perfect blip in time, I know Justin brought us together so we could have a future full of them.



       
         
       
        





Dear Justin.



I'm lost. You took my heart with you. My chest is empty but for this hollow pain. You're all I think about-the rough edge to your voice in the morning, how your skin felt under my fingers. Your eyes and how they looked at me like I was everything.