Page 23 of Jacked-up Mate
I wasn’t one of those people who loved long showers, normally, but ever since I got pregnant, my mate insisted on coming in and helping me bathe, washing my hair, scrubbing my back, doing all the pampering I could ask for. When we were done, he’d dry me off, including blowing drying my hair. There was something so intimate about that, so sweet, and, after a long day of work, it felt amazing.
“Which movie should we watch?” I asked, biting back a yawn.
“Pick a number. One through eight.”
I picked six. He counted down and pulled out one about a family moving to Mars. It was black and white, or at least, the credits were. I never got past them.
I fell sound asleep, snug against my mate, in the one place I always wanted to be.
Chapter Seventeen
Jack
I came home to find my mate pacing in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry, I tried to go quickly.” I held up the small paper bag in my hands. I’d gone into town to grab some of his favorite muffins from the bakery. He was nearing the end of his pregnancy, and his cravings had turned to all baked goods all the time.
“Oh, I’m not in here looking for food,” he said, leaning against the counter. “My back was just bugging me, so I thought maybe stretching it out would help.”
It had been bothering him for a couple of days now, and I’d been massaging him, encouraging him to take extra showers so the warm water could loosen his muscles, and propping a pillow behind him when he sat. I’d even curled around him at night so he didn’t have to hold himself up while he slept on his side. Anything and everything I could do to help. Nothing was helping.
We’d called the midwife, and they’d said, “Yep, that’s pregnancy for you,” and didn’t seem too worried. They offered to come out if we asked, but my mate was very much wanting to have as much of an unassisted birth as he could. He assured me the midwife felt fine about that, and as with everything else in this pregnancy, I took his lead. It was his body, and he was the one who needed to make those decisions, not me.
“Well,” I said softly, holding up the bag, “I brought muffins.”
He burst out laughing and snatched them from my hands. “I forgot I sent you for muffins.”
It must have been really uncomfortable for him if he forgot that quickly.
“I got one of each kind they had, but it was pretty low this time of day.” At midafternoon, the bakery had been mostly picked over, which was normal and a sign of just how good they were.
He grabbed one of the carrot muffins, tore off a hunk, and popped it in his mouth. Closing his eyes, he chewed slowly. “These have no right to be this good. It’s like health food. It’s a vegetable, and yet so delicious.”
I didn’t burst his bubble by telling him they were basically little cakes. But I supposed there was truth in the fact that there was some vegetable matter in them.
He took one more bite and then straightened. “I think I need a shower.” He walked right out of the kitchen and into the bathroom.
This was more than just aches and pains. I could feel it. I followed him in to find him leaning against the towel bar, hunched over, his eyes squeezed closed.
“I might be out of line here, omega mine,” I said carefully, “but could you maybe be in labor?”
He growled then looked up at me. “I just figured that out.”
We did end up getting him a shower, and I dried his hair afterward the way I always did, at his insistence.
“Where do you want to be?” I asked.
We’d talked about it before. We discussed a water birth with a pool in the house. He’d turned that down, which was probably for the best, since we really didn’t have room for it. We’d talked about the bouncy ball, the bed, even going to the hospital, but he hadn’t been able to decide and we left it open.
Then, two days ago—come to think of it, when the back pain started—he’d declared he wanted to have our pup outside. I was all for that, but I wanted to make sure it was still a go before I hauled everything out.
“Out back, please,” he said, his breathing heavy,
“I got you.”
I wrapped one arm around his waist, grabbed one of the baskets we had prepped for the birth with the other, and helped him outside. I laid the blanket from the basket down on the ground along with some pillows that were in the second basket I ran back in to grab. Everything else in baskets was for the baby.
“Should I call the midwife?”
