Page 34 of Say I'm Yours, Firecracker

I didn’t say anything about all the sugar she’d been ingesting, because my poor Firecracker hadn’t been able to keep much in her stomach.

Her doula told us that every pregnancy was different. Some have pregnancy sickness through all forty weeks, some don’t get sick at all. It’s really dependent on the person.

I felt bad enough for missing so much of the first trimester, I couldn’t deprive her of her sugar now.

“For what reason, Behemoth?” She said, lapping up the extra whipped cream Billy piled on for her.

“It’s healthy for mom and baby to move.” I told her, proud of all the parenting books I had read, and maybe, slightly, trying to gain common ground. “Plus, Dr. Steele told us to make sure you kept up healthy habits.”

“You really need to stay off those parentings sites.” She leaned back, and looked around. “And I distinctly remember her saying torest.”

I smiled, watching her as she tried to discreetly unbutton her jeans without moving her shirt. She fussed with it for a few more minutes before giving in and lifting her shirt. The jeans she had on were already for pregnant women, with the stretchy mesh. She didn’t care though, because anytime she’d eaten anything that made her stomach full, and her heart happy, the buttons came undone. It was one of her quirks that never failed to make me smile.

“I read that in a book.”

“You can read?” She said, laying her hand over her heart.

“Ha-Ha, Firecracker.” I joked, “I did graduate high school somehow.”

She smirked at me while rubbing her bump. “Of course you did,daddy.”

My dick twitched in my sweatpants at the nickname. Goddamn, this woman. Her smirk was devious, like she knew exactly what she was doing.

I leaned forward, close enough to her side of the table to whisper, “Keep it up and I’ll never wear anything but gray sweat pants again, see how‘platonic’this can really be.”

Her smirk faded away, morphing into a frown. I’d hit a nerve. This was something we hadn’t talked about since our agreement to stay out of each other's pants, and I had a feeling that she was reminiscing about the last outcome of us having sex.

I knew we both had our fun, and I wasn’t judging her for it, especially since I was whoring it up until a few months ago when I got her call.

It changed my whole perspective, I wasn’t proud of the way I handled my end of the situation for the first few weeks. I’d hurt her, unintentionally. While cleaning up my life, I went radio silent. I was starting to understand that abandonment was triggering for her.

I didn’t know all of the trauma life had thrown at her. I wanted to though, I wanted to know everything about her. Ever since our illicit night against that wall in a dark hallway in my sisters club, I think my heart knew she would walk away with it, and never give it back.

The way her eyes melted, back arched, breaths harsh and whispered, I knew, and I didn’t fucking care. What did I need with the stupid organ anyway?

What I didn’t expect was for her to steamroll in alongside my best friend Aaron. Bellamy was cool, gruff, and she loved Ronnie like no one else. It was an adjustment realizing I had all these other people to share my Firecracker with even before I got to have her all to myself.

I wanted nothing more than to love Ronnie like a man dying and she was the only drug that could save me.

I just needed to find a way to start doing it, without her getting spooked.

Her frown stayed turned down as she finished off her shake. I watched her spoon out the remainder of the melted whipped cream she loved and smile, trying to lighten the mood. “I was only joking. I know you don’t want a relationship, even though you’re still hanging out with ‘surfer dude.’”

“Hanging out sounds so juvenil.” She said, scrunching her nose. “We’re friends.”

“That’s what you’re calling it?” I smirked, knowing full well she wasn’t doing anything remotely close to intimate with Eli.

She made her signaturemmmmmhmmmmas she slurped up the bottom of the milkshake. Her lips wrapped around the straw, and my threat from a second ago had me readjusting myself as discreetly as I could.

Her eyebrow cocked upward, and her lips lifted into a coy smile. She knew what she was doing, and it only confused me more, because Ronnie was who she was, seductive, playful, and funny. It would be hard for any man not to fall for her.

“So couples yoga, huh?” She said as she leaned back in her chair to let the milkshake settle.

I smiled, “Tomorrow at 7am!”

She grumbled, like I knew she would, but nodded.

The next morning I picked her up from her apartment that I hated. She was flinging clothes across the room from where her makeshift closet stood. Shirts and pants flew across the air landing somewhere on the floor or couch she had positioned perfectly on the light hardwoods.

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