Cassie was still fast asleep by the time Tommy got back from his early morning run. The streets of the Burgh were slowly beginning to awaken for the day in the same lazy manner they always did. Tommy looked down at Cassie and smiled at her scrunched up face. Her hair was splayed across the pillow in a haphazard manner and her mouth was parted slightly making her snore quietly. Sometimes the domesticity of his life with her made Tommy feel suffocated and itchy inside. It made him panic that he was trapped in a bubble of something that was far too good to be true and therefore it would inevitably crumble.
He jumped in the shower and scrubbed himself until he was red raw. He scrubbed and scrubbed until he felt clean again, not just physically but emotionally as well. Then he closed his eyes and enjoyed the short time he would feel light again because by the time his hair had dried and he was heading to Colt's gym for training, the blackness that owned him would reach out with its inky claws again, reminding him that his happiness was only temporary.
With only a towel wrapped around his hips, he looked at Cassie all warm and cosy snuggled in bed and he climbed in beside her. Smiling to himself when she nestled into him, he pressed a gentle kiss on her forehead and brushed her dark hair back from her peaceful face. His nose nuzzled against hers in an eskimo kiss and she opened her eyes to find him looking at her with so much love that she thought her heart might burst.
"Morning," Cassie croaked groggily.
"Hmm," Tommy smirked kissing her with those full lips of his.
When he licked at her mouth and tried to slip his tongue inside she shook her head and pushed him away.
"Tommy, I've got morning breath," she grimaced.
"Oh really? And there was me thinking there was a rubbish dump inside your mouth what with the smell and all," he teased, his eyes twinkling playfully.
"You're mean," Cassie pouted, slapping his chest.
"Hmm, well if I can't lick these lips then perhaps your other ones would be happy for my attention," he smirked suggestively.
"You're not funny," she narrowed her eyes at him, ignoring the way she immediately began to throb for him.
"Who said I was trying to be?"
"You're a very, very bad man, Tommy Conlon," she shook her head but couldn't keep the smile off her face. She leaned up on her elbows to kiss him sweetly and nibble at his lower lip playfully. "As much as I wanna do this all morning, some of us have to get to work. We can't all spend our days hanging out at Colt's and riling up Mad Dog Grimes."
"Ouch," Tommy pretended to be wounded. "You trying to say I don't bring home the bacon for my girl?"
"You said it not me," Cassie grinned, getting up and rifling through her closet for some clean clothes.
She had a meeting with a very important buyer today and needed her lucky blouse. And this blouse truly was lucky because she had been wearing it when she interviewed for the job and for every deal she had secured for her company ever since. She had also been wearing that very blouse right before she and Tommy had sex for the very first time, and after a three year drought, she got lucky at least four times that night.
"So, when I put five grand into the joint bank account after winning that fight two weeks ago, that wasn't work?"
"Meh," Cassie shrugged and pulled a face, rifling through her underwear drawer next. "I mean, yeah ok the fighting hard work, I'll give you that, but the rest of it was every guy's fantasy, huh? The drinks were free and the girls were literally throwing themselves at you."
"You know I don't like any of that," Tommy frowned.
"So you say," she grinned flinging a pair of black lace knickers at him over her shoulders. "Tommy Conlon, you're so strong and handsome. Can you autograph my panties? Can you sign my ass cheeks?"
"I'll do more than sign them," he growled, leaping out of bed and chasing her down the hallway.
Cassie squealed as he followed her into the bathroom, tickling her until she almost passed out. His stubbled cheek rubbed against the sensitive skin of her neck while his fingers prodded her sides, where he knew she was terribly ticklish. She kicked out furiously which only made him laugh at her pathetic attempts to stop him.
"Tommy please," she groaned when he stopped tickling and his thumbs brushed across her nipples in the thin vest top she wore.
"Is that a Tommy please stop?" he murmured, his hand sliding down and rubbing at her until she bit her lip and arched her head back against the bathroom wall. Abruptly he let go of Cassie and she wanted to scream. He knew it as well judging by the very self satisfied look on his face. "Hmm that's what I thought."
He pulled her against his chest, rubbing his hands up and down her curvy waist and squeezing her perfectly rounded bottom while he nibbled on her ear lobe. She could feel him hard against her centre and suddenly she was even more desperate to feel him inside of her.
"Come on, Tommy, stop teasing me," Cassie whined, reaching down in between their bodies to slide down her shorts.
"But it's so much fun," he grinned, lifting her up and wrapping one of her legs around him as he slid inside of her slowly.
Cassie couldn't reply because she was too busy allowing herself to get lost in the feelings he was stirring as he moved inside of her. His face was buried in her neck and his hand gripped her thigh, keeping her leg around his waist while he thrust in and out so slowly that she thought you was going to lose her mind at any second. She could feel her need building and she craved more.
"Fuck babe," Tommy groaned, nipping at her neck as his thrusts grew more desperate.
"Please baby," she panted as his free hand reached down to rub gently against her clit just how he knew she liked. Slow, rhythmic circles that were offset by the way he began to thrust into her with so much aggression that it almost hurt, but far from in a bad way. Her orgasm hit her without warning and she was pretty sure her legs would have gone from beneath her if it hadn't been for Tommy holding her upright while he pounded into her mercilessly again and again in a bid to reach his own release.
"Fuck," he grunted, biting down on her neck as he spilled himself inside of her.
Lifting his face, he cupped her cheek and brushed his thumb against Cassie's lower lip, smiling when she pretended to bite him. Tommy wasn't really one for words and sweet endearments, but he didn't need to be because when he looked at her like he was right now, his eyes projected everything his heart felt.
"I love you," Cassie smiled. "And I hope you're happy that I'm going to be late for work now."
"Well, given the noises you were making, I'd say you're happy you're late for work," Tommy grinned mischievously.
"You're a bastard, you know that," she stuck her tongue out playfully.
"I am," Tommy nodded, straightening up. "Now get your ass in that shower and I'll make you some breakfast."
Cassie had no shame in ogling his toned rear when he left the bathroom and he chuckled, throwing her a cheeky wink over his shoulder. Switching on the shower, she wondered just how she was so lucky to have a boyfriend who was not only handsome but who was an absolute teddy bear inside too. Although, he would deny it if she ever told him that of course. Lathering shampoo into her thick and now rather knotted hair, she closed her eyes and remembered how aloof he had been when she first met him three years ago at the gym. She had a meeting with Colt Boyd about her company possibly sponsoring the gym, and Colt had been waylaid leaving Cassie alone with Tommy. It had been somewhat awkward because he had just eyeballed her and grunted in response to any question she asked. Then weirdly, as she was leaving a few hours later, he asked if she wanted to go out sometime, and for some even weirder reason she had said yes.
Three dates you went on and each one was as uncomfortable as the last. He barely spoke and would sit there chewing on a toothpick while Cassie harped on about her life in a bid to fill the strained silence. Despite the abnormal situation, she found herself drawn to him and she couldn't stay away. He was like a magnet and she was powerless to resist him. Then one Wednesday evening he had suddenly appeared at her apartment, drunk out of his face and bleeding from a fight he had gotten into at a bar and he had let it all out. His parents, his dysfunctional childhood, the trauma of losing his best friend along with his entire unit in the marines, and somehow after that he had just never left. Not that Cassie was complaining. He had fitted into her home and her life as though he had always belonged there, and she couldn't imagine never having him now.
It was as she was smiling to herself, thinking about the day when she had finally just given him the spare key that everything suddenly went black.
…
"I think she's coming around."
Cassie could hear Tommy and a couple of other familiar voices.
"Oh what, are you a doctor now?"
Ah, that snarky tone was Tess, for sure.
"No, but I've got eyes and I can see that hers are trying to open."
"They are not," Tess scoffed.
"They damn well are," she could hear Tommy's scowl.
"Why is it every time you two are together, you end up bickering?" Brendan sighed in exasperation.
"Because they're far too alike for their own good," Cassie muttered, cracking open an eye and feeling distinctly like an animal in a zoo. "Why are you all crowded around like I'm on my death bed? And where the hell am I?"
"In the hospital," Tommy sat down on the bed and grabbed her hand. "You fainted in the shower and knocked yourself out."
"I what?" she frowned.
"Yep, and got yourself a nice wound to show for it as well," Tess grinned pointing to her forehead, where there was a dressing the size of a Texas stuck to it.
"You needed stitches and you have a concussion so they wanna keep you in for a day or two," Tommy said.
"But I can't," Cassie protested, trying to sit up only to find herself hit with a wave of nausea and a shooting pain down the back of her head. "Tommy, you gotta help me get out of here, I've got that meeting at two with the buyer from Lowndes'. My boss is gonna kill me if I don't get that deal."
"I've already called your boss and someone else is handling it," Tommy pushed her back down gently, his worried eyes caressing her pale face.
"Who? Don't tell me Debbie is doing it? She'll fuck it up and say something stupid in an attempt to sound clever and-"
"-Shut up and stop thinking about work," Tommy ordered. "There are more important things for you to be thinking about now."
"Like what?" she rolled her eyes. "Do I want purple grapes or green grapes while I'm in here? Or maybe can I ask the doctor really nicely not give me a crappy sandwich for lunch and let me order in a Chinese instead?"
"Well, if you shut up for a minute I'll tell you."
"Would you stop telling me to shut up, Tommy Conlon?" Cassie scowled.
"I have to cos you won't stop talking," he sighed.
"Alright lovebirds, give it a rest," Brendan interrupted. "Me and Tess are gonna take a little walk while you two talk."
"We are?" Tess frowned at her husband. "Oh! Yeah, we are. See you guys in a little while."
Cassie watched them leave and didn't miss the excited grin Tess gave Tommy on her way out, and immediately her suspicions were raised. Something was going on and apparently everyone knew apart from her.
"You feeling ok?" Tommy asked, picking her hand up and kissing her palm. "I was so scared when I found you knocked out and bleeding and-"
"-Cut to the chase, Conlon and tell me what's going on," she demanded, knowing he was stalling.
"I…" he opened his mouth and then closed it again. "Ok… um, right…"
"For crying out loud, you look like a fish gasping for air," Cassie exclaimed in annoyance. "Can you just spit out whatever it is that's got you behaving like such a nervous nelly?"
"We're having a baby," he blurted out.
Cassie looked at him. She really looked at him, waiting for his mouth to twitch and that rumble of laughter she found so sexy to escape him. But no. There was nothing. Not even a hint. He looked deadly serious in fact.
"I'm sorry, excuse me?" she frowned. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I said we're having a ba-"
"-Yeah I heard what you said," Cassie muttered. "But what I'm wondering is why the hell you would say something like that?"
"Erm, because it's the truth," Tommy scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, wondering if that was a trick question. "Listen, you're about as shocked as I was when the doctor first told me."
"The doctor told you?" Cassie was dumbfounded. "And you're sure they told you that? I mean, are you sure they didn't say I had kidney stones and you just misheard them?"
"I'm pretty certain they said it was a baby and not kidney stones," Tommy confirmed, peering into her face to deduce what exactly was going through her mind at that moment. So far he could see a few different emotions; confusion, panic and shock to name just a few. "When we brought you in they ran some bloods to check whether you had some sort of deficiency or something to make you faint like that, but it turned out it was cos there's a little human growing inside you. They said they were gonna wait for you to wake up and do a scan to see how far along you are. They asked me when your last period was but I told them yours were always all over the place so it was anyone's guess."
Cassie didn't move. She didn't say anything. She just looked at the clock on the wall just behind Tommy's head and watched the hand tick tock with each passing second. This felt like a blur; like it wasn't real.
"Cass?"
"Hmm?" she looked at Tommy finally.
"Babe, I know this is a shock but it'll be ok," Tommy cupped her face.
"No, a shock is finding out you've won a million dollars in the lottery," Cassie shook her head. "Or hearing that the sweet old lady you live next door to tripped and broke her neck and died. This is… well, I don't really know what this is but it's just… I'm not sure how to process this information right now."
"You're not happy?" Tommy looked wounded, and for some reason it really hurt her.
"Are you?"
"I never thought I'd say this, but yeah, I am," Tommy nodded, a little smile lighting up his face as he let his hand drop until it rested on her still flat stomach. "I never really thought about having kids in case I ruined them like my old man ruined me. Then they told me about the baby and all I could see was me and you, a house with a little white picket fence and a little girl that looks as beautiful as you. Cass, I love you and I'm in this for the long haul. And even up until a few hours ago, the thought of us doing this- the whole family thing- would have made my balls literally shrivel up inside of me with fear. But now, I find myself wondering why it's taken us so long. And I actually had Brendan bring me this."
Cassie could do nothing but watch as Tommy pulled out a simple rose gold band with a tear shaped single diamond and knelt down at the side of the bed. Her eyes widened when she realised what he was doing and she burst into tears before she could stop herself.
"Is that a yes?" Tommy grinned.
Cassie nodded, tears pouring down her face. Inside she was berating herself for ruining the moment with such dramatics, but everything that had happened in the last few minutes had sincerely overwhelmed her.
"I love you so much," Tommy stood up and kissed her gently.
"I love you too," Cassie whispered, sniffing and then kissing him back.
"We're having a baby," Tommy pressed his forehead against hers and smiled, his own eyes welling up. "A little mini you. She's gonna be perfect, just like you."
"What if it's a boy?" Cassie croaked, her voice suddenly thick with emotion.
"She won't be," Tommy winked.
And he was right.