Chapter 96
Clarke awoke to her husband saying, "Rise and shine, Princess."
She rolled over onto her back and opened her eyes, confused as to what he was carrying into the bedroom. "What?" she said, propping herself up. "What is this?" It was tray. Full of food.
"Breakfast in bed," he announced.
"Oh, it smells good," she said, sitting up all the way. She'd never actually gotten breakfast in bed before. "But why am I getting this?"
"Because you deserve it," he said, carefully setting the tray down on her lap. There was more food on there than she'd anticipated. Her plate looked like something straight out of a restaurant, full of scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage patties, and toast. He'd also given her a bowl of yogurt with pieces of strawberries in it and a big glass of orange juice.
"Bellamy, you didn't have to do this for me," she said.
He sat down on the side of the bed and assured her, "I wanted to."
It was super sweet of him, no doubt about that. She knew he was probably still feeling bad about his behavior in recent weeks, but between last night's dinner and now this . . . she felt encouraged. "Looks like I got a little bit of everything here," she remarked.
"Sure do. What do you wanna try first?"
"Hmm . . ." It all looked really good. "Sausage."
"Okay, then." He started to untie his sweatpants.
"Bellamy!" she yelped.
"Alright, just kidding." He lifted the fork from the tray, used it to cut off a piece of the sausage patty, and then fed it to her. Not the most romantic thing to eat, but oh, well.
"Mmm," she said. "Very good."
"The hash browns are the best," he informed her.
"Oh, did you taste-test everything?"
"Yeah. That's what all the great chefs do."
"So you're a chef now?" she teased.
"Yeah, screw being a football coach. This is my calling." He scooped up a bite of hash browns and fed those to her, too. And indeed, they tasted delicious. A little more crunchy than mushy. Just the way she liked them.
"It's good to see you smiling again," he said.
"You, too." One of the many reasons why they worked as a couple was because they were so good at making each other smile and laugh. Just making each other happy in general. This super thoughtful, unexpected breakfast in bed . . . it definitely made her happy.
Unfortunately, Avery began to cry, disrupting their morning moment. Before she could even move, Bellamy was on his feet saying, "Don't worry, I got her."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Just enjoy your breakfast." He headed out of their room and across the hall into the nursery, and she heard him slip into his dad voice, which was . . . not exactly high-pitched, because Bellamy's voice was too deep to go high-pitched, but it was definitely his gruff version of a coo. And Avery stopped crying the moment she heard it.
Even though it was Sunday, and she'd come to dread Sundays for the same reason Bellamy did, this Sunday was actually off to a good start.
...
Bellamy strained as he lifted the bench press bar for the thirtieth time since adding more weight to it. He placed it back in its slot and sat up, feeling the burn in his arm muscles. Beside him, Miller was taking the weights off of his bar.
"So is this gonna be our new thing, working out on weekends?" his friend asked.
"Can it be?" He needed something on this day of the week in particular to keep his mind off of . . . other things.
"Sure. Works for me," Miller said. "Should we invite Murphy next week?"
"Murphy doesn't work out." When Bellamy thought of that kid in the gym, all he could picture was the bench press bar crushing his windpipe.
"Yeah, I doubt Jasper or Monty would wanna come, either," Miller said.
"It's fine if it's just us, though," Bellamy said. As long as he had one person who could hang out with him, then he basically had someone to keep him in line. Not that he couldn't keep himself in line, but . . . it just helped to have someone else around, in case he started to feel tempted. That wasn't gonna happen, but . . . just in case. Miller was gonna be his safety net.
Unfortunately, Miller didn't seem to realize that he was a safety net, because he picked up two forty pound dumbbells and asked, "You wanna swing by Eligius after we finish up here?" as he began to do alternating bicep curls.
"Uh, no, I . . . can't," Bellamy answered awkwardly.
"You can't?"
"Yeah, I . . ." He wasn't about to reveal what he and Clarke had talked about, the promise he'd made to her—no, that was just between them—so he said, "After Finn leaves today, I just really wanna spend time with Clarke."
"Oh." Miller nodded, smirking. "I see."
"Not like that. Well . . ." It wasn't like he'd say no to sex. Although maybe Clarke would. And if she did, he couldn't blame her. He'd put her through some crap lately. It wouldn't surprise him if she didn't feel like sleeping with him.
When he left the gym, Bellamy took the long way home, just to avoid driving by the bar. Even with his drive taking a couple extra minutes, though, when he got home, there was still a car out front that he'd hoped wouldn't be there.
"Shit," he swore. Finn was supposed to leave at 3:00, wasn't he? It was 3:05. Why the hell was he still there?
He sat out in his car, waiting for five minutes until the front door opened and Finn walked out. He heard him say, "Hey, I think Bellamy's home," and Clarke looked out and smiled when she saw him. He thought he heard Finn tell her, "See you next week," but she didn't say anything back to him. When Finn strode by Bellamy's car, he kind of nodded at him, but Bellamy happily ignored him and waited until he'd walked past to get out of his car and head inside.
"How was that?" he asked Clarke. "Almost cordial?"
"I'll take it," she said.
He shut the door, kicked off his shoes, and asked, "So how'd today go?"
"Oh, fine," she said with a sigh. "Three weeks down. We're a fourth of the way there, so . . ."
That was it? Fuck, it already seemed like so much longer.
"How was your workout?" she asked him.
"Good." Exercising always gave him energy, made him feel ready to do more. "I think we're gonna do that every week now."
"That's great," she said.
"Yeah." It'd become a routine, a habit, and eventually, he wouldn't even have to take the long way home.
He didn't realize that he'd kind of been staring at her until she gave him a confused look and said, "What?"
"Nothing, I just . . ." His eyes drifted down to her lips. "I wanna kiss you."
She smiled softly and said, "So kiss me."
"But after everything we've been dealing with, I didn't . . . I wasn't sure if you'd want me to," he admitted. He felt like he needed her permission. Explicitly.
"Bellamy." She moved in close to him, putting her hands on his chest and tilting her head back. "I want you to kiss me."
There it was then, all the permission he needed. If she hadn't been comfortable with it, she wouldn't have said that. He lowered his mouth onto hers and immediately felt that familiar electricity. Of course it hadn't gone anywhere just because of a couple arguments.
"Mmm," she purred when their lips parted. She must have felt it, too.
"Do you want me to . . . do more than kiss you?" he hesitantly asked.
She nodded almost sheepishly.
"Yeah?"
"Later tonight, though," she said.
"Ah, I see. Romantic lovemaking stuff, huh?" he determined.
"Is that okay with you?"
It'd been a while since he'd properly made love to his wife. "It's perfect," he said, already thinking of the ways he wanted to touch her, the things he wanted to do. She deserved to have every single inch of her beautiful body be adored.
...
Dorm room beds weren't exactly made for three people, but Bellamy didn't let that deter him from having his next romp with Courtney and Stacey. He'd actually worried he might have screwed it up when he called Stacey Stacey, because that wasn't even her name. But as soon as he'd started to finger her, she'd given in and said, "Fine, I'll be Stacey for you."
He and Courtney lay next to each other that night, exhausted but still horny as hell, while Stacey curled up near the foot of the bed, lazily stroking his cock. "How many girls can you handle at once, Bellamy?" she asked him.
"I don't know. What do you guys think?"
"I think . . . five," Courtney declared.
"Five?" he echoed. That was ambitious.
"No, six," Stacey wagered.
"Six?!" He had stamina and all, but still, he was a man, not a machine. "How about we try three and I just work my way up?" he suggested.
"We could do that," Stacey said. "I wonder if Rose would be down."
"Probably," Courtney said, laughing. "She's such a slut."
"Oh, wait, we're actually doing this? You guys got another friend who's down?" If this Rose chick was hot like them, then he wouldn't say no to it.
"Well, we're just thinking about how we should celebrate after you guys win your bowl game," Courtney said, tracing her fingers along the lines of his chest. "What do you wanna do to us then? How hard do you wanna fuck?"
"Pretty hard." He'd really thrown himself into the college lifestyle these past few weeks, partying more often than he studied, having sex with as many girls as possible. When they won that bowl game, things were just gonna escalate.
"Are you gonna hurt us?" Courtney asked, catching him off guard.
"What?" He shot her a confused look. "No." He didn't wanna hurt anyone.
"Because you can," Courtney said. "My last boyfriend used to put his hands around my neck."
Nothing about that sounded fun to him. "I'm not gonna do that," he told her. Sure, he was down to be adventurous in bed—the fact that he was lying in his with two girls right now was proof of that—but there were also lines he wouldn't cross.
"My last boyfriend liked to call me a whore while we were going at it," Stacey said, sitting up on her knees. "You can do that, too, if you want."
Yet another thing he didn't see the appeal in, so he shot that suggestion down straight away. "No."
"Why not?" she pressed.
"'cause you're not a whore."
She laughed at that and pointed out, "I'm having threesomes with a guy I barely even know and my best friend. I'm a whore. I admit it."
"Oh my god, if your dad knew what you've been up to since you've been here . . ." Courtney trailed off.
"He'd stop sending me money, that's for sure."
Bellamy frowned. "You have a dad?"
"I prefer to call him my personal ATM." Stacey smirked.
Even if they weren't close or anything, it still kind of made him . . . second guess things for a moment. "You're somebody's daughter."
"Well, yeah, we both are."
He hadn't really thought of that before. When he had hot girls in front of him telling him to take his pants off, their fathers weren't the first thing that came to mind.
"Hey, Bellamy, come back," Courtney whined, reaching out for him when he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "We're lonely without you."
They weren't lonely; they were horny and willing. Possibly a little stoned. And he didn't care about either of them. Not really. Nothing they were doing was going to amount to anything serious. How would the people who truly loved them feel about that?
"Uh-oh," Stacey said, "he's freaking out now."
"Oh, come on," Courtney groaned impatiently. "Newsflash: Every single girl you've fucked has been somebody's daughter. The nice ones, the bitchy ones. The slut ones, the virgin ones. We've all got dads out there who wouldn't like you very much."
Of course they wouldn't. Because he wasn't being very nice to their daughters. Sure, he wasn't choking them or calling them whores like they were asking him to do, but he was still just using them for sex.
"But we like you," Stacey reminded him. It was almost like the girls had a good cop/bad cop thing going on, and she was the good one, while Courtney liked to taunt him more.
Did they even really like him, though? Take the sex out of the picture, and did they have any reason to? He didn't take any interest in their lives, didn't do anything to make them feel special. Hell, he'd probably never done that with any girl. Except for . . .
"Fine, if you're not gonna play with us, we'll just play with each other," Courtney said.
He heard Stacey giggle, followed by the sound of lips smacking. He'd watched them scissor each other earlier, but that had been on his request. If they left him out now, it'd be out of spite.
"Wait a minute." He lay back down with them, cupped both their heads, and leaned in to kiss them at the same time. Both of their tongues stroked his, and just like that, they were starting back up again.
"Are we gonna fuck?" Stacey asked excitedly.
"Yeah, we're gonna fuck." That was all they ever did.
...
Bellamy was determined to make the night as romantic as possible for Clarke, so he found a Spotify playlist called "Perfect Playlist for Making Love" and lit some candles in the bedroom while she did the mom stuff with Avery. When he shut off the lights, he said, "Yes," proud of himself for doing so much with so little. The ambiance was set.
He took his shirt off and was stripping down to his underwear when he heard an alarming sound coming from Avery's nurse: crying. But it wasn't Avery crying. Running across the hall, he pushed open the door and said, "Clarke? What's wrong?"
There she sat with Avery in her arms, shirt off, bra cup pulled down, and instead of telling him what had her so worked up, she just kept crying.
"Baby, what's wrong?" He knelt down in front of her, touching her face. "Talk to me." Avery looked fine, so he didn't understand why she was upset.
"I just . . ." She pulled her bra back up, and the tears continued to fall down her face like waterfalls. "It's been getting harder and harder to feed her. That's why it's been taking so long." She shook her head, looking like she was about to just fall apart. "I don't think I'm producing as much milk anymore."
He had to admit, he was relieved to hear it was only that and not something more serious. "Well, that's okay," he said, rubbing her arm to try to soothe her.
"No, it's not," she cried. "It's, like, drying up or something."
"Well, that's how it happens, right? I mean, she's almost four months old now."
"But some women do this for years!" she yelled. She wasn't yelling at him. More like she was just venting her frustration. "It's not supposed to dry up if you're doing it regularly, and I've been doing it regularly! I mean, you see me. I do it a lot."
"Yeah, you do," he agreed. She was really committed to it, and hell, he hadn't even known it'd been getting more difficult.
"So why is this happening?" Her body began to shake as she cried.
"I don't know." He took Avery out of her arms, figuring that she'd just start crying, too, if she sensed her mom doing the same. "Maybe it's just a temporary thing."
"But what if it's not?" she fretted "What if it stops altogether and I can't feed her anymore? I mean, I'm her mom. I'm supposed to be able to feed her, you know?"
He felt like he couldn't do anything for her, but seeing her break down like this over something that she probably couldn't even control . . . it broke his heart. "Clarke . . ."
"I did everything I was supposed to do. And it was fine; it's been fine."
He took her hand in his, squeezing it supportively. "Well, maybe it's something you can fix. Maybe it's just a hormonal thing that'll pass."
She sniffled loudly. "You think?"
He didn't want to give her false hope when he had no idea what the hell he was talking about, so he said, "I don't know. I don't really . . ."
"I was looking online," she interrupted, "and it said something about herbs."
"Herbs?" What the hell?
"Yes, and I would do something with herbs if it means I can keep going," she rambled. "'cause I don't wanna stop this. I love being able to do this for her. You know?"
"Yeah." The whole breastfeeding experience seemed to be . . . almost sacred to her. And hell, who was he to judge?
"And if I can't anymore . . ." Her mouth trembled. "I'd feel so guilty."
"Clarke." He didn't want her feeling that way.
The guilt seemed to overcome her as she bent over, hiding her face.
"Hey, babe, look at me," he urged. She didn't, but he kept trying to comfort her anyway. "You have nothing to feel guilty about."
"But it hasn't even been four whole months yet," she cried, sitting back up. "It's not fair. Most women . . ."
"Every woman's different," he pointed out. "Your body might just be different."
"I don't want it to be different. I just want it to do what it's supposed to." Looking down at her chest, she lamented, "My boobs suck."
"No, they don't."
"Yes, they do," she insisted.
"Trust me, your boobs do not suck," he reassured her, hoping to inject a little humor into a serious situation by joking, "In fact, I'm a pretty big fan of them."
Somehow, despite how devastated she clearly was, that got a sad laugh out of her. "God," she said, wiping the tears off her face, smearing her makeup in the process. "You must think I'm being crazy right now."
"No. No, not at all." She'd been so strong about so many things lately. If she wanted to break down over this, then she had every right. "I mean, I know I can't completely understand what this means to you," he acknowledged, "but . . . you're an amazing mom to her, Clarke. Whether you're breastfeeding her or not, she couldn't ask for a better one."
Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, but he hoped that was because he'd said something heartwarming, not because she'd thought of something else that had saddened her. "Maybe we could ask Dr. Cillian about it at the next checkup?" she said.
"Sure." That was coming up in a couple days. Maybe everything would be back to normal by then.
"And maybe I just have to see a lactation consultant or something," she went on.
"Yeah." Was that an actual job? He was totally clueless, but he figured she knew more about it than he did. "I'm sure you're not the only woman who's gone through this."
"Yeah," she agreed. For a moment, she just sat there breathing, as if to calm herself down, then nodded and said, "Okay. Yeah." She held out her arms, so he handed Avery back to her, and she snuggled her for a moment before kissing the top of her head and whispering, "Goodnight, baby. I love you," as she put her back into her crib. "I love you so much."
"She loves you, too," Bellamy reminded her. That wasn't something that would change if she needed to start drinking formula. But he wasn't about to mention formula at all, not when she was . . . still looking pretty fragile about the whole thing.
He put his arm around her, and they moved at a slow pace towards the bedroom. She seemed reluctant to leave the nursery at all.
When she saw that he'd lit candles around the room, she put her hand on her chest and softly said, "Oh . . ."
Shit, he thought. He should've run back in there and blown out the candles. "Obviously we don't have to . . ." He trailed off, zero expectations of sex actually happening now.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I messed everything up."
"No, that was me, remember?" That was why he'd had to sleep on the couch. "You didn't mess anything up."
"I didn't?" she squeaked out.
"No." They could have sex any night. Even if all they did tonight was lie down together and hold each other . . . that was enough for him.
She sniffled again, then hugged him tightly and said, "I'm so glad we're getting back to normal. I can't do any of this without you."
He held her close, willing to not let go until she did. Even though she seemed grateful for his presence and his support, and even though her emotions seemed like they were calming down, he just wanted to do something more for her. Something better. He just wanted to be better.