27. Evie

Chapter 27

Evie

"Cum sponges!" Bristol cried from her perch on a plush armchair at the front of the event room inside the Winchester Hotel. Her bright blue gaze locked on her best friend seated at our table, and she clutched a package to her chest. "Dakota, you know me so well."

The ladies in attendance all laughed, but I spun in my seat to face Dakota. "What in the hell is a cum sponge?" Shaking my head, I muttered, "You know what? I probably don't want to know."

My young friend giggled, downing her second—or maybe it was third—mimosa. Setting down her glass, she held up both hands. "Okay, hear me out on this one."

Another fit of giggles gripped her, and she placed her head on the table, taking a few deep breaths to settle herself. Bristol wasn't the only one who enjoyed a party before noon where alcohol was served.

"They're a cylinder-shaped sponge on a stick." She paused. "You know what? It'll be better if I show you."

My eyes widened as she darted across the room on unsteady legs, reaching into whatever bag contained the item in question before returning. Plopping back down on her chair, she unzipped a clear plastic bag, producing a singular sponge.

Dakota took one look at the horror etched on my face and smirked. "Don't worry. I'm not going to actually show it in use. This is more of a theoretical visual demonstration." Offering me the one she held, she said, "Here, you take this one."

Cautiously, I reached out to grip the plastic stick protruding from the end of the sponge.

Clearing her throat, Dakota began, "Okay, so it's the same insertion tactic you'd use with a tampon. But instead of absorbing blood, it soaks up all the cum. And you don't leave it in there. Just spin the stick a few times and remove it. Then voilà! No leakage."

As someone who hadn't used a condom in nearly a decade, I was mildly intrigued. "Does it really work?"

Her head bobbed enthusiastically. "You bet! Bristol was hooked on them long before I lost my V-card to Braxton. And then when I did, she insisted I try them. Now, I have a brand endorsement deal because I've used them in a few too many of my books, and the company that makes them is loving how many readers have run to buy their product. So, of course, when a free box showed up on my doorstep the other day, I couldn't resist throwing a pack into Bristol's gift since she was the one who turned me on to them."

"Hmm." I eyed the sponge held in my grasp. "I'll have to check that out."

"Yeah, I'll bet you're getting all the creampies now that you're preggo." Dakota's eyes dropped to the vicinity of my belly. Even though I wasn't showing yet, the skin around our growing babies was becoming firmer to the touch.

My face flamed. I knew these girls were close, but I wasn't about to volunteer that, since learning I was pregnant, Jenner hadn't touched me once. Maybe I didn't need these cum sponges after all.

Tessa piped up beside me. "I still can't believe you're gonna have three babies all at once."

"You and me both," I breathed out.

I was still wrapping my mind around the whole thing. Yes, three babies was a lot to take on, but one of the things I was working on with my therapist was breaking it down day by day. If I looked at the situation as a whole, it would be easy to become overwhelmed. We had several months before three babies were a reality, so right now, we were focused on the one due in a matter of weeks.

"You know"—Dakota held up her champagne flute for a refill from a passing waiter—"I should be pissed at you."

"Me?" I placed a hand to my chest.

"Yeah, you." She narrowed her eyes. "You've given Braxton baby fever."

Okay, it was kinda adorable that her young husband was already itching to start a family. It reminded me so very much of Jenner at his age. I only prayed their path to parenthood would be easier than ours had been.

A blur of copper came into my field of vision, and suddenly, Bristol's arms were encircling Dakota's neck from behind. "Oh, don't you go blaming Evie. Braxton has wanted a gaggle of kids since before the two of you even hooked up."

Dakota huffed. "Yeah. What's wrong with that guy?"

I couldn't stop the smile that spread onto my face. "He loves you so much that he can't contain it," I offered in explanation. "The only choice left is to let it grow."

"Yeah, well, if it hurts half as much as when he took my virginity, I'm not in any rush."

Tessa snickered as she said, hidden beneath a fake cough, "No comment."

Pointing an accusing finger at Tessa, she screamed, "I knew it!"

Bristol waved a hand to a member of the wait staff. "Water over here for this one. She's cut off."

Dakota's brow furrowed. "Hey!"

"You'll thank me later," Bristol promised. Turning to me, she said, "You'll have to forgive my bestie. When she drinks too much, it acts like a truth serum. Apparently, childbirth is high on her list of fears. Who knew?"

"Listen, lady. You would be terrified, too, if the first time you met your sister-in-law, it was hours after she'd given birth, and in her drug-induced delirium, she made sure you knew how wide everything got stretched out." Dakota extended her hands, curving them to form a circle where her fingertips didn't quite touch. "Yowch." Her curls bounced as she shuddered.

Tessa tilted her head from side to side while wrinkling her nose. "That's eerily accurate."

I grimaced, reality sinking in that I might have to endure that twice over. I wasn't sure the surgical option and resulting recovery were any better.

Bristol clapped her hands, seemingly eager to change the subject. "So, Evie, do you have a best friend from back home in Oklahoma who's gonna swoop in and steal all your attention from us once news reaches that you're about to have an instant family?"

"No." I shook my head. "When I went off to college, I lost touch with a lot of people. Well, not so much lost touch as our interests kinda drifted apart. Not a lot of people leave Rust Canyon, and many of my friends got married young and stayed home to support their husbands. Not that I didn't do exactly that, but going to college set me apart. Then you throw in the rising star athlete I married, and we just weren't on the same life path anymore."

Bristol hummed, hugging her best friend tighter. "What about college, then? There has to be someone from your past who will be excited about your news."

Nostalgia hit me square in the chest, looking at the pair of women across the table. From what I'd gathered over the past few months since my return, they had been college roommates, and seeing them made me think of my own ride-or-die. The one I hadn't spoken to in years.

Immediately, Bristol picked on my silence. "Ooh. See, I knew there was someone! Tell us all about her before she shows up. It's a very serious business vetting girl gang members."

"Girl gang?"

The redhead waved her hand around the small table where it was me, herself, Dakota, and Tessa. "Yeah, that's us." She nodded solemnly. "It's very exclusive."

I let out a laugh. "Yeah, I can see that. Glad I made the cut."

Letting go of Dakota, she rushed over to hug me. "Of course you did, Evie. We love you."

Blinking back tears, I cursed the damn pregnancy hormones for making me weepy at the drop of a hat.

"Aw, no!" Bristol exclaimed when she pulled back. "I didn't mean to make you cry."

I waved a hand before my face, but my shaky voice wasn't very convincing. "I'm fine."

Bristol gestured for Tessa to scooch over a seat so she could sit beside me. "What's wrong?"

Squeezing my eyes shut, I whispered, "I did have a best friend in college. But we don't talk anymore."

A soft, warm hand found mine. "You don't have to tell us about it. I'm sorry if I brought up bad memories."

Sighing, I faced my new friends. "We didn't have any kind of falling out or anything like that. Jenner and I kept our infertility struggles to ourselves. I didn't want anyone to know, didn't want the constant looks of pity. My college roommate, Natasha—who also happened to be my maid of honor when we got married the first time—got pregnant by accident in the middle of all of it. Seeing her have the perfect little family was too much, so I stopped taking her calls. I know it sounds selfish. That I just let our friendship die because I couldn't get over my own issues."

Tessa said, "You were in self-preservation mode, Evie. A good friend would understand that. You should reach out. I'm sure she'd be happy to hear from you."

I shook my head. "No, it's been too long."

Dakota chimed in. "If Bristol ever stopped talking to me? It would suck for sure, but if she tried reaching out after all this time? I would jump at the chance to hear her voice and catch up on all I'd missed in her life."

My eyes slid to the redhead by my side. "Yeah . . . there's also something else I didn't mention."

"Why are you looking at me when you say that?" Bristol asked cautiously.

"I'm ninety-nine percent sure Natasha hooked up with Maddox the night of my wedding."

A wicked grin curved on her face. "Then I guess we're even. I fucked his brains out the night you remarried Jenner."

The four of us burst out laughing, the earlier undertone of sadness fading away.

The redhead wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. "Seriously, though. It's no secret that Maddox had an active sex life before we got together. I did, too. I can't be mad about some woman he slept with when I was"—Bristol counted on her fingers, trying to do the math—"thirteen."

Stunned, I couldn't believe how mature she was being about her partner's past. I didn't want to know about a single one of the women Jenner had been intimate with before we'd met. The urge to play the comparison game would be far too strong.

Dakota snorted. "Yeah, you weren't so breezy about it when it came to Hannah and Maddox having a history." She cupped a hand, stage-whispering to those of us not in the know, "Hannah Moreau, as in Coach Moreau of the Comets's daughter."

Bristol glared at her best friend, pointing a finger in her direction. "That was different, and you know it."

"Why? Because you always wanted to be her when you grew up?"

Lips twisting to the side, Bristol admitted, "Maybe . . ."

"Let's share with the group why you were ridiculous to be even a little bit jealous. One—she's freaking married. And two—you're the younger, hotter model." She threw in a wink for good measure. "Less mileage."

I clapped a hand over my mouth to try and stop the laughter bubbling up from my chest.

Bristol flicked her wrist, dismissing Dakota. "Don't listen to her; she's drunk. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine."

"Speaking of friends," Dakota began, "where is the Wicked Witch?"

A shiver rolled down my spine at the thought of Juliana and her nastiness.

"Oh, didn't you hear?" A smug satisfaction sounded in Bristol's voice.

"Hear what?" I asked.

"Maddox benched Saint indefinitely for the little stunt he pulled. After a week of trying to get his agent to coerce management into overriding the decision, he realized it was pointless. So, he waived his no-trade clause, and they shipped him off to Alberta."

My jaw dropped. "Wait, what stunt?"

"You seriously don't know?" I shook my head, so she explained, "Juliana is the one who blew the whistle on you with the adoption agency. And Saint was dumb enough to gloat to Jenner about it."

While I remained speechless that I hadn't heard about this in the weeks since the incident at the agency, Tessa remarked, "It's so cold up there her fake tits will probably freeze."

Bristol leaned both elbows on the table. "They might, if Saint hadn't dumped her ass for fucking up his career with her vindictive bullshit."

"Karma, you gotta love it." Dakota raised her freshly filled glass. "Evie ends up with everything while Jules gets kicked off the gravy train."

"I'll drink to that!" Bristol cheered, and everyone raised their glasses.

No one warned me that double the babies meant I'd be getting up twice as much in the middle of the night to pee. Rolling out of bed, I rushed to the bathroom before my bladder exploded.

Damn, Jenner and his forcing me to drink ridiculous amounts of water.

A relieved sigh rushed past my lips when I made it in time, but when I returned to bed, I noticed Jenner wasn't in it.

"Babe?" I called out, only to be met with silence.

Checking my phone quickly, I saw it was nowhere near morning, so where the hell could he be at this time of night?

Throwing a cardigan over my loose sleep shirt, I padded into the hallway. Soft music reached my ears, and there was light coming from the cracked-open door of the guest bedroom.

Curious as to what he was doing in there in the middle of the night, I stepped closer, pushing inside. Jenner stood with his back to me, dressed in paint-splattered clothes, as he used a paint roller on a stick along the wall.

"Whatcha doin'?" I asked softly so as not to startle him.

Jenner spun around, the roller stick suspended in the air. "You shouldn't be in here. The paint fumes are bad for the babies."

Folding my arms over my breasts—which I could've sworn had doubled in size in the few weeks since learning I was pregnant—I leaned against the doorframe. "I'll go back to bed if you tell me why you're painting in the middle of the night."

Sighing, my husband replied, "Couldn't sleep. I got to thinking about all the things we need to get ready, and I needed to do something to settle my mind."

"So, you decided to redecorate?"

"Yeah. The yellow nursey has been waiting for Baby Girl for months. Which worked out pretty well when we found out she was getting two little brothers." His mention of our twin boys had my hands dropping to my belly. It still didn't feel real. "I had this navy paint sitting in my trunk and figured if I was up anyway, I could at least be productive."

"I'm surprised you didn't opt for Indy Speed Red."

Jenner shrugged. "Hearing about Braxton's upbringing and the pressure placed on him to follow in his brother's footsteps, I don't want our sons to feel like they don't have options, that they can't carve their own paths, follow their own dreams. I thought a space theme would be kinda cool, you know? Boys like rocket ships, right?"

A smirk found its way onto my lips. "Is that your way of saying you like rocket ships, Jenner?"

"I mean . . . if they offer me a ride into space tomorrow, I'm totally taking it." A boyish grin curved on his handsome face.

"Come here." I crooked my finger

He set the paint roller down and stepped closer. Once he was within reach, I cupped his jaw, running my thumbs over the soft texture of his beard.

"Is it okay?" he asked quietly. "If you want to do something else, I can scrap it and start over."

"It's perfect." I pressed my lips to his. "They're going to love it. And not because space is ‘cool,' but because their dad poured his heart into it."

Jenner peeked down to the swell of my belly between us, and I followed his gaze.

"I don't think I've ever been this happy, Evie," he whispered.

"Me, neither," I agreed. "Feels like a dream, and I never want to wake up."

If we were this thrilled at the idea of our growing family, I was certain our hearts would burst when we finally met our children.