Chapter 13: Desperate Measures
The city welcomed them back with a familiar gray drizzle, the kind that seeped into bones. Their villa smelled of closed-up air and lemony cleaning products Dave must have used before their trip. It felt smaller, the walls closer. Rave stood in the doorway, her duffel bag at her feet, staring at the curated chaos of their life together: a stack of racing magazines next to a physiology textbook, a single ignition coil on the coffee table acting as a paperweight for a pile of hospital bills.
“Home sweet fucking home,” she muttered, but there was no bite to it. Just exhaustion.
Dave watched her from behind, seeing the weight settle on her shoulders again. The flight had been silent, her hand resting on her belly over her thin dress, her gaze fixed on the cloud blanket below. That silent admission of fear in the rental house hovered between them, a specter they hadn’t yet faced in the daylight.
He moved past her, picking up the duffel. “I’ll run a bath.”
“Don’t want a bath,” she said, but followed him down the long hall to their bedroom.
The room was as they’d left it. The sheets were a tangled wreck from their frantic goodbye fuck a week ago. A forgotten coffee cup sat on his nightstand, the dregs long evaporated to a brown stain. Her side was worse: an open toolbox sat on the floor, a scatter of spark plugs and wrenches surrounding it like mechanical confetti. She’d been tuning the engine of her bike in here, he realized, the week before they left. The faint, petroleum scent of gasoline still clung to a discarded rag.
“Classy,” Dave said, nodding at the toolbox.
“I was looking for a distraction.” She kicked a socket wrench. It clattered against the leg of the bed. “Didn’t work.”
He dumped the bags and started stripping the bed. She leaned against the doorframe, watching his efficient movements. He was good at this—the domestic remediation of chaos. He bunched the sheets into a ball.
“I can smell us,” she said quietly. “On those. From before we left.”
He paused, the bundle in his arms. He looked at her. Her eyes were dark, pupils wide in the dim room. The defiance was gone, stripped away by the travel and the unspoken dread. What remained was a stark, raw need.
“Dave.” Her voice was a rough scrape. “I don’t want a bath. I don’t want clean sheets. I want to feel something else. I want you to make me feel something else.”
He dropped the sheets. They landed with a soft whump on the floor.
He crossed the room in three strides. He didn’t kiss her. He grabbed the hem of her cotton dress and pulled it up and over her head in one swift motion. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her body was a revelation every time. The taut, round swell of her stomach, the darker line bisecting it. Her breasts were heavier, veins like a road map of life. She stood there, exposed, her chin tipped up in a challenge that was more plea than provocation.
He backed her toward the bed, his hands on her hips. “What do you want to feel?”
“You,” she said, no hesitation. “I want to feel you so deep I forget my own name. I want it to hurt a little. I want to come so hard I see stars. I want to be empty of everything but you.”
His control, the careful doctor’s restraint, snapped. He pushed her back onto the bare mattress. The cold cotton made her gasp. He didn’t give her time to adjust. He shoved her thighs apart, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh of her inner thighs, spreading her wide. He knelt between her legs on the floor, his gaze locked on the glistening, swollen flesh before him.
She was already wet, her slickness a dark sheen against her skin. The musky, sweet scent of her pregnancy filled the space between them, dense and primal.
“You’re fucking dripping,” he growled, the clinical observation filthy in his mouth.
“So do something about it.”
He didn’t use his fingers. He leaned forward and dragged his tongue through her folds in one long, flat stroke, collecting her wetness. She cried out, her hands flying to his hair, gripping fistfuls. He licked her again, slower this time, circling her entrance before zeroing in on her clit. It was hard and already protruding, begging for attention.
He gave it none of his usual teasing finesse. He sucked it into his mouth, applying a rough, relentless pressure with his tongue. He fucked her with his tongue, licking and sucking with a hungry rhythm that had her bucking off the mattress within seconds.
“Oh, fuck, right there, don’t you dare stop,” she babbled, her heels digging into his back. Her words dissolved into a series of choked grunts.
He slid two fingers inside her without warning, curling them up, finding that spongy spot deep within. Her inner walls clamped down on him instantly, a pulsing, vice-like grip. He fucked her with his fingers in time with his tongue on her clit, a brutal, coordinated assault. Her hips rolled in a frantic, desperate rhythm. The sounds she made were animalistic—guttural moans, sharp inhales, his name ripped from her throat like a curse.
“Dave… I’m gonna… I’m gonna—”
He redoubled his efforts, his nose buried in her, breathing her in. He felt the exact moment she shattered. Her whole body went rigid, a strangled scream tearing from her lungs as the orgasm ripped through her. Her cunt clenched rhythmically around his fingers, her thighs shaking violently where he held them apart. He didn’t let up, licking and sucking her through the violent pulses until she was writhing, oversensitive, trying to push his head away.
He pulled back, his chin slick. He looked up her body. She was a wreck—sweat-sheened, panting, her eyes glassy with spent pleasure. But the look she gave him wasn’t satisfaction. It was a deeper, darker hunger.
“Now,” she panted, her chest heaving. “I need you inside me. Now.”
He stood, fumbling with his belt. His cock was painfully hard, straining against his jeans. He freed himself, not even bothering to undress fully. He pushed his pants and boxers down just enough.
He climbed onto the bed, hovering over her. He guided himself to her entrance, the head of his cock nudging against her slick, swollen flesh. He paused, looking down at her face, at the tear that had escaped the corner of her eye and was now lost in her hairline.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice rough.
Her eyes, hazy with pleasure, focused on his. He pushed forward, burying himself inside her in one deep, steady thrust. She was so wet, so incredibly tight around him, her body still fluttering from her climax. He filled her completely, a feeling so profound it stole his breath.
For a moment, he didn’t move. Just held himself deep, feeling the life they’d created shifting between them. He saw her fear again, reflected in her eyes, but beneath it, a ferocious trust.
“You’re not alone,” he said, the words raw.
Her answer was a roll of her hips. “Prove it.”
He began to move. It wasn’t the frantic pace of the cliff or the desperate rhythm in the rental. This was deeper, more measured, each thrust a deliberate promise. He withdrew almost completely, then sank back in, slow and deep, grinding against her. The slap of skin, the wet sounds of their joining, filled the room. She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back, pulling him in deeper with every stroke.
“Harder,” she breathed, her nails scraping down his spine. “Fuck me harder, Dave. I can take it. I need it.”
He obliged, his pace intensifying, his thrusts becoming sharper, more driving. The bedframe slammed against the wall with a steady, pounding beat. Her pregnant belly pressed between them, a solid, living barrier. He changed his angle, and on the next thrust, she screamed, a sound of pure, unraveling pleasure.
“There! Oh, God, right fucking there!”
He’d found it. He hammered that spot, each impact jolting through her with electric intensity. Her second orgasm built fast, a tsunami following an earthquake. Her cries became incoherent, her body tightening around him like a fist.
“Come with me,” she begged, her voice breaking. “Please, I want to feel you come inside me. Fill me up.”
It was the permission he needed. His control evaporated. With a guttural groan, he plunged into her one final, devastating time and held there as his own climax tore through him. He spilled into her in hot, pulsing jets, his body shuddering with the force of it. Her own release followed a second later, milking him, dragging every last drop from him as she shook and sobbed beneath him.
He collapsed onto her, careful of her stomach, his face buried in the sweat-damp crook of her neck. They lay there, a tangle of limbs and spent energy, the only sound their ragged breathing.
Slowly, the world came back. The feel of the cold mattress beneath them. The scent of sex and gasoline. The gentle, alien kick against his abdomen where their bodies were still joined.
He rolled off her, pulling her with him so her back was against his chest. He held her, his palm splayed over the kick, feeling the life stir within.
“We’re building a crib,” he said into her hair, his voice hoarse. “Tomorrow. In the nursery. Not just looking at the empty room.”
She was silent for so long he thought she’d fallen asleep. Then her hand came up and covered his on her stomach. Her fingers were cold.
“Okay,” she whispered.
It wasn’t a solution. It wasn’t an answer to the fear. But it was a step. A piece of furniture built on solid ground, not a precipice overlooking the sea. He held her tighter, and this time, her body relaxed fully into his. Outside, the rain picked up, tapping against the windowpane. Inside, in the wreckage of their bed, they held onto the one solid thing they had: each other, here, now. It would have to be enough.
It would have to be enough.
For three weeks, it almost was. The crib, a monolithic puzzle of Scandinavian beechwood, remained half-built in the corner of the nursery, a permanent fixture of their shared procrastination. They navigated the taut wire of Rave’s anxiety with a careful, practiced silence. Dave’s hands, so often busy with sutures and syringes, found a new purpose in the quiet hours. He would kneel behind her on the living room floor, his palms pressing deep into the aching small of her back, working the knotted muscles until she sighed, her forehead dropping to the stacked pillows.
“You’re better than a shock absorber,” she mumbled one evening, her voice muffled.
“Different kind of pressure,” he said, his thumbs circling. “Less explosion, more implosion.”
She laughed, a short, sharp sound. “Everything’s imploding.”
He didn’t answer. He just kept working the tension, his silence an acknowledgment that felt truer than any platitude.
The storm broke on a Tuesday. It started as a dull, insistent pressure deep in her pelvis, a feeling she’d mistaken for the baby finally engaging, settling into position. But by midnight, the pressure had sharpened, crystallizing into a vise that gripped her entire abdomen, squeezed tight for a minute, and then vanished, leaving her gasping on the edge of the bed.
“Dave.”
He was asleep instantly awake, a skill honed in the ER. “Now?”
“I don’t fucking know,” she snarled, clutching her belly as another wave began to build, a slow, cresting tide of pure force. “It feels like… it feels like the car is stuck on my guts.”
He flipped on the light, his eyes clinical, assessing. He watched her through the next contraction, timing it on his watch. His calm was a metronome in the chaos of her breathing. “Real,” he stated. “But early. Hours yet, probably.”
“Hours?” she gasped, sweat already beading at her hairline. “I can’t do this for hours.”
He helped her walk, pacing the dim hallway as the house slept around them. Between contractions, she was herself—pissed off, vivid. During them, she vanished into a primal creature, her world narrowed to the raw mechanics of pain. She leaned into the doorframe of the nursery, her knuckles white around the wood, and let out a low, guttural groan that seemed to vibrate from the floorboards.
“Fuck. This.”
“Breathe through it, Rave.”
“I’ll breathe through your fucking neck in a minute.”
He almost smiled. This was a battlefield he understood.
The calm between storms grew shorter. The drive to the hospital was a blur of streetlights and her curses. Admittance was a cold, bright reality of triage rooms and paper gowns. A brisk midwife with kind eyes checked her progress. “Four centimeters,” she announced. “You’ve got a marathon ahead, love.”
Rave’s face, pale and slick with sweat, crumpled. “No,” she whispered, a sound of pure despair. The bravado was gone, incinerated by the pain. She looked at Dave, her eyes wide with a terror he’d never seen, not even on the cliff’s edge. “I can’t. Dave, I can’t.”
He moved to her side, ignoring the midwife, and took her face in his hands. His thumbs wiped at the tears she hadn’t known were falling. “Yes, you can.” His voice was low, absolute. “You drive a car at two hundred miles an hour. You married me on a crumbling cliff in a storm. This is just the next impossible thing. And you’re not doing it alone.”
Something in his words, their specificity, their anchoring in their shared, fractured history, steadied her. She nodded, a quick, jerky motion, and gripped his hand as the next wave tore through her.
Time lost meaning. It was measured only in peaks of agony and shallow valleys of exhaustion. She refused the epidural with a vehement shake of her head. “I need to feel it,” she panted. “I need to know I’m here.”
So she felt it. All of it. She felt her body, that powerful, athletic instrument she’d honed and trusted, turn against her, become an enemy of expanding, ripping pain. She roared into it. She screamed Dave’s name until her throat was raw. She crushed his fingers, her rings biting into his skin. At some point, during the transition phase where the world dissolved into a white-hot furnace, she locked onto his eyes.
“You did this to me,” she seethed, her voice cracked and ancient.
“I did,” he said, holding her gaze, unflinching. “And you wanted me to.”
A strange, wild laugh coughed out of her, lost instantly to another groan. The midwife said words. Complete. Push. They were the most important words in the universe.
She pushed. She bore down with a force that tore something inside her, a searing, stretching burn that eclipsed all other pain. Dave was at her shoulder, one arm supporting her back, his other hand gripped in hers. “I see him,” he breathed, his doctor’s detachment gone, replaced by awe. “Rave, I see his head. He has hair.”
She pushed again, a raw, animal sound tearing from her throat. Her vision swam, the sterile lights blurring. The burn was now a fire, an impossible stretching. “It’s… tearing me… apart…”
“You’re stretching,” Dave corrected, his voice fierce beside her ear. “You’re opening. Now push him out. Push!”
With a final, desperate snarl, she gathered every shred of will and shoved. There was a sudden, violent release, a slithering, hot rush, and then a high, sharp, indignant cry filled the room.
The sound stopped her world.
She fell back against the propped pillows, utterly spent, trembling from the effort. There was a frantic, muted activity between her legs. Then the midwife was lifting a tiny, purple, writhing thing onto her bare chest.
He was smeared in white vernix and blood, his face scrunched in outrage, his limbs flailing. He was the most real, most terrifying thing she had ever seen. Her hands came up, unbidden, to cradle the hot, wet weight of him. She stared, her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat.
Dave’s hand, shaking slightly, came to rest on the baby’s back. His other brushed the damp hair from her forehead. His eyes were bright.
“He’s here,” Dave said, the words simple and devastating.
Rave looked from the screaming, perfect face of her son to Dave’s. The walls she’d built, the cliffs she’d chosen to stand on, the roaring engines she’d hid behind—they were all gone, swept away in the tidal force of this moment. In their place was this raw, pulsing vulnerability, this tiny, furious life on her chest.
“Hi,” she whispered to the baby, her voice unrecognizable to herself, soft and broken open.
The baby’s cries hitched, quieted. He turned his head, a blind, instinctual nuzzle against her skin.
She looked up at Dave, and for the first time, she let him see every scar, every fear, every unguarded piece of her. She had nothing left to hide behind.
“We made a person,” she said.
He leaned down, his forehead touching hers, their son between them. “We did.”