Chapter 32: The Last Time as Two
The silence in the penthouse was different now. It wasn’t the peaceful quiet they’d cultivated before, but a thick, watchful stillness, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath. The police had finished their sweep. The new security system was a silent, blinking sentinel in the corner. But the real scar was internal.
Cynna stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, her silhouette outlined by the sprawling, indifferent lights of Los Angeles. One hand rested on the curve of her belly, now a pronounced, firm swell beneath her silk robe. The other traced the ridged, healing line of the scar on her chest—a permanent footnote to Maya’s madness.
Pedro watched her from the doorway of the bedroom, a glass of water in his hand. He saw the way her shoulders held a tension that hadn’t been there before the attack. A flinch at sudden noises. A hesitation before answering the phone.
“You should try to sleep,” he said, his voice soft in the vast room.
“I keep thinking about the storage unit,” she said, not turning around. Her voice was distant. “All that white furniture. The mobile we picked out. It’s just sitting in the dark somewhere, full of her fantasy.” She finally looked over her shoulder at him. “Does that make me awful? That I’m glad it’s gone?”
“No.” He crossed the room, placing the water on a side table and coming up behind her. He didn’t envelop her immediately, just stood close, letting his warmth seep into her back. “It makes you human. It makes you sane.”
She leaned back into him, her head tilting to rest against his shoulder. “I feel like she stole something from me. Not just the skin,” she said, gesturing to her chest. “The… innocence of it. This should just be happy. Scared, but happy. Now it feels like we’re waiting for the next disaster.”
He turned her gently in his arms, his hands settling on the glorious swell of her hips. “The disaster is over. She’s in custody, awaiting trial. Ruiz says the case is airtight. It’s just us now. Just this.” He bent his head, pressing his lips to her forehead, then the tip of her nose, then finally her mouth. It was a slow, claiming kiss, devoid of frenzy, full of a profound and deliberate reassurance.
She kissed him back, her hands coming up to frame his face. The taste of him, familiar and essential, began to dissolve the cold knot in her stomach. When they parted, she was breathing harder. “I need to feel something else,” she whispered, her eyes dark and serious. “I need you to make me feel something good. Something real. Right now.”
He understood. This wasn’t just about desire; it was an exorcism. A reclamation of their space, their bodies, their future from the ghost of violence that had invaded it.
He led her to the bed, the clean, minimalist lines of their sanctuary. The only light came from the city beyond the glass. He untied the belt of her robe, letting it slide off her shoulders and pool at her feet. She stood naked before him, her body transformed by pregnancy—fuller breasts, dark nipples, the beautiful, taut dome of her stomach, the slight, powerful curve of her lower back. The angry red scar was a stark contrast to her skin, but he didn’t avoid it. He bent, his lips following the path of his fingers, kissing along the healing line with a tenderness that made her eyes well up.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmured against her skin, his voice rough. “Every part of you. This strong, incredible body is making our child.”
He laid her back on the cool sheets, his own clothes discarded in hurried, clumsy movements. He needed skin. He needed the entire, uninterrupted map of her. He knelt between her legs, his hands spreading her thighs, and simply looked at her. The scent of her, musky and sweet, filled his head. He lowered his mouth to her.
His tongue was slow and thorough, a languid exploration that had nothing to do with hurry and everything to do with worship. He licked a broad, wet stripe from her opening to her clit, circling the swollen bud before sucking it gently into his mouth. Cynna cried out, her back arching off the bed, her fingers tangling in his hair. The sensation was a lightning bolt of pure, uncomplicated pleasure, burning away the lingering shadows.
“Oh, god, Pedro… right there,” she gasped, her hips beginning to rock against his face. “Don’t stop. Please.”
He didn’t. He feasted on her, his tongue plunging inside her, then returning to flick and circle her clit with relentless precision. He slid two fingers into her tight, wet heat, crooking them to find the spot that made her thighs tremble. She was sopping, her arousal coating his chin, her moans growing louder, more desperate. This was the sound he wanted to hear. This raw, unfiltered proof of life and pleasure.
“I’m gonna come,” she warned, her voice a high whine. “I’m gonna come all over your face.”
“Do it,” he growled against her, the vibration tipping her over the edge.
Her orgasm hit like a wave, a series of sharp, clutching spasms around his fingers. She screamed, a guttural, releasing sound that echoed in the quiet room. He stayed with her, gentling his tongue until the last tremor passed.
Before she could come down, he was moving up her body, his cock—hard, thick, and leaking—nesting against her soaked folds. He looked into her eyes, his own blazing with love and a fierce, protective lust. “I need to be inside you,” he said, the words a raw confession. “I need to feel you around me. All of you.”
“Yes,” was all she could manage, wrapping her legs around his hips, her heels digging into his ass. “Fuck me. Fill me up.”
He pushed in, a slow, inexorable invasion that made them both gasp. She was incredibly tight, her body stretched and sensitive from both her climax and the pregnancy. He buried himself to the hilt, pausing when he was fully seated, their bodies fused. He dropped his forehead to hers, breathing her air.
“You feel like heaven,” he choked out. “You feel like fucking home.”
Then he began to move. Not a frantic pounding, but deep, rolling thrusts that stroked every inch of her inner walls. Each drive brushed against that sweet, swollen spot inside her, building a new, coiling tension almost immediately. The slap of skin, their mingled sweat, the obscene, wet sounds of their joining—it was a symphony of reality.
She met him thrust for thrust, her nails scoring down his back. “Harder,” she demanded, her head thrashing on the pillow. “I’m not made of glass. Fuck me harder, Pedro.”
He obeyed, his control snapping. He drove into her with a powerful, piston-like rhythm, the bedframe knocking a soft, steady beat against the wall. The visceral sensation of his balls slapping against her, the heat and friction, the sheer animal truth of it consumed them.
“Whose is this?” he grunted, his hand splayed possessively over her belly where their child grew.
“Yours!” she cried out, the words torn from her.
“And who do you belong to?” He punctuated each word with a deep, grinding thrust.
“You! God, only you!” Her second orgasm was building, a tidal wave gathering force deep in her core.
He could feel her walls beginning to flutter and clutch around him again. It was too much. The sight of her beneath him, her pregnant body taking all of him, her cries of pure ownership, shattered his last restraint.
“Come with me,” he demanded, his own release coiling at the base of his spine. “Come on my cock, Cynna. Now.”
The command did it. Her third climax erupted, a violent, full-body convulsion that squeezed his cock like a velvet fist. With a ragged shout, he plunged deep and emptied himself into her, jet after hot jet, his hips stuttering against hers as he rode out the pulses of his own ecstasy.
He collapsed beside her, careful not to crush her, his arm thrown over her heaving stomach. They were slick, spent, breathing in ragged unison. The record in the other room had long since ended, leaving only the sound of their breath and the distant city hum.
He pressed a kiss to her damp temple. “Real enough for you?”
She turned her head, a tired, truly peaceful smile on her face for the first time in weeks. “Yeah,” she sighed. “That was perfect.”
They lay in silence for what felt like an eternity, drifting in the warm, satisfied afterglow. Pedro’s hand was tracing idle circles on her belly when he felt it.
A subtle, hardening tension. Not the baby kicking. This was different. Deeper.
Cynna’s breath hitched. Her hand flew to cover his.
“Did you feel that?” she whispered.
Before he could answer, a powerful, unmistakable wave clenched through her abdomen, visible this time, a rippling contraction that tightened her entire midsection like a fist. It wasn’t pain yet, but it was immense, undeniable force.
Their eyes locked, wide with simultaneous terror and awe.
The moment shattered.
“That’s—” Pedro began.
Another one came, stronger, squeezing the air from Cynna’s lungs. She gasped, her fingers digging into his arm. “Oh, fuck. Pedro.”
He was already moving, scrambling off the bed. “It’s early. It’s two weeks early.” His mind, moments ago blissfully blank, was now a frantic checklist. Bag. Keys. Doctor. Hospital. Not the psychiatric ward. The maternity wing.
“The bag is by the door,” Cynna said, her voice strangely calm between the receding wave and the anticipation of the next. She tried to sit up, wincing. “Help me up. I need to… I think my water just broke.”
He was at her side in an instant, his arms around her, his heart hammering against his ribs. The finality of it, the sudden, brutal pivot from one kind of intensity to another, left him dizzy. The fight was indeed over. A new, primal one was beginning.
“Okay,” he said, forcing his voice into a steadiness he didn’t feel. He helped her stand, the evidence of their lovemaking and the new, clear fluid on her thighs a surreal contrast. “Okay, let’s go. I’ve got you. I’ve got both of you.”
He grabbed the pre-packed bag, threw a coat over her shoulders, and guided her toward the elevator, his hand pressed firmly against the small of her back where another contraction was already gathering its terrible, wonderful strength.
The elevator descent was a suspended, breathless eternity. Cynna braced herself against the mirrored wall, her face pale and gleaming with sweat as a contraction locked its jaws around her spine. Pedro watched the numbers blink downward, his hand a steady, useless anchor on her back. “Breathe, sweetheart. Just like the class.”
“Fuck the class,” she gritted out, a harsh laugh escaping between clenched teeth. Her knuckles were white on the railing. “That woman with the fucking panpipes lied. This isn’t a wave. It’s a demolition.”
The doors opened to the underground garage, its cool, petrol-scented air a shock. He half-carried her to the car, folding her into the passenger seat. She immediately braced her feet on the dashboard, her body bowing as another peak hit. The raw, guttural sound she made was nothing like the practiced hee-hee-hoo. It was ancient and animal, and it terrified him.
He drove with a focused mania, slicing through the late-night traffic. Every stoplight was a personal enemy. He stole glances at her profile, lit by passing streetlights. Her eyes were closed, her entire being turned inward to the monumental work unfolding inside her. “Talk to me,” he said, needing to pull her back, just a little.
“It feels like I’m being split in two by a rusty crowbar,” she said, her voice thin. “And I have to help it. I have to push it out. Do you understand how insane that is?” She turned her head, her eyes wide and dark. “What if I can’t? What if my body just… breaks?”
He found her hand, squeezed it hard. “Your body knows. It’s been knowing for nine months. We’re just along for the ride.” He pulled into the hospital’s circle drive, the bright red ‘EMERGENCY’ sign casting a bloody glow. “And I’m not getting off this ride without you.”
A nurse with a clipboard met them with calm efficiency, taking one look at Cynna’s contorted posture and bypassing triage entirely. They put her in a wheelchair, the wheels squeaking on the polished linoleum. The maternity ward was a different universe from the sterile psychiatric wing, but the underlying hospital smell—antiseptic, starch, and fear—was the same. It made Pedro’s skin prickle.
Their room was softly lit, a deliberate attempt at serenity that felt like a mockery. Cynna was stripped, gowned, and tethered to monitors in minutes. The machine began chattering, spitting out a paper ribbon with a frantic, spiking line and a loud, galloping whoosh-whoosh-whoosh that was their baby’s heartbeat. That sound, so alien and so familiar, made the room tilt.
A resident, young and brisk, checked her dilation. “You’re at eight centimeters. Moving fast. No time for an epidural, I’m afraid.”
Cynna’s face crumpled for a second, a flash of pure panic. Then it hardened into resolve. “Fine. Okay. Let’s just get it out.”
The next hour dissolved into a primal, sweaty blur. The calm techniques evaporated. Cynna cursed, she wept, she dug her nails into Pedro’s forearm deep enough to draw blood. She vomited into a basin. She roared. He fed her ice chips, wiped her forehead, murmured nonsense into her damp hair, his own terror a live wire in his chest. He was a spectator at the most important event of his life, utterly helpless.
The doctor arrived, a woman with calm hands and a voice that cut through the noise. “Okay, Cynna. The baby’s right there. On the next one, I need you to push like you’re shitting out the sun. Can you do that?”
Cynna, exhausted beyond coherence, nodded. She locked eyes with Pedro, a desperate, silent plea. He braced himself behind her, an arm across her chest, becoming her anchor.
“Now, Cynna! Push!”
She bore down with a scream that tore from the depths of her being. Every muscle in her neck and face corded. The monitor beeped wildly. Pedro watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the crown of a tiny, wrinkled head, smeared with blood and vernix, began to emerge from her stretched, straining body.
“Stop! Pant!” the doctor commanded. Cynna sobbed, shaking, trying to obey. “Good. Now again. Big push!”
Another soul-shattering effort. The head surged free, turning slightly. “The cord’s loose, good. One more for the shoulders!”
Cynna gathered the last dregs of her strength, her face a mask of agony and ferocious purpose. She gave a final, gut-wrenching push. There was a sudden, slick, sliding release. A gush of fluid. And then a small, purple, impossibly complex little being was lifted onto her heaving chest.
The room held its breath.
For a second, silence. Then a thin, indignant wail pierced the air, a sound of pure, outraged life.
“It’s a boy,” the doctor said, smiling as she laid him on Cynna’s skin.
A son. Their son.
He was messy, perfect, and furious. His tiny fists flailed against the sudden cold and light. Cynna’s hands, trembling violently, came up to cradle him, her sobs now ones of stunned, overwhelming relief. She looked from the baby’s face to Pedro’s, her expression shattered and rebuilt in an instant.
Pedro’s vision blurred. He couldn’t speak. He touched the baby’s back, feeling the frantic, bird-like heartbeat under his palm, the heat of him. He leaned down, his lips pressing to Cynna’s sweaty temple, then to the damp, dark hair on their son’s head. The smell was metallic and sweet, a scent fundamentally new to his world.
“Hi,” he whispered, the word cracking. “Hi, little man.”
Their baby’s cries softened to hiccuping grunts, his face nuzzling instinctively against Cynna’s breast. The room, which had been a theater of violent effort, settled into a stunned, warm quiet. The demolition was over. In the wreckage lay everything.
The wreckage was soft, and breathing, and theirs. For a long time, there was only the sound of his son’s wet, snuffling breaths and Cynna’s shuddering sighs as the tremors of effort slowly left her limbs. Pedro remained frozen, his hand spanning the baby’s entire back, feeling the miracle of each expansion of those miniature lungs.
A nurse moved in, efficient and gentle, wiping the infant down with warm cloths while he lay on Cynna’s chest. The purplish hue melted into a flushed, healthy pink. Tiny fingers, each with a perfect, translucent nail, curled around Pedro’s thumb with a reflex that felt like destiny.
“He’s here,” Cynna murmured, her voice shredded and wondrous. She was staring, utterly transfixed, at the dark, matted hair, the bow-shaped mouth already making sucking motions. The profound, animal fear in her eyes had been replaced by a dazed, exhausted love so bright it hurt to witness.
Pedro finally found his voice, thick with tears he wouldn’t shed. “You did it. You actually did it.” He kissed her forehead, her cheek, her salty lips. “You magnificent, terrifying creature.”
She gave a weak, breathy laugh that turned into a wince as the doctor delivered the placenta and began the meticulous work of stitching her where she’d torn. Cynna barely noticed, her entire world contracted to the weight on her sternum. The medical bustle receded into a distant hum.
After what felt like both an instant and a lifetime, they were left alone, a tentative bubble of privacy in the sterile room. The baby had latched, his jaw working with a surprising, rhythmic intensity. Cynna winced again, but her smile was beatific.
“Ouch. Okay, so that’s a feeling,” she breathed, her head falling back against the propped pillows. Her eyes found Pedro’s, a new clarity in them. “He needs a name. Before the world crashes back in. Before the forms. He needs his name.”
Pedro nodded, his thumb stroking the back of the tiny hand still clutching him. He’d thought about this for months, turning over options that felt either too light or too heavy. Nothing had stuck. “What do you see?” he asked softly.
She studied the baby’s face, her fingers tracing the curve of a downy eyebrow. He had Pedro’s nose, the distinct, elegant line of it already apparent. But the shape of his eyes, currently screwed shut in concentration, was all her.
“ROBERTO JOSE PASCAL," Cynna whispered.
The name hung in the air, solid and real.
She looked up at Pedro, her gaze fierce through the fatigue. "WE BREAK THE WHOLE PEDRO JOSE, JOSE PEDRO NONSENSE WITH THIS ONE. HE GETS HIS OWN NAME WITH HIS LEGACY TO HIS ABUELO AND HIS GREAT GRANDPA WHO'D HAVE LOVED TO HAVE MET HIM."
Pedro’s breath caught. A sharp, sweet pain bloomed behind his ribs. He saw Cynna's grandfather, Robert, cooking for his family, having survived a massive heartattack at age 26. He lived until he was in his 70s, and he was Cynna's world when her world made no sense at all. All the stories she told of growing up with him there-- encouraging her to be a Renaissance woman- to be the one to dig at the truth, no matter the pain-resided in their son. Jose for Pedro's dad, the kindest, most gentle man known to them both. He took in Cynna as his own when Pedro brought her to Santiago, Chile the first time. The honouring of both men made it perfect.
“Roberto,” he repeated, testing the weight of it on his tongue. It felt right. It felt like stone and history and hope. He leaned in, his lips brushing the baby’s temple. “Welcome, Roberto. You have no idea what you just survived.”
The first weeks were a brutal, beautiful siege. Roberto’ demands were absolute, his schedule a tyrannical chaos of three-hour cycles that devoured night and day. Pedro moved through their home like a ghost, boiling bottles, folding impossibly small laundry, watching Cynna’s relentless, bleary-eyed devotion.
The scar on her chest faded to a pink line. The one in her mind was harder to map.
He found her at 3 a.m. once, standing frozen in the doorway of the unused second bedroom, the one they’d once thought would be a nursery for a different ghost. She was just staring into the empty, moonlit space, Roberto asleep in her arms. He didn’t ask. He simply guided her back to their bed, peeling her fingers one by one from the doorframe.
Their physical connection had become purely functional—helping her in and out of showers, applying lotion to her stretched skin, passing the baby back and forth in a weary dance. The doctor had given the all-clear at the six-week checkup, but the idea of sex felt like a relic from another civilization, absurd and distant.
Then, one afternoon, Roberto fell into a deep, unexpected nap. The silence was jarring, a physical presence after the constant mewling and fussing. They stood in the living room, stunned by it, like prisoners released into a forgotten daylight.
Cynna looked at him, her hair in a messy knot, wearing his old t-shirt and sweatpants. Dark circles painted her under eyes, but within them, a spark had rekindled. “He’s out,” she said, as if he might not have noticed.
“He is,” Pedro agreed, listening to the monitor’s staticky silence.
She walked to him, not with her old sway, but with a new, grounded solidity. She placed her hands on his chest, over his heartbeat. “I need you to fuck me,” she said, her voice low and raw. “I need to not be a milk machine or a healing wound for one goddamn hour. I need to be your girlfriend, your fiancee. The one you fuck.”
The crude, direct words ignited a fuse in his gut. He’d been so careful with her, treating her like blown glass. This was her shattering that pretense.
“You’re sure?” he asked, his hands coming to her hips, feeling the fuller curve of them.
In answer, she grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head. “I’m sure. I’m sore, and I’m tired, and my tits leak. Fuck me anyway.”
They didn’t make it to the bedroom. The deep, oversized couch in the penthouse living room became their altar. She pushed him down onto the cushions and climbed over him, yanking her sweatpants and underwear down in one rough motion. She wasn’t gentle, and he didn’t want her to be.
She was still slick from postpartum changes, a different, richer wetness. She guided him inside her with a frantic urgency, sinking down onto his hard length with a guttural, swallowed cry. She was tight, phenomenally tight, the internal landscape of her body changed but profoundly familiar. A warm, clutching heat enveloped him.
“Christ, Cynna,” he grunted, his hands flying to her hips to steady her, but she slapped them away.
“No. Let me.” She set a punishing rhythm immediately, riding him with a frantic, desperate energy. Her head was thrown back, the column of her throat working. This wasn’t about lovemaking or connection. This was about collision. About reaffirming the raw, physical fact of their union outside of diapers and pediatrician appointments.
He let her use him, his own hips driving up to meet her downward slams. The obscene, wet slap of their joining filled the silent room, a stark counterpoint to the quiet monitor. Her breasts, heavy and full, bounced with each movement. He reached for one, his mouth latching onto a nipple through the thin cotton of her shirt. The taste of milk, sweet and alien, mixed with her sweat.
She cried out, her internal muscles fluttering around him. “Yeah, just like that,” she panted, her words fragmented. “Don’t you dare be gentle. I can take it. I just pushed a human out of me. Your cock is nothing.”
Her filthy talk, so uncharacteristic and blunt, sent a jolt of pure lightning to his balls. He flipped her over suddenly, pressing her into the cushions without slipping out of her. The new angle was deeper, shocking. She gasped, her nails digging into the leather.
“You want it hard?” he growled, his control vaporizing. He drove into her, each thrust a full-body commitment. The couch groaned in protest. He could feel every ridge, every clenched, silken inch of her. It was brutal, and healing, and necessary.
“Yes! God, yes, right there, you bastard,” she screamed, her body bowing. Her climax ripped through her, a silent, seismic event that locked her around him like a vice. The intense, rhythmic squeezing tipped him over the edge immediately.
He came with a shout, emptying himself in deep, pulsing jets, his forehead pressed against her sweat-dampened back. He collapsed on her, careful to keep his weight on his arms, both of them breathing in ragged, shattered unison.
In the silence that followed, broken only by their slowing breaths, the monitor on the coffee table crackled to life. A soft, snuffling sound came through, then a thin, reedy cry.
Roberto was awake.
Cynna started to laugh beneath him, a breathless, hiccuping sound of pure irony. Pedro joined her, his laughter muffled against her skin. He slipped out of her, both of them wincing at the sensitivity.
He pulled up her sweatpants with a tenderness that contrasted violently with their previous act. She turned and kissed him, slow and deep, tasting of salt and exhaustion and survival.
“Go get your son, Papa,” she whispered, smiling against his mouth.
He stood, pulling on his own pants, his body humming with a profound, settled peace. The crying from the monitor was not an interruption. It was the next beat. The reason for it all. He walked toward the nursery, not to a ghost, but to a living, hungry legacy named Roberto.