Coming Around Again (7 page)

“Have I thanked you for that?” she murmured,
pressing her lips to his cheek, once and then again, lingering to inhale the
scent of him.

“Not in the way I prefer. I thought you may be too
tired for that.”

“I’ve been tired every day for the last three years
and three months. Bloody children. We’re not having any more.”

“Absolutely not. Stay on the pill, Mrs Strøm. Not
having anyone fiddling unnecessarily with my machinery.”

“Up to you. Just remember, when I’m tired, I’m
forgetful.”

He took the wine from her hand and pulled her into
his lap. “I’ll have to make sure you’re well rested.” Running his hands over
her sides, he gently cupped her breasts, and rolled his thumbs over peaked
nipples. “Stella?”

“Don’t talk,” she said on a dreamy sigh. “Just keep
doing that.”

“Have I told you at all, that you are a wonderful
mother? And my sons are extremely lucky?”

She smiled, leaning forward to kiss him. “Not
recently, no. Thank you. I do my best.”

“You do more than your best,” he assured her,
pulling her jumper from her body, the material still damp from the twins’
exuberant bath. “You do everything. I am in awe of you, your patience, your
strength…”

“Are you trying to get me into bed? Or make me
cry?”

He framed her face between his palms. “I couldn’t
ask for a better mother to my children. The only two I will ever have. Because
two…”

“Is enough,” she concluded their mantra, created
their first night back from the hospital with two screaming, demanding, and
impatient babies.

She rolled her hips gently into his groin. “That
was lovely, but are we doing this or what? One sip of wine and I’m ready to
pass out.”

He swiftly raised the jersey maxi skirt to her waist.
“We’re doing this.”

Stella felt an elbow digging into her ribs. And
something else hard between her buttocks. Worst of all there was definitely a
hand, a large male hand, cupping her breast. Underneath the material of Niels’
T-shirt, on the bare skin of breast that remained untouched since the last time
she’d had sex with her husband, cupped.

“Are you awake?” Niels grumbled from behind her.
“Do you need to be sick again?”

“The hell are you doing?” she demanded, wrestling
out of his grip and slapping his hand from her tit.

“I was sleeping,” he said on an enormous yawn.
“Until you started moving about.”

“You were feeling me up. Rubbing your chub into my
bum,” she accused.

Niels lifted the duvet and started laughing. “Oh,
come on, Stella. You know how much I love your pumpkin.”

“Don’t call it that.”

“This is all automatic. I don’t think it’ll ever
change. There’ll be a day when I’m old and couldn’t encourage an erection. But
while you still have that delectable ass, I will forever feel my manhood.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she threw at him, turning onto
her side and tucking the duvet more tightly around herself.

Niels caught the T-shirt in a bunched fist and dragged
her against his bare chest. “You didn’t have any complaints when you were
sleeping earlier. Actually, you told me to move my hand lower.”

“I’m clearly delirious. And you’re taking advantage
of a sick woman.”

“My wife.”

“Ex-wife.” She shivered as his palm slipped warmly
underneath the T-shirt again, his thumb skimming over her navel.

“There’s still a possessive pronoun. Mine…” he
added on a whisper.

“Look, I’m ill. I don’t need you molesting me with
our children in the next room.”

“Why do you pretend I don’t know? Post-orgasmic
Stella always sleeps better than irritable Stella.”

So very true, but she couldn’t let her barely
ex-husband touch her anywhere outside of the sanctity of marriage. God, the
things she’d let that man do to her sexually…

“You shouldn’t,” she muttered while his index
finger traced the line of her lace Brazilian-cut knickers.

“Nothing I haven’t done before,” he assured her,
parting her thighs with his hand and slipping his fingers beneath the edge of
her panties. She held her breath, waiting for him to cross that inevitable,
tantalising line.

“Sleep, my sweet,” he whispered, his fingers simply braced against her
belly. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

***

Bird song woke her. The lack of throbbing agony within her skull
surprised her. Niels huffing beside her made her sit up and immediately regret
moving so fast. The migraine hadn’t gone. It had been dormant. Waiting for her
to move before striking again.

“Why are you moving?” Niels grumbled beside her.

“To piss you off, naturally,” she threw at him.

“You are the most unbelievably stubborn woman I have ever met.” He
leaned over her into a drawer and withdrew some more paracetamol. “Here.
There’s water on your side.”

“Aren’t you efficient?”

“I’m going to gag and blindfold you in a moment if you don’t stop
bitching,” he warned. Instead of being offended, arousal smoked its way through
her clearly deluded veins. Not answering, she took the medication and snuggled
beneath the duvet once more.

When she woke again, her fever made her tremulous and halfway to
delirium. Niels simply washed her down with a soapy, cool flannel. Had she been
just five percent conscious of her surroundings, she’d have never coped with
the way he exposed her to the elements.

“Does that feel better?” he asked, dressing her in a clean T-shirt once
he’d finished. How she stopped herself from slapping him when he paid far too
much attention to her cleanliness between the legs… God only knew. He had to be
touched to do that and survive.

“Freezing.”

He practically rolled her into the duvet and adjusted her next to him,
partially upright. Every so often, he’d wave a ginger-scented straw under her
nose and she’d take long gulps. It lulled Stella into sleep for a few hours.
When she creaked open her eyes again, the nausea abated and her skull stopped
auditioning for drummers. She heard the boys downstairs, giggling about
something.

Struggling to sit up, she unravelled the duvet from her body and went in
search of toothpaste and a shower. Bed baths… Flaming Florence Nightingale
downstairs did his job too indelicately. Scrubbing her like a dirty pan.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Nurse Strøm asked lightly.

“Having a shower. Now where’s the shampoo?”

He made a face of exasperation and opened a cabinet to the left of the
large sink. “Here. New toothbrush. And paste. If you want mouthwash, you’ll
just have to borrow mine. Or use the kids’.”

Stella turned over the shampoo bottle. “When did you start using this?”

“Since you told me how harmful parabens and sulfates are to children. I
can follow orders. Unlike some…”

Stella stared at him pointedly. “You don’t have to stand there and
watch.”

“I watched you give birth and I still had sex with you after. You taking
a shower is low on the shock factor scale.”

She took an unsteady step towards him, ready to start pummelling where
words couldn’t compensate, and Niels caught her. “You’re so stubborn. Look,
have your shower, but I’m getting in with you.”

“Keep your damn clothes on,” she commanded, waving a shaking finger
under his nose. He gently pushed her hand aside and lifted the T-shirt from her
body, then stripped the knickers from her thighs. After wrapping a hefty arm
around her naked waist, he carried her into the large glass shower cubicle and
turned on the water. She shrieked at the immediate cold, and the noise died
away under the power and warmth of the pressure. Better. So much better.

Slowly, she became aware of Niels’ fingers in her hair and relaxed even
further.

“Stop making that noise,” he told her in a growl.

“What?”

“You know what, now stop it.”

Meanie
.

He rinsed the shampoo from her hair and smoothed on her favourite
conditioner. The lid clattered to the tiles and she bent to retrieve it. Her head
swam and immediately Niels righted her. Once again she found her bottom
cradling a sizeable erection.
Oh dear
.

“Maybe you should get out,” she suggested. The look in his eyes made her
close her mouth. After a brisk soaping, he allowed her to stand under the spray
for a few more minutes. Both her hair and body were double-wrapped with thick
cotton towels. Before he dried himself off, he handed her cocoa butter, and
removed his clothes. Shocked and weak from a lack of food, she turned her back
on him and smoothed the body lotion over her skin. What was wrong with her?
They’d showered and dressed in front of the other a million times before.

A few minutes, later, she was tucked back up in bed with a cup of
homemade chicken broth. He’d made her mother’s recipe. The one she made any
time she or the children had a cold or the flu. Without another word, he sat
beside her as she drank, trying not to cry.

“You don’t have to worry about me, you know,” she said eventually. “I
know I haven’t proved it today, but I can look after myself.”

He sighed. “I am well aware of how incredibly self-sufficient you are.
I’m sure there are androids who look up to you.”

Ouch
.

Silence ruled again. Niels broke it first. “I am always going to worry
about you,” he offered into the quiet. “Force of habit.”

***

Two years married

“Isn’t this early?” Niels asked the midwife again, as she pressed her
fingers into Stella’s swollen and contracting belly.

“Thirty-four weeks, isn’t necessarily early for multiple births,” she replied,
a frown developing on her patrician brow. “It’s better to be earlier. Less
complications…Mrs. Strøm…”

“You’ve got your hands near my vagina, you can call me Stella,” came the
blistering retort of a woman fed up with labour, contractions, and a lack of
medication already.

“All right then, Stella,” she said with a laugh. “The twins haven’t
turned. Now it’s nothing to worry about, but we’re trying to encourage at least
one of them to move head first.”

“And if neither of them do? C-section?”

“May have to be. Listen, it’s nothing you haven’t expected. It may be
Plan B, but it’s still a plan. We’ve got your pool ready, and that can only
help encourage a little foetal movement. All right?” She straightened and
removed her gloves. “I’m going to nab the consultant. You get yourself in the
pool and I’ll be back.”

Niels walked the midwife out of the room while Stella struggled upright
to wriggle her maternity top from her shoulders and scramble for her bag.

“What are you doing?” Niels demanded, taking the bag from the floor and
lifting it to the bed. “Do you want to land tummy first on the floor?”

She sent him a disgusted look and he threw back. “Don’t look at me like
that. I was standing right there. For you to call
Niels, can you get
something for me?
Your stubbornness is something else.”

“Are you having a go at me? While I’m in labour?”

He took a deep breath and said, “What did you need?”

“My bikini top.”

He shook his head and searched through the bag for her floral patterned
top. Once found, he helped her put it on and with a secure arm around her
waist—or what used to be her waist—he walked her to the birthing pool. In her
dreams, she had a simple, elegant birth, transferring her children from
amniotic fluid into water. Stella ignored the horror stories of twin births,
scalpels, epidurals, caesarean sections, twin-to-twin transfers… NICU ward and
focused on her plan.

“If you move,” she whispered to her belly, “I will take you to
Disneyland.”

Niels lifted an eyebrow. “Really? You think that’s going to work?”

“What else do you have?” she demanded. “What help are you offering,
apart from being mean to me?”

“I could turn you over and smack you on the bottom. That works for
ketchup bottles. Why not you?” She burst out laughing, then winced as soon as a
contraction hit. He immediately reached for her hand, and rubbed the heel of
his hand over her spine.

“Bad?”

“Bad enough I feel like throwing up. You know, I think I might have to.”

Without missing a beat, Niels grabbed a cardboard bowl and held it under
her chin.
Cripes
, she thought as he whipped the bowl out of sight and
gave her some water.
He’s never going to want to have sex with me again.

“Can you move around a little?” he asked, easing her back so she floated
a little more in the water. His fingers filtered through her scalp and massaged
the beginnings of a headache away.

“Nah, do that.”

He worked his fingertips in circles under her curls and she closed her
eyes. “Stella,” he said softly.

“Yes?” He didn’t reply and she tweaked open an eye. Oh dear. He looked desperately
tired and worried. “I’m all right. We all are. We will be.”

He nodded distractedly. “I’m just going to balance the mini speaker on
your belly. The midwife said music encourages movement as well.”

“Throw it at me. And can you call your parents? Tell them what’s going
on? We did leave dinner in a massive hurry.”

Solemnly, he agreed and after handing her the waterproof phone and
covered speaker, he left the room to call his family. Bracing one arm on the
side of the pool, Stella balanced the phone on her belly and held the speaker
by her hip bone. “Vaughan Williams,” she told the twins. “Your favourite. You
moved all the time to this one.”

Closing her eyes, she breathed through the next contraction, or tried
to. Mainly she wanted to know what was taking her husband so fucking long.
Hissing through her teeth, she turned to the side and dropped the phone into
the water. “Why, Lord?”

She pushed the speaker over the side, to use two hands to get out of the
pool. Niels walked back into the room, his eyes going from the phone, to her,
with one leg out of the pool, bottom high in the air.

Uh-oh
. Without saying a
word, she eased back into the pool and pretended a contraction had hit. “Oww?”

“Let me explain something to you, so you stop behaving like you’re imprisoned
and I’m your jailer. You are in labour.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“I truly don’t believe you do. You haven’t had any drugs to warrant
this…” he directed to her bare-arsed escape. “Isn’t this enough? Why do you
want to cause yourself any more harm?”