Wandering Romance

A New Son

PART THREE: THIS CHARMING LIFE

Unlike with Ava, this pregnancy exhausts her, and morning sickness has done some damage to her throat. She prefers her tropical fruit salads compared to her first pregnancy of wanting the combination of sweet and salty. She's even carrying different too. With Ava, all there had been was belly. It looked like she shoved a basketball under her shirt. Now, she has grown thicker in her hips, thighs, and somehow even in her lips. Jax leers at her new bust line and curves and claims she has that pregnancy glow, which she firmly believes is just extra perspiration.

She can even admit she is wondering if there would be any post-pregnancy body to bounce back to. All she can stare at in the mirror is the silver stripes she knows won't disappear.

She is also a mess emotionally. No longer is she cool as a cucumber. She cries if a banana isn't ripe the way she wants it. Everyone has made sure to keep a box of Kleenex on standby especially on the days she aches for Jax the most. It irritates her that she is so emotional. She hates how needy she feels for the blonde biker. As much as she needs him – misses him. She thinks she hates him with the same fiery passion.

She says as much in the letters she sends as weekly visits aren't enough. With their daughter and a table in between them, there isn't enough time to focus on them. Jax's visits are dedicated to Ava and navigating how to explain that daddy made a mistake is why he can't come home.

With Ava, it didn't bother her that she was going to be a single mother. She particularly didn't care if Jax was going to be involved or not. She had a support system outside of Jax.

Now is a different story.

She wishes that Jax could be here to fully experience pregnancy with her. She wishes she had someone to go baby shopping with. Someone to rub her back and feet as her body changes. She had already gone through that alone once. She didn't want to go through it alone again. She didn't want the replacements that were her parents, Gemma, and the club. She wants the father of her children to be there for every step.

She wishes she could see Jax bond with their unborn child in the privacy of their home and not with prison guards watching.

She wants to feel the heat of his hand on her stomach. His breath fanning across her expanding abdomen as he whispers secrets to their child. She wants cheesiness and mushiness. She wants the Hallmark moments.

She will have to go through the delivery alone. At least, Jax was there for Ava.

And little Ava hasn't been taking Jax's prison sentence very well.

She didn't understand why they had to visit him in a cold dingy place with mean-looking people. Ava was becoming frustrated with why her daddy was away. When it came time to leave Stockton, Ava had begun throwing fits for having to leave her father behind. Visits required having one of the few guys not in Stockton will her as her big belly hindered her from handling an angry Ava.

Aubrey knows that she doesn't help matters much either. If she wasn't pregnant she thinks that she would have been handling his prison sentence better. She can't help the sharp jabs she takes as she reminds him of the fact she is home alone raising their daughter and soon another child.

She knows it's wrong to have him stewing in even more guilt. She hates highlighting what she believes to be a failure to him. She knows she sounds like a belligerent idiot on those days as she reads him the riot act of what he is doing to their family.

And she misses him.

She misses him more than words could describe.

She thinks she might hate him a little bit for it.