Happily Letter After by Vi Keeland

CHAPTER 24

SADIE

With the house all to ourselves that Monday morning, we’d definitely gotten carried away fast. I kept expecting that maybe Sebastian would pull out of me to get a condom on at some point, but he never did. He knew I was on the pill, so it wasn’t a big deal, but he’d always been diligent about the extra protection every time we’d been together.

But having him inside me with no barrier felt incredibly good. The feeling was so intense that I could feel myself coming much faster than I’d anticipated. Our bodies just seemed to be in sync because as soon as I started to orgasm, I felt him quake. We rocked together as our orgasms shot through us simultaneously. There was nothing more beautiful than the guttural sound Sebastian made when he climaxed. I felt it vibrate throughout my entire body.

“Sebastian,” I called out over and over as he came inside me. “Sebastian . . .”

It was the best sex we’d had thus far. I wasn’t sure if it was because we’d grown that much closer recently or what. I just knew I’d never felt more connected to a man in my entire life.

He rested his head inside the crook of my neck. “I’m sorry. That felt too good. I should’ve stopped it.”

Reaching down and squeezing his ass, I said, “It’s okay. I’m on the pill.”

He let out a relieved breath. “I know. But I’ve never been irresponsible like that. You just make me a little crazy, Sadie.”

“I’ve got you.” I smiled.

He looked into my eyes and said, “Yeah. You definitely do . . . have me.”

Deliriously happy, I returned his sentiment with a huge smile.

“What do you want to do?” he asked. “We have the whole day.”

Doing a whole lot of nothing sounded good to me. Hanging out in his bed like this was such a rarity.

“Can we just lie here for a bit? I love not having to rush out of bed or worry about getting caught.”

He frowned at my statement. “I’m sorry that I can’t have you here all the time with me.”

“It’s okay. That just makes being with you even more special, when we can have days like this.”

He used the bedsheet to playfully pull me toward him. “What am I gonna do with you? You’ve totally knocked me on my ass, Sadie Mae.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Sadie Mae? Where did that name come from?”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Not sure where it came from. ‘Mae’ just seems to go with your name. But what’s your actual middle name now that we’re on the topic?”

“It’s nothing you’d ever guess.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“It’s George.”

His eyes widened. “Really? After your father . . .”

“Yep. My mother thought it was funny to give me my dad’s name. Definitely not feminine but I love it. It’s different.” I grinned. “What’s your middle name?”

“Rocco.”

“Really? I love that. Where does it come from?”

“My grandfather.”

“Cool name.”

He moved the sheet to gaze at my naked body. I loved the way he looked at me.

Sebastian seemed like he was pondering something. “You know, the fact that I didn’t think to stop when we were having sex is really telling. I’m usually so responsible. And I think part of why I slipped is that I’m just so damn comfortable with you.” He blew out a breath. “But I’m sorry I didn’t check that it was okay with you first.”

“I would’ve stopped you if I was worried. But if you want . . . we can just forego condoms now that you know.” I winked.

“I think I’d like that . . . a little too much.” His eyes then landed on a scar on my abdomen. It was the first time he seemed to notice it. Sebastian traced his finger along it. “What’s this?”

I looked down at myself. My heart raced a little because telling this story might lead to me admitting other things.

“My appendix burst when I was a teenager. I had to have an emergency surgery.”

“Shit. That must have been scary.”

“It really was. It actually . . . caused some complications for me.”

A look of concern crossed his face. “How so?”

“It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I have time,” he said as he gripped my hip and pulled me toward him.

I wasn’t sure if it was too early in our relationship to be bringing it up. But this was the perfect window to talk about it. His not knowing had actually been eating away at me a little bit. I didn’t think he would judge me. But regardless, I still felt like it was something that I needed to tell him. Since we were on the subject, there was probably no better time than the present.

I took a deep breath in. “A few years after my appendix burst, I started experiencing pain. I was in my late teens. I went to the doctor to get it checked out, and when they examined me, it turned out I had scar tissue blocking my fallopian tubes as a result of the appendix rupture. That meant that basically down the line, I might have trouble getting pregnant.”

His expression darkened. “They couldn’t do anything for you?”

“Well, I ended up getting surgery to repair them, but they couldn’t remove all the scar tissue, so there are no guarantees. I was told that in the future, they could become blocked again. It’s possible that I won’t have a problem, but at the time, I really became quite worried that maybe I wouldn’t have any luck getting pregnant someday when I was ready. My doctor knew how anxious it was making me. So she encouraged me to consider having some of my eggs harvested. That way, if one day I reached a point where I couldn’t conceive naturally, I would have young, healthy eggs for IVF.”

Sebastian blinked a few times to process that information. “So you froze some of your eggs . . .”

“Yes. But . . .” Here was the part I needed to brace myself for. It was something I’d never told anyone I’d dated before. “Shortly before the procedure, I started to think about everything that my mother went through . . . losing her ability to conceive from the cancer and struggling to adopt. It all worked out in the end, because she got me. But not everyone is as lucky as we were. I’d always wanted to do something to honor her. So an idea came to me . . . since I was going in for the harvesting-eggs procedure anyway.” I swallowed and continued. “My doctor expected to get a good amount of eggs because I was young and healthy. I wondered if that might be my only opportunity to donate some to a family in need, in honor of my mother.”

His eyes slowly widened. I couldn’t gauge what he was thinking.

So I continued. “It made me feel like I was not only doing something to protect my future fertility but to also help someone.”

Sebastian blinked a few times. “Wow. That’s . . . certainly an honorable decision for someone so young to have made.”

“Yeah. I mean . . . I didn’t want to ever have to do it again. I figured since I was going through all the trouble, if there was ever a time to make that kind of decision, that was it. So I bit the bullet.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I don’t even know why I was so compelled to admit this to you now. It’s just . . . you asked me about the scar, and I felt like this was the right time to let you know.” I looked into his eyes. “I hope you don’t think any differently of me because of my decision.”

The seconds that passed where he didn’t immediately say anything were excruciating.

Then he cupped my face. “I would never judge you for making a decision that helped someone else. Don’t ever think that. It’s definitely . . . surprising . . . but not something that makes me think any differently of you, Sadie. If anything, I admire you even more for doing that.”

I let out a long, relieved breath. Not sure why I expected that to be harder than it was. I supposed I didn’t have to admit anything to him at all, and he would have never known about that decision I made all those years ago. But deep down, I think it would have bothered me to not know how he might have felt about it or whether he would have looked at me differently.

“So . . . these eggs . . . ,” he asked. “Did they go to different people?”

“No. I didn’t want that. I wanted them to all go to one person in need—a cancer survivor like my mother. And I didn’t want to know who that person was. It was important to me that there be no contact at all. I just wanted to help someone. So I made sure it was all anonymous. To this day, I have no idea whether anything took . . . whether there was a baby who came from it.”

“Wow. Okay.” He squeezed my side. “Thank you for opening up to me. I know you didn’t have to do that.” Then he stared off for a bit.

We lay in a sort of awkward silence after my admission—until Sebastian got out of bed abruptly and said, “How about I order us some lunch?”

I sat up against the headboard. “That sounds great.”

“Why don’t you take a hot shower? I’ll go pick something up so that it’s ready for when you get out.”

Things were seeming brighter by the second. I smiled and lifted myself off the bed. “Okay.”

By the time I got out of the long shower, though, while the hot Thai food was waiting in containers on the table, Sebastian made an unexpected announcement.

He looked upset. “I have to head to the restaurant. The chef called in sick and the substitute has never worked with us before. I have to make sure he knows what he’s doing, oversee things.”

“Oh no. Does that happen often?”

“Only a few times before. It always works out in the end, but it’s nerve-racking.”

This sucked.

“Okay . . . um, well . . . can I do anything?”

“Birdie isn’t supposed to be home for a while. But you can hang out here or head home. Whatever you prefer.”

“Will you let me know if you need me to head back here for her or something if you can’t make it back in time for her tomorrow?”

“Absolutely. Thank you for offering to do that.”

After he left, I couldn’t help wondering if there was more to his departure than the story he had given me. I knew that was probably ridiculous paranoia. It just seemed like the entire mood changed after I admitted to him that I’d donated my eggs. I could see how that might freak someone out. I remember watching stories on the news about sperm donors whose children came to find them years later. One guy had, like, twenty kids. My situation was different, of course. I didn’t do it for money. It was to honor my mother and help one family in need. But still, maybe he’d had some sort of a delayed reaction to my admission.

Anyway, I was probably reading into it too much. I tried to put it out of my mind for the rest of the day.