Happily Ever Addendum (15 page)

Rachel’s voice broke me out of my
daydream.

I grabbed one of the portable monitors
as I walked out of the room to get Lilli. Still looking down at the monitor, I
hadn’t seen the bedroom door open and Lilli walk out. We smacked into each
other, her head connecting with my nose.

"Oh my god! Aidan? Are you
okay?" Lilli exclaimed. "I’m so sorry…I didn’t see you coming."

I cupped my nose and blinked a couple of
times to clear the spots that I was seeing. I leaned against the wall. Pulling
back my hand, Lilli gasped and ran back into the bedroom.

Looking down at my hand, I saw that it
was covered in blood. Lilli returned with a towel from the bathroom and held it
up to me. I took it and put it to my face.

"I’m so sorry." She said
again.

"It was an accident." My words
were muffled from the fluffy Egyptian cotton that was pressed to my face. Lilli
followed me to our bathroom.

I pulled the towel away and saw Lilli
cringe in the mirror.

"I’m so, so sorry." She
covered her face.

"It’s okay." I chuckled out.

Turning the water faucet to a cool
temperature, I washed the blood from my face and used the towel to clean off
the blood before it dried. Once I was finished, I could tell that my eyes were
going to turn black. Lilli obviously could tell too.

She sat down on the side of the tub,
placing her head in her hands. I turned around, focusing my attention on her.

"Lilli?" She wouldn’t look up.
"Lilli, look at me?" She shook her head. "Please?" I walked
closer to her. She lifted her head and I could tell she was crying.

Pulling her up and into my arms, I tried
to soothe her.

"Don’t cry, love, it was an
accident."

"Your eyes are going to turn
black." She sobbed slightly. "It’s my fault. I’m so, so sorry."

I rubbed her back. "Calm down. It’s
fine, really." I pulled away and looked at her. She looked at me and wiped
her cheeks. "Okay?" She nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to smile.

Moving in to kiss her, she pulled away.
"Keep your face away from my head. I’m dangerous." She said and
walked away, clearly still upset.

I moved to her side quickly and wrapped
my arms around her, turning her to me. I kissed her before she could pull away
from me. The kiss was meant to be loving, but immediately turned passionate.
The taste of her on my lips was so amazing.

Sliding my tongue over her lips, she
opened her mouth to me. I took full advantage, plunging my tongue into her
mouth greedily. My hold on her tightened and I backed her to the wall, pressing
my entire body against hers. Soon my hips were rocking into hers slowly.

"Aidan…" she mumbled against
my lips. I kept kissing her, moving my mouth over her neck. "Aidan…"
she panted out.

"Hmmm…?" I hummed against her
neck.

"You need…oh god…you need to
stop." She slid her hand into my hair and gripped as I lightly bit her
collar bone.

"Mmhmm…" I mumbled against her
neck and rocked my hips into hers again.

"Ai…" I covered her mouth with
mine and brought my hand up to cup her breast, softly massaging. She pulled my
hand away.

"Stop." She murmured against
my mouth and pushed me away.

"What?" I asked confused, both
of our breathing labored.

She blushed and then motioned to her
chest. I looked down.

"Oh…I’m…I’m sorry." I pulled
myself back from her.

"We can’t…uh…do anything…not for a
couple of months." She looked uncomfortable with the conversation.
"And…well…these." She motioned to her breasts, one with a wet spot on
it now, "will sort of be off limits while I’m breast feeding."

I nodded, embarrassed at my lack of
control.

"I’m gonna…uh…go change." She
moved away from me as quickly as she could.

I was such a fucking idiot. I pressed my
forehead against the wall, tapping my nose. "Shit." I groaned low.
The pain in my nose was nasty.

Lilli returned with a different shirt on,
attempting to walk passed me quickly, keeping her eyes away from looking at me.

"Hey." I grabbed her hand and
walked with her down the stairs. "Don’t feel…look, I’m sorry that I
started…I mean, I forgot that…"

"It’s okay." She shrugged,
"just slightly embarrassing."

"Don’t be embarrassed." I
squeezed her hand. "Should I be embarrassed that I’m jealous?"

"Jealous?" She looked
confused. "You want to leak from your..?"

I laughed. "No, no, no. I mean that
I am jealous that they get to put their mouths on you and I don’t." I
smirked.

She smacked my arm.

"Don’t make it sound like
that!" She laughed.

We sat at the dining room table where
Rachel had set the food out. As we were eating, Jay announced that Sarah had
arrived.

"Hey, Mom." Lilli went to
stand up.

"Don’t get up. Eat, you’ll need
it." She smiled.

"Please, sit and eat with us."
I stood and pulled a chair out for her.

"Thank you." She smiled up to
me.

We sat in comfortable conversation until
the first cry in our home broke up the conversation. Lilli got up and I
followed her.

"Someone is finally awake." I
said halfway up the stairs.

"It’s Walsh." Lilli laughed.

"How do you know that?" I
asked her.

"I can just tell." She
shrugged and headed toward their room.

Sure enough, it was Walsh. Livy was
lying quietly awake in her bed, though she was slightly fussy. Lilli changed
Walsh and then sat in the chair with him, lifting her shirt to feed him. I
changed Livy and then stood rocking her in my arms while watching Lilli.

It was the most natural thing to watch
and yet it was so erotic. She was naturally good at this and it scared me that
maybe I wasn’t as good.

"Can you hand me that receiving
blanket?" Lilli pointed toward Walsh’s crib.

I walked over and looked around at the
different blankets that were hanging and lying around. I heard Lilli giggle and
turned around.

"The one with the ducks." She
smiled affectionately.

I grabbed it and held it up. She nodded
in approval. After handing it to her, she laid it over her shoulder and draped
it down over Walsh.

"Why are you covering
yourself?" I walked over and sat on the stool in front of her. She
shrugged. I pulled the blanket back and she glared at me slightly.

"I like to watch. If I can’t feed
them I want to be able to at least be a part of it this way." She sighed
and relaxed back into the chair. "Besides, it’s not like I haven’t seen
your…"

"Aidan." She hissed and then
threw a bib at me. I laughed.

She handed Walsh off to me and gave me
his receiving blanket with orders to burp him, though he may not burp. This
stuff was just a tad bit confusing.

Lilli took Livy and placed her against
her other breast. I sat patting Walsh as Livy fed. I was glad that I had taken
the week off from work and planned to work mostly from home the week after
that. Then an idea hit me.

"Lilli?"

"Hmm?" She looked up from Livy
to me.

"What if we have your mother stay
here this week?" Lilli’s brow furrowed. "She can help you out this
week and I will work half days from home. Then, when your mom leaves, I will
arrange for a full two weeks home."

"You don’t have to do all of that.
We will be fine."

"I know you’ll be fine, but this
will give you more help during their first month home, until we all get
adjusted."

"I’m fine with asking my mom to
stay, though you don’t need to take more time off from work. I’m going to start
interviewing nannies like we discussed."

"Lilli, please let me do this? You
can still interview nannies but, this way, you will have help with these two
while you look." I put my hand on her knee and rubbed. "You do
realize that I want to be here with you three? I want to be a part of their
lives."

She sighed in defeat and nodded.
"Okay. I guess when you put it that way." She squinted her eyes at me
playfully.

"Good, then it’s settled." I
pulled Walsh up and held him in front of my face. "You hear that, buddy,
I’m gonna be home with you for a while." I turned Walsh around to face
Lilli. "Yeah, Daddy!" I mimicked a baby sounding voice and moved
Walsh as I spoke. Yeah, I used my son as a puppet.

Lilli laughed loudly and Livy jerked.
"Stop it!" She laughed. "He’s not a doll."

Sarah had agreed to stay with us for a
week and a half. The first night home was interesting. We were up every couple
of hours to change, feed, rock and soothe the twins back to sleep. However, we
were up to the challenge.

The second night, Lilli was falling
asleep while she was feeding the babies at four in the morning. Sarah had to
keep tapping her on the shoulder to keep her awake.

The third night, I let Lilli sleep while
Sarah and I took care of the babies. Lilli had pumped earlier in the day to
start building up a supply so that I could help out more with feeding time.

The fourth night, Lilli let me sleep
while her and Sarah took care of everything.

The fifth night, we let Sarah sleep and
handled the babies throughout the night.

After our first full week at home, we
had hoped that we would have Walsh and Livy sleeping better at night.
Unfortunately, when it comes to newborns, not everything goes as planned. They
still had odd sleeping patterns and we couldn’t figure it out.

Sarah left to go back to Canada and I
began my two weeks of working from home.

Lilli began interviewing women from
different nanny services. I had to insist that she look for a live-in nanny.
She wasn’t happy about ‘hiring someone for around the clock services when she
was fully capable’, but finally relented when I mentioned her going back to
work with the foundation.

The first few interviews had not gone
well. Lilli made some phone calls to different agencies in the area hoping for better
applicants. When that didn’t work out, she resorted to about five hours of
online research and phone calls in order to find reliable information for
hiring a nanny.

I had suggested calling Elora to find
out about their nanny, Mya. Lilli then told me that they had lucked out in
finding a college student with classes only three nights a week. It was perfect
for Elora, but wouldn’t work out for us.

A week, and multiple exhausting nights,
later, Lilli found Kimberly. Kimberly was a forty-five year old divorcee who
had been a kindergarten teacher during her twenties and thirties. She was the
mother of one thirteen year old son, which Lilli immediately figured could move
in here as well.

Three days after I met Kimberly and her
son Peter, we hired her. We decided to renovate the third floor to fit in
another bedroom suite like Rachel and Alex’s. We needed to tear down a couple
of walls, install some doors, install a kitchen and add on a second bathroom
for Peter. It took a little over a week to get everything set up.

Kimberly and Peter moved into the house
and it was almost odd at how quickly they acclimated to the family. Alex looked
to Peter like an older brother, and Rachel and Kimberly seemed to have a lot in
common.

Lilli was so happy with Kimberly that I
saw an immediate change in her. She started to relax a little more, which she
needed.

Kimberly had also helped us achieve what
had felt like the impossible. The babies slept almost an entire night, five
hours straight. All she did was put them in the same crib together.

She explained that since they had spent
all of their time together inside of Lilli, it was only natural to miss that
presence. She would eventually put them in separate cribs, moving them side by
side and slowly working the cribs apart. But, for now, as infants, it was
perfect for them. We couldn’t have agreed more.

"You know, you pay me to get up
with them." Kimberly laughed quietly as I sat feeding Walsh in the rocking
chair.

"I know, but it’s my last few days
of being home with them." My voice sounded just as sad as I felt about
being gone all day.

"It’s really nice to see a father
take such an active role with his children." She smiled at me warmly.

"I’m sure that my lifestyle makes
it easier for me to do so." I shrugged.

"Ah, even so, not all men would sit
up at night as you do." She patted my shoulder and went to check on Livy.

The days passed and soon I had to return
to work. I headed to the twins room to tell Lilli and the babies good bye. As I
entered, I looked around the room but didn’t find Lilli. I leaned into the crib
and kissed both of the twins. As I was walking back to their door, I heard a
noise in the bathroom.

I walked toward the door and knocked.
"Lilli?" I could hear a buzzing noise.