Triplets Make Five

All of this seemed to be a trend with Delilah. This refusal streak she had in her. She seemed hell-bent on saying ‘no’ to me every step of the way. I didn't know what that was about her personality, but it was what had initially attracted me to her. She was the only woman I had ever met who turned me down. That first night at the bar when I offered her a ride home, any other woman would have said ‘yes’. But she didn't.

Then again, when I asked her out on a date over lunch in my office. Every single woman I ever dated said ‘yes’ the first time I asked.

But Delilah didn't.

And now, when it was more pertinent than ever for her to say yes to me, she was saying no once again. She was turning down every service I could possibly offer her--from the best doctors in the nation to financial stability--just to preserve some sort of facade she was putting up for the world.

The more I got to know her, the more confusing she became. At first, I thought she hid away from the world because she thought she was weird. But the more I got to know her, the more I realized she bled a confidence that rivaled even myself sometimes. She was feisty. Filled with fire and passion. She was someone who knew what she wanted out of life, even if that life was a plain and simple life.

Then, I thought she kept herself cooped up in her little office because no one in the company cared about her. It was some sort of self-thrown pity party she could have on a regular basis. Then I talk with her and got to know her more, and I found out that she liked it. That it was her decision to settle in that office versus the comfortable one sitting right next to her on the same hallway.

And now, that secretly confident woman who hid herself away from the world for reasons I still couldn't explain was denying the one thing she was scared of losing.

Money.

She was scared of losing her job. At least she had been honest about that. She couldn't be scared of her reputation, because she didn't have one. No one talked about her, no one invited her to anything, and the couple of people who did know about her didn't have any feelings toward her one way or another. They knew stories about her. They had theories about her how she lived her life and why she did the things she did. But they didn't feel one way or another about it.

She was a neutral subject among those in the office that did know who she was.

The only thing I could gather was that this was some sort of intern

al war for her. Like I had become a fill-in battlefield for whatever fight she thought she was still fighting. And it killed me inside. As I walked into my office Monday morning and settled into my seat, I looked up across the hallway and saw that light underneath her door. She was here, she was pregnant with my fucking triplets, and I couldn’t even knock on her door to see how she was feeling.

I was trying to avoid eye contact with her as much as possible. I would glance up at her as she came out of her office, scanning her to see if she was okay. I noticed her skin was paler than usual. She was probably more nauseous as the days rolled by. That started a cascade of thoughts in my head. How sick was she? What was she keeping down? Was she throwing up fluids? That wasn’t a good thing if she was.

But every time she looked towards me, I had to sink my eyes back into my paperwork. Back into my computer screen. Back into whatever pointless meeting someone had set up with me.

It was hard for me to keep my eyes off her. She was a beautiful woman. I thought about how her curves would grow. How her breasts would fill with milk for my children. How her hips would spread, creating more room for her thighs to grow and settle. I thought about how her feet would eventually hurt, carrying around my three children within the confines of her body. I thought about how I could massage her feet. Her calves. Her thighs.

Her pussy.

I dipped my head back into my paperwork as she came out of her office. Just thinking about her swelling with my children was bringing my cock to life. Everything about her body would change, and just thinking about those changes made my mouth salivate. This woman had crawled into every part of me. She had cracked open my sternum, laid her beautiful body in there to rest, and sewed herself back up in it.

I had no idea how we were going to keep this a secret. I had no idea how we were going to make this work. But I respected Delilah enough to try. I cared about her well-being enough to not push her into anything she didn’t like.

But if I thought for once second that her and those children weren’t doing well, I would intervene at all costs.

Because that was what Delilah deserved. She deserved someone who respected her boundaries until she was hurt. Then? She deserved someone who would swoop in and save her.

Even if she didn’t want it.

Seventeen

Delilah

I was lounging around on my couch and trying to eat ice cream. It was the only thing I was able to keep down with my rolling nausea, and I was angry at that fact. I was going to get big enough already carrying triplets, and the last thing I needed was to be stuffing my face with ice cream. I was going to be as big as a house by the time this pregnancy was over, and my anger only served to make my nausea worse.

Beethoven was sitting on my lap, purring for bites of my ice cream. Every time I pushed him off my lap, he would jump back up, bothering me for my food. He ran his tail all along my arms and settled himself between my legs, meowing and purring for the food I had in my hands. I hated this. I hated all of this. My mind was swirling at a thousand miles a second. How was I going to take care of three children at once? I lived in a one-bedroom apartment that barely had enough room for me and my cat.

The first thing I had to do was draw a budget. I had to go through my finances, figure out what I made during the month down to the penny, then lay out what I could afford. My first move during this pregnancy needed to be the purchasing of a house the kids and I could live in. I couldn’t raise them in a one-bedroom apartment. Even if I kept them all in the same nursery, they would each need their own living space as they got older, which meant a house with at least four bedrooms. And in Philadelphia, even a rundown home with that many rooms would run me a quarter of a million dollars.

Then I would have to set aside a budget for all of their nursery items. Buying three cribs alone would cost me a thousand dollars, and that was money I currently didn't have. Then there was the expense of bottles and a breast pump if I wanted to breastfeed three children off two nipples. Pacifiers and crib bedding. Eventual full-sized beds and more expensive clothing as they got older.

Currently, I was throwing all my extra money into paying off my car. I was still two months away from having it fully paid off, but now I was thinking about all the money I could've saved had I not done that. Had I not spiraled my extra money into that car. Hell, I was thinking about what I could've saved if I got a cheaper car.

But now I needed a bigger car. I needed space to comfortably seat three children along with all their stuff if we went anywhere. I would have to trade it in, which meant another car payment. Which meant more money I had to factor into my budget.

The numbers were rolling around in my head and they weren't helping my nausea. I set my ice cream down and watched Beethoven stick his head in the container. Even though I knew I needed to eat, I couldn't bring myself to do it. All of the money I would need during this pregnancy alone was adding up quicker than I could get it to stop. Then, I thought about the diapers I would need to buy. The clothes they would grow out of. The food they would need to eat and the medicine and doctor’s appointments they would require.