By the time Garth had returned with a few waters, Jesse had almost downed his whole bottle. Sloshing what was left of it in front of me, he lifted an expectant brow at the bottle in my hands.
Two could so easily play at this game.
After unscrewing the lid, I clinked my bottle to his and lifted it to my mouth while I heard Josie whisper to Garth what was going on. Another curse flooded from his mouth. I took my own dainty sip at first, and just when Jesse was crossing his arms, I tipped the bottle back and drained all sixteen ounces in the time it took Garth to mutter yet another comment that would earn his forehead a dent the size of Jesse’s fist if he didn’t watch it.
“Well?” I waved the empty bottle in Jesse’s face. His eyes were wide with surprise. “What’s it going to be? Your wife’s and child’s well-being, hydration included, is in your hands.”
Jesse’s head fell some, his eyes drifting to my stomach. When he looked up, I saw a look of resolve I was all too familiar with.
“Black,” he called, his voice matching his expression, “get me another.”
MY HEAD WAS swimming, and my body was floating. I couldn’t remember how many beers I’d had, but it hadn’t been many. At least too few to feel so hazed. Given my low tolerance to all things of an alcoholic nature paired with the added clincher of not having had a single drink for the past few months, the three or four or five I’d had the past couple of hours was screwing with me like I was a teen girl who’d just busted into her parents’ liquor cabinet and reached for a bottle of peach schnapps.
I wasn’t quite drunk, but I was close enough to realize I needed to cut myself off unless I want Garth to have to peel me off of the barn floor. Rowen had kept up with our agreement . . . bet . . . thing, matching my every bottle of beer for her own bottle of water. So that meant she’d had three or four or five too, which should be more than enough.
Except it was so hot in the barn it felt as if my skin was about to start peeling off. Garth had opened up the back barn doors when the heat hit stifling levels, but of course it would be the night when not even the faintest of summer breezes would grace us with its presence. So it was hot. Ungodly hot. Rowen was wearing something light which should keep her cool, but her arms and chest had been coated with a sheen of sweat for the past hour. She was seeping water as quickly as she could drink it.
Not to mention she’d hardly drank anything on the drive over because she had complained that if she downed more than a thimble of water an hour, she had to hit every rest stop and gas station we passed. A pregnant woman needed at least three liters of fluid every day, so given that each bottle was . . . I squinted in an attempt to focus on the miniscule numbers stamped on her water bottle . . . okay, the first number was definitely a one, but the second one could be a six . . . it could just as easily be an eight.
I gave my head a swift shake to see if that would help clear my vision, but it seemed to do the opposite. So it was either sixteen or eighteen ounces. If she’d had three or four or five—let’s say four as a safe average—that meant she’d had about . . .
Math’s hard. That was all I could think as I made my third attempt to multiply four by sixteen, then eighteen. I couldn’t arrive at the right answer, but I arrived at a conclusion. She hadn’t had her daily recommended value of fluid.
I’d reached mine, beer-wise, after I lifted my second bottle to my lips, but I was a big guy—my body could take it. Rowen’s though? Hers was too fragile to risk chancing something as important as hydration.
“Is that another empty bottle I see you clutching?” Rowen’s arm wound around my back as she nestled into my chest. “I’ll flag someone to bring you another.”
I had to shake the bottle in my hand. Nothing. When she cocked an eyebrow, I lowered my gaze to the water bottle she was holding.
“Mine’s empty,” I said, resting my hand on her back. Even through the thin layer of her dress, I could feel her sweat. I felt that familiar sensation cinching around my stomach, almost like an invisible vise had been attached and was being clamped down. It had been getting worse and more frequent, triggered now by something as simple as Rowen sweating a little. My neurotic switch might have been triggered from the moment she’d flashed those two pink lines in my face, but I hadn’t started out like this. No, my fall into hard-core loco had been a daily regressive effort. “Yours is not.”
Rowen’s hand moved lower down my back, her thumb curling through a belt loop and giving it a few tugs. “This is fun.” She smiled at me and tapped my nose, which was starting to tingle. “I like this game of You Drink, I Drink.”
When she pressed closer to me, her fingers splaying more into ass than back territory, I felt something flicker to life that I’d been doing my damndest to repress. That flicker grew to a rolling flame when I saw the unsaid things in her eyes. Things that should stay unsaid in public but positively sighed, cried, or exhaled in private. That was the alcohol’s fault too.
If it hadn’t been for alcohol doing what it did best and lowering my inhibitions, I would have been able to drop a cage around that flicker then douse it in baking soda and aim a fire hose at it before it had the chance to ignite into something else.
I already knew what she wanted—she’d made no secret of it—and I knew she knew I wanted the same thing. But I couldn’t have that. Or I wouldn’t let myself. Not until she and the baby were both given a clean bill of health and I could stop worrying about her heart giving out if I did so much as kiss her too hard.