by Ella James
“I’m not upset.” His still-pale face is earnest.
“Are you sure you aren’t? You’re gonna have to come and visit in your private jet now.”
He shuts his eyes—well, eye—and lets a breath out. Then he looks back at me. “I can do that. I’m not tied down like I was before.”
“I’m surprised you did that. Just a little. But I’m happy if it’s good for you.”
“I think it was the weekend with you.” He looks almost shy as he confesses that. “I told you about building the tables. After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought about doing the woodwork while working on the startup, but there’s never any extra time. I get this weird thing—from my mom,” he adds softly. “My mom was an orthopedic surgeon. How I knew what not to do for your ankle.” He taps his head. “Anyway, her hands shook when she got tired. Notable trait for a surgeon. Well, mine do too.”
“So you’re saying you would be too tired from the long hours in the office to do woodworking effectively?”
He nods. “Working on a startup is consuming. Just the nature of the beast.”
“You got tired of being consumed?” I give him a soft smile.
He looks down again before meeting my eyes. “I kept thinking about you. And how you were always going to be there, with Margot and Oliver. Just one plane ride away.”
I snort. “Don’t tell me you wanted to see me. We both know that’s baloney.”
He leans closer to me, so close I can see him swallow. “I think we’re both fans of bologna.” His lips brush mine gently. “I did want to see you. More than anything.” He swallows hard and looks down. Then his eyes are on mine, and they’re pooling. “I’m in love with you, Gryff. But the fact remains…” He gives a light shake of his head. “Look at what I came from. The kids were left to you. Asher didn’t trust me. He thought I wouldn’t be good for them.” His voice thickens on the words.
“Oh, baby, that’s not true. He just knew you worked a ton. And Sutton knew I loved kids and was living in the sticks with a bunch of rednecks on crotch rockets, so she thought I might never find somebody good.”
His eye shuts, and I sit up, wrapping my arms around him. “News flash, Sly—people aren’t their parents. Or their childhood, or their situation.” I rub my hand over his chest. “People are their heart and choices. That’s all there is to it.”
I’m surprised my eyes well up when I look up at him. I’m blaming Peanut. “I’m not gonna lie. It hurt when you Houdini’d. I was upset and confused. It sucked. If you let those things you’re scared about define you, you’ll be right. You won’t be good for anybody. But Sly, what if you don’t?”
He swallows hard, and something like fear flickers through his features. “Even if I don’t, I might always be like this. I can promise I won’t ghost on you again, but Gryff, I’m fucking skittish. I’m going to be so fucking scared of losing you. I already am,” he admits.
“What?” I shake my head and pin him with a WTF look.
He blows a breath out. “Barrel racing isn’t very safe. And don’t some people die in childbirth?”
I blanch. “I hope not!”
“Sorry.” He cringes.
“I don’t think a lot of people die in childbirth, no.” I change positions, moving so I can lie my head in his lap. He frames my face with his hands, and I yawn. “Look, I’m really tired, B. I get tired right after dinner now and need to go to sleep.”
His fingers push their way back into my hair. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
I sit up with a smile. “Just kidding. I am sort of sleepy, but I just wanted to put my head in your lap.” I give him my best side eye. “So are we friends or something? What’s the what? Suspense time’s over.”
“You mean everything to me,” he rasps. “I want to be your friend—more than friends—” he laughs— “for a long time.”
“How much more than friends?” I grin, and he wraps me up against him. “For however much you’ll let me have. I’m telling you, I’m a little fucked up. Sometimes things…” He exhales. “Certain things kind of throw me off.”
“You mean like PTSD?”
“Maybe. That day in the Bean place, with your friend who hugged me? She was wearing my mom’s perfume.” His voice goes ragged on the words, lips tugging downward. “I hadn’t smelled it in a long time. It was weird because I didn’t decide to leave, but I just…did.”
I pull the covers back and motion to the white sheets. “Get in there, and you can tell me what else ails you. Sleeping is one, right?”
He lies back slowly, and I pull the covers fully back then tuck them over him. “I don’t sleep well.”
“You think you were working all the time to like…avoid the stuff?”
Using two fingers, he rubs at his forehead. He looks tired. “Maybe.”
He holds his arm out, like he wants me to get under the covers with him.
I do just that, and he wraps me in his warm arms. “Can you really forgive me?” His lips brush over my hair, and I feel him draw a breath in. “It was unforgivable…the way I left you like that.” Another deep breath, and his face is pressed against my hair. “After my mom died…” A little shudder ripples through his chest. I hug him tighter. “I was…scared that people would find out. What happened. It was me who…made her upset. I knew something was wrong. She would lie on the couch all the time and sleep. But I still got mad at her. It was because she didn’t get me vinegar for a train powered by baking soda and vinegar. The worst part was she got the train.” His voice breaks on the word. I rub my hand over his back. “It was this fucking cool train. Lightweight. After…” He swallows and inhales. “After she died, my dad threw it away.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
“She was a good mom. But it was me who wasn’t grateful enough. You can say she was depressed, but…it was me, June. No one but me pushed her over the edge. My dad wasn’t even there. It was just me. And I did that. So how can I be good for anybody?”
His whole body quivers so hard. Then I know he’s crying. He’s gulping air down like we’re running out, and I feel something wet in my hair.
“My poor Burkie. I’m so, so, so sorry.”
His shallow breaths come faster, and I try to get him to calm a bit. “Breathe in through your nose…and out your mouth.” I can feel him trying. “It hurts really bad. Makes you feel so lost, right?”
I stroke his hair, holding his cheek to my chest. “It’s okay. You are gonna be okay. At some point. It won’t hurt as much.”
“I didn’t know. And I should have. I want to go back. So I can know, Juney. That was my app.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like…this dynamic depression screener,” he says thickly. “It guides meditation…you tell it your moods. Like, let’s say…you do the meditations for eleven minutes…usually. If you don’t, if…for two days it’s nine…and then six. If you click through in a certain pattern…certain speeds. The AI can identify depression. It can contact a doctor or call a help line. Monitor your browser history…if you ask it.”
“Oh, sweetheart.”
“It’s really complicated. Who I sold it to—he’s older. With a bigger team.” He sighs. “I was tired.”
“Of working frantically? I know you must have been. So is he going to do it like you wanted?”
He nods. “I’ve got some money in it. But I’m not in charge. I stopped developing…and left the team…for now.”
“You were probably run down. You just need some time. Maybe you can support it with your money but let your day to day be something else.”
He nods. I press a soft kiss against his damp cheek. “I forgive you, Burke babe. You just stick with Juney. We can figure out the way between us. We’ll do it together. I’m strong and solid, and I think you’re pretty damn strong, too. Together we’re unbreakable.”
He nods. I stroke his hair back off his damp forehead. “Kids lash out. You’re gonna see that. It’s a normal part of kids just being kid
s. When someone’s…well…a parent with good mental health doesn’t take that personally. You can dust yourself off. I’m so sorry for your mama.”
He hugs me more tightly then and nods. “You wanna go by her resting place tomorrow? Take some pretty flowers?”
He shrugs, and I second-guess the suggestion. “Or we don’t have to.”
“I don’t ever go. It’s probably overgrown.”
“They do maintenance. And your mama isn’t in there anyway.” I put a hand over his chest. “She’s in here.”
“I don’t know if I can ever believe in a happy ending, June. You might need someone who can.”
That breaks my heart. “You ought to know by now that I don’t listen to what people tell me to do. Maybe you just need to see some happy things. Have yourself some happy endings.”
I don’t know why, but I kiss him on the mouth.
He wraps his hand around my head and kisses me more deeply.
“B—”
“I need it. I need this.”
So he gives me oral on that basis—that he needs it. And I let him because I’m mega horny since he knocked me up. Also because I want him happy. And like I said, I like happy endings.
After that, I lay him down and take his dick and treat it like an ice cream cone. I think I do a nice job, because he starts pulling my hair, which just encourages me, and thrusting into my mouth, and then comes hard.
He squints at me after he takes a moment to recover. “Oh shit. Will that hurt the baby?”
“Oh yeah, jizz is a killer.”
He blanches. I laugh.
“You’re wicked, woman.”
“I know.”
We lie down together, wrapped up in each other’s arms. His sweet face is in my hair. My leg is pushed between his.
“This is awfully comfy for a little slice of hell with Mr. Devil.”
“Hey, now. You’re the mom of my hellspawn.”
“That I am.” I snuggle closer.
Chapter 31
Burke
She’s asleep in what seems like a few seconds once we lie down in the bed together. I look at her face and throat and breasts and then her belly when she twists and pulls the covers off. She’s fucking perfect. And she’s got our child inside her.
There’s a part of me that wants to stay awake and watch her sleeping, but I’ve been thinking—about the things about me that are the most incompatible with being a good partner to someone. To June Lawler. Getting sleep sometimes is probably important.
As I scoot closer to her, sleeping June wraps her arms around me.
Huggie buggie…
The words bob up from a well buried somewhere near the center of me. I can hear my mother’s voice, can feel her arms around me as she murmurs the silly phrase, just something she used to say when she hugged us at bed time.
I don’t know why, but remembering that makes my eyes fill with tears again. Once the faucet’s going, it’s so fucking hard to stop. I keep hearing all these other things my mom used to say…remembering some things she used to do. Like cutting shapes into our sandwiches with bread stamps and the way her white coat smelled when she would come home from the hospital with it on sometimes. I remember hearing her heartbeat through the stethoscope she always let us play with, and the specific little flower she would always draw when we’d hand her the sidewalk chalk.
The first night my dad ever hit me, she pulled me into the downstairs bathroom and said, “Burke, honey. We’ll get away. It just might take some time.”
I wish it didn’t, but it fucking kills me that we didn’t get away. I know she had to be in so much pain to do what she did. (That makes more tears fall down toward my ears, to think about my mom being so sad and hurt). But…she left us. She left us with him.
Since I’m already crying, and it’s dark and quiet, and June is wrapped around me, I just keep on going. I think of Margot and Oliver, and Asher, Sutton, and it’s all so fucking sad, my chest feels like it’s cracking open.
June stirs then and hugs me closer. I grit my teeth to hold back a groan that wants to come out.
Why does it have to be so bad?
Why does it have to be?
It makes me so mad that my mom’s story ended pushing a note that said “call 9-1-1” under the door, and stepping off a stool in her closet. It makes me so goddamn fucking furious, I start shaking. My dad is a piece of shit, and he’s alive and well—with a new, girlfriend younger than the one before. According to a local magazine, he just bought a small plane to fly down to Malibu on weekends.
I don’t want it. That’s the thesis of my life so far. I don’t want things to be the way they are. When Asher died, I was so furious that for a second, it made me want to do a crazy thing, like crash my car, too. And then I met June, and we rode those horses to her family’s home, and we were sitting on that swing, and she said that bullshit thing about the happily ever afters. And all I wanted—all I wanted in the universe, at that heartbeat in time—was to be able to believe it. Even just a little, just a sliver of belief.
As we rode the horses back to her barn, I realized I couldn’t. And it made me feel so fucking…broken. Which just made me want her more. Like a fucked-up moth to a perfect, warm flame.
And as I lie there, letting my mind wander to the baby June has in her belly, I remember asking someone at the work site for her. The words just float into my head, along with a blurry picture of a plywood room—the room I fell into.
“Call June Lawler. Tell her I need her. I want June.”
It’s too much for one night. Too much to fit into my head. I push my face into the way-too-puffy pillow, and my eye hurts, and my head still aches some. I shift onto my side, and June shifts with me.
“Burke…” She murmurs something near my chest, her words a tickle.
I whisper “mmm,” just so she won’t be lonely in her dream.
I get up again and use a tube of motel toothpaste to brush my teeth with my finger. I look at myself in the mirror—I look pale and tired and fucked up—and I think about my mom and her pain. For years, I tried hard not to. Now it’s like a jagged tooth that I keep pushing my tongue onto.
I look at myself—slightly blurry still, though not as much as even yesterday—and I feel like she’s looking at me, too. I wonder what she’d say if she could, and somehow I just know she would be saying sorry.
I’m so sorry, sweetheart. It went so wrong, and I didn’t want it to. I never wanted that for you, Burke.
I wipe my eyes with hotel tissue, but the faucet stays on for a while longer. I feel nauseated by the time I fall asleep in June’s arms.
The next morning, I find I can see her face with almost perfect clarity. I can see Peanut better, too.
June straddles my hips and kisses my forehead when I tell her. “I’m so freaking happy. And I know you’re relieved.”
“You sure you can forgive me fucking up and ghosting?”
“I’m not mad if I can keep you.” She smiles in that way she has, so I can see wheels turning in her head.
I see my mother smiling, so clearly it’s almost like she’s right there with us.
I nod twice before I find my voice. “Whatever you want,” I rasp. “I’m yours already.”
“You are mine.” She leans down and kisses my lips, her hair falling over my neck and shoulders. It feels so good, I shut my eyes.
“What do you say we go out and you can show me all around to all the places I read about in magazines. We stay here for a few days, and then go back to the farm. Unless you want to live here? Do you want to live here?”
I laugh. “Do you?”
Her eyes widen. “I don’t know.” She takes a breath and lets it out and meets my eyes. “What if I spend time here and it turns out that I don’t, Sly?”
I grin. “Then that’s good. I don’t know if I want to live here either.” She gives me a questioning look, and I trace her forearm with my fingertip. “I want to be where you are, Gryff. I’d re-locate in a heartbeat if
it means I get to be near you.”
“You would, really?” Her lips twitch into a smile that turns into a big grin.
I smile back. “Really, really.”
Epilogue
June
“What do you think?”
I grin at Burke, and then reach out and run my fingertip over one of the crib’s delicate spindles. “I don’t have words.” I throw my arms around his neck and sort of hit his six-pack with my basketball belly. “It’s freakin’ gorgeous. Peanut—a.k.a. Ashtyn Lawler-Masterson—is gonna love it.”
I take Burke’s hands, and we twirl in a circle over the pale pink rug in our baby girl’s near-finished nursery. Margot and Oliver must hear me laughing, because they dash in and join the party. Somehow Margot ends up in the crib, and Oliver is hanging upside down from Ashtyn’s rocker. Burke throws both of them over his shoulders and starts downstairs, roaring like the troll he sometimes pretends to be. His low voice echoes through the house’s roomy corridors.
We moved into my childhood home a month ago, though we’re not completely furnished with our renovations.
It took some thinking, but we ended up deciding to get rid of almost everything that had been in here and re-decorate a little bit, to make my family’s home feel more like ours. And it is ours. Burke bought the house from my dad and then signed it over to me, so it’s about as both of ours as anything could be. Daddy used the money to pay off his new house, where he’s living happily with Mrs. Kensington—mustache and all.
As a “Baby Mama Token of Appreciation,” B paid off the bank loan on the farm and even bought some acreage back from neighbors we had sold to in the last few years.
In the last couple of months, since he’s been well and truly settled in here with the kids and me, he and Shawn started “S of a B Woodworking,” which is quite a hit on Etsy and in a few showrooms up in Albany and Atlanta. When he and my brother get a few dozen more pieces—mostly beds and custom rocking chairs, although they plan to start doing some tables soon—Burke and I and the kids will spend some time in California, seeing how we like things there and letting Burke court showrooms in the Bay and L.A. areas.