Masterson In Love

by Lisa Lang Blakeney

  It's a good thing that I never got around to sharing with Elizabeth some of my new found reservations about having that squad of kids I mentioned before, because neither one of us can afford to second-guess how to move forward now. A baby is coming, and it's like I've won the damn lottery. A part of me is growing inside of Elizabeth. A connection that links me to the woman I love forever.

  But I'm not going to lie.

  I'm also scared shitless.

  31

  Roman

  I'm sitting again in Longwood Park on what is becoming my bench. Well mine and Cecil's. I wonder what kind of man this Cecil person was that he deserved a bench dedicated to him and in such a place like this. I wonder if it was something as simple as him making a financial donation, or if he was some sort of pillar of the community, or maybe just a really great father.

  Typically I do a little investigation on things I wonder about. I've been known to have an insatiable appetite for knowledge about very specific things. I mean it doesn't take much to Google a name and get a little history on someone, but this time there's something about me not knowing who Cecil is that I like. I know enough. He was respected and he's remembered. And sometimes that's all a man wants out of life.

  A legacy.

  Longwood is humming with energy today. It's the week after Christmas and before New Years and evidently in this neck of the woods that's a big deal. Everywhere I look there are shitloads of young couples, in matching North Face jackets, pushing strollers and sipping on expensive lattes. Looking like they do this all the time.

  According to a posted schedule, they have some sort of small celebration in the park every night until New Years Day, and tonight it's a troop of young girls dancing a scene from the Nutcracker. I remember the ballet, because it was one of the few holiday traditions my mother stuck to. Watching The Nutcracker every time it aired on television. We only had one TV in our house, and I hated when she watched that damn special. I'd rather have been watching wrestling or something, not to mention that it made her cry every single time.

  Jade spots me and walks hesitantly over. We haven't spoken much since Elizabeth's accident. Mostly because all I've had on my brain is Elizabeth's surgery, her recovery, and the baby that is growing inside of her. I haven't been in the mood to argue with yet another person close to me, but we were overdue for an argument. There was no putting it off any longer.

  "Hey."

  "Jade." I nod hello. "Have a seat."

  She sits down next to me, but doesn't really look at me. Then she starts to nervously tap her leg.

  "Why are you nervous?" I ask.

  "I think we both know why."

  "Why don't you tell me."

  "I was keeping an eye on the ex, saw that he contacted Elizabeth, but I didn't tell you about it."

  "Why?"

  She finally looks up at me. I think she's surprised by my calm response.

  "I was waiting for Elizabeth to tell you about it."

  "Why?"

  "Because I knew she wouldn't."

  "So you put her in danger to prove some sort of point?"

  "Obviously, I didn't know it was a set up. I didn't think the ass would try to hurt her."

  "All he's ever done is hurt her." My voice rises slightly. "So forgive me if I don't understand your line of reasoning. You are quite familiar with drug users are you not?"

  I not so subtly remind her of her drug addicted ex.

  "I didn't even know he was in contact with that other asshole. I don't have access to his text messages, Roman. Just his email. She didn't even email him back. I honestly didn't think she would agree to meet him."

  "Camden could have helped you get access to the text messages or put a tail on him once you saw that email."

  "I thought I had it handled."

  "But the point is that you didn't. You didn't have it handled at all."

  She looks away while cracking a piece of gum that's in her mouth.

  "You're right."

  "I've always appreciated how you look out for me, Jade. You are way more than an assistant. You're one of my best friends. One of my only friends. But you're dead wrong about Elizabeth. She's the one. She's IT for me, and the sooner you get on board with that, the better off we're both going to be. Because if I have to make a choice, Jade, it will be her. It will always be her."

  Jade clears her throat for a moment.

  "I did try and talk to her about Ethan."

  "When?"

  "When I found out about the email. We talked. I told her then to tell you about the email. To tell you about Ethan. I knew you'd handle it from there. I gave her two days, long before the accident, but she didn't do it."

  "What happened after the two days passed?"

  "I didn't address it," she pauses, "I became distracted with something else."

  "Doesn't matter either way. You had no right to order her or to strong arm her into doing anything, Jade. That's the part you're not getting. You work for me, and you're my friend, but that doesn't mean you have the authority to unilaterally manage my life and the people in it."

  "Understood."

  "She's having my baby. Did you know that?"

  "No," she says with genuine surprise in her voice.

  "She was pregnant with my child when she went to meet those douches. Elizabeth and my baby could have both been hurt badly or worse."

  I hate to even think about an outcome like that. I would have set the whole city on fire if I had lost Elizabeth that day. Those assholes were dumb enough to make a mistake that could have cost her life. The truth of that hits me like a thunderbolt. What were they even planning to do with Elizabeth once they stopped the car? It's too bad I'll never know.

  "I'm sorry, Roman. I didn't know. If I had, maybe I would have handled things differently."

  "Just handle them the way I pay you to handle them. If I ask for surveillance, then I expect you to report back exactly what you've seen and heard. I don't pay you to make judgment calls about what you find out."

  "I got it."

  "All right, so are we good now?"

  "I don't know, are we?"

  "Well you're not fired, if that's what you're asking."

  "Ok."

  She looks as if she's almost in tears.

  "What did you think I was going to say, Jade?" I ask a bit puzzled by her uncharacteristically emotional reaction.

  "I don't know. I mean ... I was afraid that you'd cut me off."

  "Listen, we have a very complicated relationship. You're my friend and you also work for me. Those are two very different positions in my life. You jeopardized the business relationship, but it would take a lot more for me to dump the friend. Just don't fuck up again." I give her a small smile.

  "I won't," she says relieved and more relaxed now. I imagine that if either of us were huggers, we'd be hugging right now. But we're not.

  "Now that we've got that out of the way, little Minion, we need to talk about why I brought you back out to Longwood today."

  "All right, why? What's the deal with you and this place?"

  "I've got something that I need you to do for me."

  32

  Elizabeth

  I can't wait to see the inside of my apartment. My simple furniture. My exposed picture windows. My dusty wood floors. My empty stainless steel refrigerator. My three fig plants, that are all probably dead. I can't imagine who would have put forth the effort to water them over these past few weeks. Only two people have a key, Sloan and Roman, and I seriously doubt that either of them even bothered.

  I was hoping to sleep in my own bed for the first time in almost eight weeks, but I have no idea how I'm going to make it up the ladder to my loft. Not just because I basically now have a bionic leg filled with pins and screws, which is still healing, but also because I'm pregnant. If I fall climbing up the ladder, I have more than myself to consider. I'm responsible for another life. So I guess I'll just have to make do with some pillows and a comforter on my sofa. That's fine thoug
h. I'm just grateful to be back home.

  I was ten seconds away from being practically kidnapped and taken back to Penn-Washington by my parents, but thankfully I was able to convince them that I'd much rather recuperate back in my own space. I convincingly spit out a couple of totally exaggerated statistics about the speed of healing in a familiar, relaxed environment. Blah, blah, blah. That and the fact that I told them I wanted to keep a close eye on Blake. Which is totally true. He's going through his own hell of a recuperation. Stuck on a liquid diet and pretty much homebound. I feel responsible for his condition.

  He wouldn't have been involved in any part of this drama if I hadn't dragged him into it. If it hadn't been Roman who hurt him, it would have been Ethan. Somehow Blake would have gotten hurt, and I have no one to blame but myself. How can someone as smart as me make so many dumb decisions at the same time?

  My parents didn't actually put up as much resistance to me staying as I thought they would. I'm a little frightened that it's because they've developed a soft spot for Blake. According to Sloan, they visited him several times in the hospital and practically begged his parents for their forgiveness. Especially once my mother found out that his family was from Washington Falls. While she was truly sorry that Blake was hurt because of me, she was probably more mortified that our parents shared mutual friends. Tongues would be wagging back home about my torrid love affair with my cousin and the fact that he assaulted one of Washington Falls own. My mother was desperate to put that fire out before it started.

  "I guess I should have fished for your keys while we were still driving, Bitsy." My mother fusses with a smile. "Your bag is as deep as the bottom of the black lagoon."

  "I know. I know. They're in there somewhere, Mom. I just need to get a smaller keychain, so I can drop them in the pocket of my bag. That pouch thing they're on makes them too big to stuff in the pocket."

  I'm waiting for my mom by the door, leaning on my crutches, while my father walks around to the trunk of their Subaru to get the bags of groceries we purchased after I was discharged.

  "Found them," she cheers. "Don't forget to bring in the flowers too," she says to my dad.

  I smile to myself, because I realize just how much people can surprise me. Neither one of my parents have given me a lecture about not telling them about Ethan or why I never reported the assault by Shrek. All my dad said was, "We live with our own choices." And left it at that. They didn't even address the fact that I was now pregnant out of wedlock or about the fact it's Roman's.

  While I doubt they'll be shouting the announcement of my pregnancy from the rooftops, they seem to have come to terms with it in a way that works for them. In fact, I was really amused by how my mother was being really particular about the groceries she picked up on our way home. Everything organic, wild-caught or grass fed. She's so cute. I think she's only been inside of a Whole Foods literally twice in her life.

  "Welcome home, darling," she chirps.

  When my mom finally gets the door open, I'm stunned by the condition of my home. It's cleaner than I think it was when I first moved in. The windows are crystal clear, the wood floors have a freshly lacquered sheen to them, the counters are spotless, my mail is sorted and put in manageable piles for me to sift through. The leaves of my plants are clean, shiny and perky, and the soil in the pots looks slightly moist. Someone has been taking wonderful care of my house!

  There's even a tastefully decorated, fresh Christmas tree in the corner where my biggest fig plant was. Someone moved it to place the tree there. The lights on the tree emit a warm white glow and the bulbs are mostly gold with a few red ones sprinkled around. There are five wrapped presents underneath the tree and they all are labeled with my name.

  "A tree!" I say almost like a kid.

  "The lights are on a timer, so don't worry about unplugging them later."

  "You did all of this, Mom?"

  "Not really."

  "Aunt Juliette too?"

  My father grumbles something incoherent under his breath while I continue hobbling around my apartment. Now I'm curious to see what else my family has done while I've been recuperating. I peek inside of my office. It's clean and spotless. Nothing out of place. Except that there's a copy of the blog interview I did before the accident, printed out, and framed. Why is my mother not taking credit? This is totally her handiwork. Only a mother would be proud enough of a blog interview to frame it, I laugh to myself.

  "Sloan helped too," my mother says. "She'll be over after work and blow out your hair for you. Make you look pretty."

  "All right," I say rolling my eyes.

  I hobble on my crutches to the other office. I haven't quite got the feel for these things. They hurt my armpits, and sometimes I just want to chuck them to the side and hop on one leg.

  Everything looks pristine in here too. I notice an envelope in the middle of the desk with some scribbling on it. Roman's handwriting.

  Look inside is written across it.

  Inside is the gold bracelet he gave me. I thought it had been mangled and lost in the car wreck. I even asked one of the nurses about it, and she assured me that there was no gold bracelet on her inventory list when I was admitted. I thought it was some sort of awful karmic sign that I had lost it, but here it is.

  I dump the delicate chain onto the surface of the desk and spread it out with my fingers. It's evident that the clasp has been replaced with a more secure lobster claw and a new charm has been added. A different one.

  A sunflower.

  Almost in tears, I awkwardly unclasp it and latch it around my left wrist, which is infinitely harder to do when you're leaning on a pair of crutches. Then I jingle my wrist back and forth watching my new charm slide around my arm.

  I was devastated that day in the hospital when Roman wouldn't turn around and acknowledge me. I didn't think it had anything to do with the restraining order, because if it did, he wouldn't have come to the hospital at all. It felt to me like he was rejecting me. Punishing me. I couldn't get Jade's words out of my head. I'd lost his trust, and I didn't know what I could do to earn it back.

  I know to him it looks like the minute he set his foot on that plane to Miami, that I made plans with Ethan out of spite. It looks bad, but it wasn't like that at all. I knew Ethan was up to something and once he brought Roman's name into it, I couldn't let it go. I just forgot the fact that drug addicts are big fat liars, and I shouldn't have believed anything that came out of his mouth. I should have told Roman the minute he contacted me, then none of this would have happened.

  "You all right?" My father startles me.

  "Yeah, I'm fine," I lie.

  "You have a visitor."

  My heart jumps inside of my chest. Is it Roman?

  "Here I come," I say hopeful.

  When I enter the living room, I see my mother smiling from ear to ear. She's taking Blake's jacket for him while he moves to sit on a stool at my kitchen island. I'm surprised at how good he looks. His hair is a bit longer, and he's definitely thinner, but other than that he looks totally normal until he spreads his mouth open.

  It's full of titanium.

  "Hey, boss lady." He tries articulating his words through a clamped mouth of metal.

  Once he notices my unsteadiness on my feet, he stands back up and quickly walks over to me.

  "I've got crutches, Blake." I reassure him smiling.

  He doesn't respond, probably because it hurts too much to talk, and instead replaces himself as one of my crutches. I wrap my arm around his waist and lean into him as he helps me hobble over to my dining table.

  "Blake brought you a present, Bitsy," my mother says as if she's pleased that someone else has a little Christmas spirit around here but her.

  I can't possibly accept a Christmas present from this man after everything I've put him through.

  "No, Blake."

  He ignores me after I'm comfortably seated, and goes to grab two boxes out of a large shopping bag. My mother hands him a pad of paper and a pen
. He starts writing furiously.

  It's for the sake of School Bucks.

  Let's open them at the same time.

  I already know what it is. I've opened this same gift before from a very different man, which makes this feel even more wrong. A new laptop. Both of our computers were ruined in the car accident. They had both been sitting on the floor of the car in a laptop bag by my feet. When my leg became pinned, they were crushed.

  Thankfully I saved all the files to the cloud the night before.

  We can continue with the app just like it was eight weeks ago.

  I could kiss him. So my update is not as behind as I originally thought. At this rate we'd be able to relaunch the app for the new year. Instead of a kiss, which would be wildly inappropriate, I thought at least a hug was in order.

  I clumsily lean over in my chair and give him a hug, which puts a huge smile on his face. A smile that I think is painful for him because he flinches. I place my hand on the side of his face.

  "Ooh, that must hurt," I say chuckling. "Stop smiling, you goofball."

  It's at that very moment, with my hand on Blake's cheek, that I can hear a key being turned inside the lock of my front door and it swiftly being pushed open.

  Before I can react, a large ball of fur charges in first and lifts his huge paws onto my knees, then starts licking my face. An even larger man is standing in the doorway giving me a very unforgiving glare.

  The one where he either wants to fight me or fuck me.

  33

  Elizabeth

  "Duchess."

  I've never been more thrilled to hear that simple, panty-dropping greeting. Low, gritty, and heavy with tension. As soon as I spot him in the doorway my stomach spins, and although I know it's impossible this early in the pregnancy, I feel like the baby is flipping and fluttering around in my stomach. Excited to hear his father's voice.

  I say his because, I've decided that my baby is a boy based on the fact that I admittedly have a glow, and according to old wives' tales, girls steal a mother's looks. Boys don't. So even with a smashed leg, a jiggled head, nausea, sore boobs and jacked up vocal cords, I've never looked more vibrant if I do say so myself.