by Alice Ward
When, during one of our negotiation sessions, he said that he wanted a backyard to play in, that got me thinking. I thought I might like to have a backyard too. So I hired a real estate agent, told her what I wanted and it only took three visits to find the perfect place.
I piled the three of us into the SUV and headed that way for the surprise. Well, for the seal of approval I should say. Out on Georgica Pond, it was a vast estate that I learned was close to Rhett Hamilton’s, the owner of the Beasts, place.
“Are we visiting someone?” Skye asked as we drove through the gates, then said, “Wow,” as the house came into view. With six bedrooms, it was more than we needed, but I thought we could grow into it one day.
“Holy cow,” Jagger said from the back seat.
Not saying a word, I opened the door and before I could walk around, Jagg and Skye were out too.
“There’s a pool and a lake!”
Taking Skye’s hand, we watched our son run around the yard, blowing off some energy before heading to the front door. “Jake, who lives here?”
I just smiled at her and stuck a key in the lock. Jagg came clomping up the steps behind us. “This place is so cool.”
“Jake…” her voice had a warning tone underneath it.
I held up the key as we all entered the massive foyer. “This could be our home, if you like it.”
The look on her face was priceless as she stared at me, then turned in a circle to take in the elegant but open floor plan. She looked like she was in a trance as she walked room to room, Jagger racing ahead.
“Sooo?” I prodded when she’d been through the entire house.
“It’s incredible. Even more beautiful than your uncle’s home.”
“Yes, it is. But it’s livable too. Not some museum. A place for Jagger to play and not have to worry about getting things dirty. There’s a separate two bedroom guesthouse as well as a one bedroom pool house. There’s also one bedroom over the garage too. Cadence could move in one of the places if she wanted.”
I was rambling, overselling I knew, but I couldn’t seem to stop talking until Skye placed a hand over my lips, smiling up at me. “I love it, Jake. I’m overwhelmed a bit. I never imagined getting to live in such a place.
“Weeeee!”
We both looked up to see Jagger sliding down the long banister, a huge grin on his face.
“Well, I think he likes it,” I said with an equally large grin.
Skye grimaced. “I can see some trips to the urgent care in our future.”
I chucked her softly on the chin. “Hey now, we’re supposed to be living in the moment, remember. Not focusing on the past or future.”
That was another reason I hadn’t asked her yet. I’d started seeing a therapist and wanted to prove to Skye that I was serious about getting help. Since the day we found Jagger in the park, I’d seen her twice a week, working through all the shit in my head.
Skye was right. It was helping. I still jumped at loud sounds, but I’d started to learn to laugh when I did it instead of thinking badly about myself. I still had nightmares and sometimes woke to find Skye watching me from the chair, out of my reach.
It was working.
My little family was working. And it was time to make it official.
“Let’s go outside,” I called to Jagger, and he pounded across the floor, throwing open one of the many sets of terrace doors making up the back wall of the house.
We walked past the pool and down toward the water where Jagger started picking up rocks and throwing them in, raising his arms in the air each time one made a splash.
“Hey, Jagg. Is this backyard big enough for you?”
“Yeah, way big.”
I stuck my hand out. “So, do we have a deal?”
His tongue poked out and his palm slapped mine, giving me a firm shake. “Deal!”
With a long exhale, I turned to Skye. “Whew, that took long enough.”
She was grinning like a fool. “So, does that mean you finally get to ask me a very serious question?”
My heart began to pound as I dug into my pocket and sank to one knee. “Skye, I love you. I’ve loved you all my life. I’ll love you for the rest of it. And I’ll love our son, take care of you both. It’s been a long and interesting journey for us to get to this but place, but Skye Crawford… will you make me the happiest and most grateful man in the universe and marry me. Please.”
Tears filled her eyes as I reached for her hand to slide the enormous diamond on it.
“No.”
Huh?
I rose to my feet, my legs a little unsteady. “No?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “No.”
I stared at her. “Um, well…” I was three seconds away from jumping in the water.
She gave me a soft smile. “You have one last thing. No, two last things to do before I say yes.”
I continued to stare.
“You have to ask my father…”
No. No. Nooooo. I wanted to drop to the ground and throw a temper tantrum that would rival Jagger’s on his very worst day.
I gulped. “Okay. What’s the second?”
It was her turn to stare at me, a brow lifted. I knew what she meant. “You want me to visit Trey’s grave?”
She nodded.
I grabbed her hand. “Okay, let’s go right now.”
***
It took a few hours to get there, and we were lucky that Jagg slept most of the way. Once we crossed the town’s line, my heart started beating hard. First, we visited my Uncle Paul, who cried the moment he saw me.
“I’m so proud of you, Jake,” he said for the first time in my life.
I promised him that we would be back later, and he offered to let us spend the night. I accepted gratefully, thinking I’d finally get to fuck Skye Crawford in my old bedroom.
Her house was harder.
Jagg burst from the car and ran up the small porch and through the door without even knocking. “Mamaw. Papaw. Look who’s here to surprise you!” I heard him yell all the way from the driveway.
Soon, the door opened again and Mrs. Crawford appeared, Jagger sitting on her hip. Mr. Crawford was right behind her. They were both grinning, then the smile slid off both of their faces as they saw me.
Shit.
It was awkward for the first hour. They tried to be polite, asking polite questions, serving polite lemonade with polite cookies. When I asked Mr. Crawford if I could speak with him, I thought for sure he was going to tell me no.
We went for a walk, and I told him the entire story. I didn’t leave anything out. Well, except the doing his daughter twice part.
“I want to marry, Skye. I want Jagger to have my name.”
He scowled at me. “Is that what they want too?”
I laughed and told him about the month-long negotiation process we’d just been through. For the first time, he laughed too.
“That kid is something. We don’t get to see him enough.”
“I’m buying us a place. It has a nice guesthouse as well as a pool house, and an apartment over the garage. We have plenty of room and would love for you and Mrs. Crawford to visit, stay for weeks, months.” I lifted a shoulder. “Move there if you want.”
He smiled, and it felt genuine. “Boy, you have more money than sense.”
I grinned at him. “Yes, sir.”
He scratched his chin. “Being closer to Skye would be good. It’s a nice offer. Thank you.”
The silence stretched, causing my nerves to stretch too. “So… about marrying Skye?”
He sighed, his shoulders going up then down with the heaviness of it. “Jake, I’ve known for years how my daughter feels about you. Hell, I’ve known for years how you felt about her. Now, I didn’t know about all those other shenanigans going on behind the scenes, and I don’t approve of you getting her pregnant, but now that I know the story, I can understand it better.”
A tiny bit of tension left my body.
He stabbed a
hand in my direction, so fast I nearly jumped away from it. “I think you’ll make a fine son-in-law, Jake. Treat her and my grandson right and we won’t have any trouble.”
We shook, and I felt my face splitting open. “Thank you, sir. We won’t have any trouble at all.”
After an hour or so, Skye and I left for the graveyard, leaving Jagg with his grandparents. My heart thumped as we drove over the patch of road where Trey died. It thumped harder as we pulled into the cemetery. It was beating wildly when we parked near his marker.
Skye linked her fingers through mine as we walked over to where he lay.
“I’m sorry, Trey,” I said to the granite when I was able to speak. I’d known that being here like this would be different, but I couldn’t have guessed how hard. “I miss you, man, and I wish I could tell you this in person. I wish things could have been different. I wish I could ask for your forgiveness. But they can’t, and I can’t.” Hot, burning tears seared my sinuses. “Just know that I love you. I think of you every day of my life. And it’s time I let you go rest in peace.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and tapped the screen, bringing up his last voice message to me. My thumb paused over the delete button.
“Goodbye, Trey. You were the best friend a man could ask for. I hope you don’t hate me anymore.”
I tapped delete and watched the message disappear. The last link holding me to the pain and guilt. I wished some bird or rainbow would appear, giving me some sign that I had his blessing. But things didn’t happen like that in real life. Instead, my sign was the woman beside me who hooked her hand through my arm.
She was where my focus would be. Skye and Jagger, and any little ones who followed.
With one more stop to make, I led Skye back to the car and drove to the place in the woods where we first made love. There, Skye pulled her phone from her pocket.
“I need to do something too.” She went to her email and I realized what it was. “I never listened to the video message you sent me that night,” she confessed, her thumb hovering over the delete button. “Do I want to?”
I shook my head, remembering crying into the camera, trying to convince her she was better off without me.
“I didn’t think so.” With a sigh, she tapped the button and it was gone before also deleting the one I’m made for my son.
Poof.
I wished we could do the same in our brains so easily.
We smiled at each other, the weight of a million pounds lifting away from us both. It was time. I pulled the ring Jagger had helped me pick out from my pocket, an incredible five-karat French-set halo diamond with a cushion center stone.
This time, when I sank to the ground, Skye went down with me.
“Yes,” she said before I could ask, and we both laughed, kissing as I pushed the ring on her finger.
We made love in those same woods again, her back against the tree as I pulled her skirt up and her panties down. I’d worshiped her before, and I worshiped her then, with a new level of love and passion between us.
In these woods, we’d conceived a baby, creating a bond that even our stubbornness, pain, and stupidity couldn’t break. A large part of me wished she wasn’t on the pill so we could conceive another.
“I love you, Skye,” I whispered against her lips as I slipped a finger inside her, my thumb brushing over her clit.
She moaned, throwing her head back to look up at me. “I love you too. So very much.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath as I added a second finger, stretching her so she’d be ready for me. I touched all the places I knew drove her crazy, watching her face as I gave her what she needed.
She whimpered, one of the hottest little sounds I’d ever heard as she came, her muscles clenching around my fingers. I didn’t let her rest, just continued building her toward a second release.
As I watched her face, her body seized, and she keened. She shuddered, eyes screwed shut, breasts heaving, and I committed the sight to my memory forever.
While she was still panting, I slid inside her, groaning as she gripped every inch of me as I lifted and lowered her onto my cock. She held onto me so tight, it was like she never wanted to let me go.
I kissed her neck, her ear, her forehead, her lips, unable to get enough. Over and over, I told her how much I adored her, how beautiful she was, how perfect.
My fingers dug into the soft flesh of her hips as I made love to her, desperate to make her feel every inch of me. Time stretched out, snapped back, and froze just for us. Her moans reached a crescendo, ending with a wail just as her pussy gripped my cock so tightly I couldn’t hold back any longer. I plunged in one last time and came with a wild roar, shuddering with the force of my climax.
We stayed like that for a while, locked together. Kissing. Breathing. Sweating.
And as we walked back to our car, hands tightly linked together, the woods of our childhood were no longer haunted. Together, we’d exorcised the demons of our past.
EPILOGUE
Skye
Eighteen months later…
“Push!”
As the nurse began counting, I bore down, trying with all my might to push the baby from my body. Jake held my leg up with one arm while the other supported my back, helping me to lean forward as I grunted and cursed through the pain.
“You’re doing so great, Skye,” he murmured as the contraction ended, and he pushed my sweaty hair back from my face. He swiped an ice cube from the cup and rubbed it over my parched lips. I licked at it, needing a little bit of water. I’d been laboring for nearly nine hours.
Too quickly, my stomach tightened again, a huge vice around my torso threatening to tear me in two.
The nurse began to count.
“Push, baby, you’re doing so great,” Jake said. “I’m so very proud of you.” I gave another enormous push, gritting my teeth through the pain.
Go natural, they’d said.
It’s better for the baby, they’d promised.
Well, they were going to get their asses kicked the moment this baby was outside of my body. Natural? Screw that. If I ever had another child, I was getting two epidurals, and… and a morphine pump.
Then it happened.
Just as the nurse counted to four, a huge explosion occurred around my butt region. No, it wasn’t a baby. It was a projectile turd that hit the doctor right in the chest. I was surprised it didn’t knock the doc from his stool, it hit him so hard.
Like a paintball bullet shot from a gun, a brown two-inch circle appeared on his blue birthing apron. Mortification wasn’t something that came easily to me, but I was mortified. And I was still contracting, the pain tearing at me. There was only one thing I could do, and I screamed it.
“Shit!”
Jake laughed. “Literally.”
I smacked at him, pushing him away even as the pain ripped through me. “Get out! Get out now!”
Jake just stood there and took the beating, his body shaking with suppressed laughter as he held my leg up. “It’s no big deal. Shit happens.”
I growled at him. “I want a divorce,” I yelled, but he only laughed harder. By then the contraction was over and I turned all my attention to him, wondering if I could get to his balls through the bed’s rails.
The nurse leaned toward him. “If you want to come out of this with your life, you’d better stop that soon.”
Jake pressed his lips together, but his shoulders were still shaking as the nurse helped the doctor change his apron, then wiped my butt with a wet towel.
Yes.
She wiped by butt.
I groaned and placed my hands over my face. If I couldn’t see what was happening down below, maybe that meant it wasn’t real.
Then another contraction started to build and there was no more time for embarrassment.
“I see the head,” the doctor said and Jake practically dove between my legs to get a look too. If I could have worked up another turd, I’d have blasted him in the forehead with it.
“I see it,” Jake yelled. “Brown hair. He’s got brown hair.”
“She,” I corrected through gritted teeth.
It had been an ongoing source of debate. We had decided not to find out the sex of the baby and let it be a surprise at the birth. But I knew the baby was a girl. I could just feel it. This pregnancy felt different somehow.
Even as Jake and Jagg both insisted it was a boy, I’d stuck to my guns. In my heart, I really didn’t care. A girl would be nice but giving Jagg the little brother he desperately wanted would be good too. Either would be a wonderful addition to our little family.
Another contraction hit and the internal debate ended. Boy or girl. I didn’t care. I just wanted it out. Now!
“Oh my god,” Jake breathed, “half of the head is out.”
It felt like a cannonball between my legs. My torso was consumed in the powerful vice of the contraction while the pressure down below was like a hot blade slicing through me over and over.
Jake looked at me. “This is so cool.”
I scowled at him. “Cool?” I said between gritted teeth, feeling like a demon was rising out of my soul. “How about I cut off your balls and see how cool that is.”
He shot the nurse a yikes look. “Will her head start spinning around soon? Should I watch out for pea soup?”
The nurse snorted. “You really need to be quiet. I heard that a jury let off a woman who killed her husband during labor. Said it was justified since he was cracking jokes.”
I gave the nurse a high five. I liked her a lot.
“Sorry, honey. I’ll shut up now.”
I gave him a high five too.
“Almost there,” the doctor said, cutting into our conversation. “Another hard push. Let’s get this baby out.”
I bore down hard, not giving a shit about the possibility of shit. It was strange and amazing all at once to watch the head pop out, its furry brown mass of hair all gooey and slick. I reached down to touch him or her, crying as I felt our baby for the first time.
“That’s it. We have shoulders.”