I lean over to him as I’m strapping him in his car seat.
“Hey, are you okay, Cole?” I ask.
He nods his head.
“Are you sad?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’m happy you got me,” he says.
My heart feels like it melts into a puddle in my chest and I lean in to hug him as much as I can with him in his car seat. “I am too, baby.”
Once I sit beside Tristan, I feel a strange unease settle over me. I told him I loved him and he said the same to me the other night at club Purity, but I can’t stop worrying that something is going to happen to come between us or that he’ll change his mind and decide he really does want to end things now that we won custody of Cole. After all, that was the original plan.
I decide not to say anything about it on the ride home and settle for looking out the window and enjoying the moment for as long as I can because that small voice in my head keeps telling me it could be the last time we’re all together as a family.
We put Cole down for his nap when we get home and Tristan is unusually quiet while he prepares sandwiches for us to have lunch. I watch his broad back as he stands by the kitchen counter, enjoying the way his black shirt seems to struggle to contain him. The winter sunlight comes in through the far wall of the kitchen, which is nothing but an expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s even a light snowfall starting outside, which is coating everything in a fresh, white powder that looks so soft I’m tempted to go out and run in it like a little kid.
It all feels perfect. All of it except that nagging feeling that Tristan is waiting to talk about something important. Maybe he had second thoughts about what he said to me at the club, or he’s realizing he doesn’t actually want to be a parent. I’m probably being paranoid, but no amount of self-talk seems to quiet the doubt stirring inside me.
“Stephanie, will you come outside for a minute?” he asks suddenly.
I nod my head, lips pressed together because I’m too scared to say anything. I grab my coat and slip it on, giving the half-finished sandwich he was making a look as I follow him outside. What is the hurry, Tristan?
He leads me into the backyard, which I’ve had a few weeks to come to appreciate since unofficially moving in with him. Though I guess since I had to take an official leave of absence from work, the status of my move-in is getting more official by the day. Taking care of Cole will only keep me out of work for another year or so until he’s ready for preschool, and then I’ll be ready to go back to my job. I realize I’m letting my mind wander because I don’t want to focus on what Tristan could possibly be bringing me all the way out here for in the snow.
“Is everything okay?” I ask when he takes me past a building the size of a normal family’s house, which is for the groundskeeper a few months of the year.
“Just a little farther,” he says, face betraying no hint of emotion.
“If you’re going to chop me up into little pieces, you could have had the decency to do it somewhere warm at least. Maybe even let me get a little tipsy first.”
He doesn’t acknowledge that, but I can tell from the way he half-falters in his step that he’s tempted to say something.
“If you do kill me, I’m sorry about the overdue cell phone bill. They’ll probably come after you for it.”
He finally half-turns with an exasperated look on his face. “I’m not going to murder you, Stephanie. I just wanted to show you this.” He gestures out toward a grassy meadow behind the groundskeeper’s building flanked by snow-dusted trees.
“Wow,” I say, impressed but still a little confused. “It’s really pretty out here. But why…”
When I turn back to face him, he’s waiting for me on one knee with a ring held between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s where I want to marry you,” he says.
“Pretend marry like you talked about before?”
“Not pretend. Stephanie Holland, will you marry me?”
I’m too stunned to speak for several moments. My vision blurs with tears and I find myself falling into him reflexively, forgetting he was holding the ring and knocking it to the ground with my clumsiness. “Yes,” I say thickly. “Yes.”
He plucks the ring up from the ground and carefully slides it on my finger. My eyes widen when I take in the ring. I’m surprised by how much I love it. Maybe I’m biased because I’d probably love anything Tristan got me, especially an engagement ring, but it’s the perfect blend of size and design. He didn’t try to make it a showpiece to broadcast to the world that I’m engaged to a billionaire, but he made sure it was nice enough that even an untrained eye could tell it’s a beautiful and precious ring.
After I’ve hugged him for a few seconds, I pull back and slap him across the face, jabbing a finger toward him. “What were you thinking scaring me like that? I thought you were going to bring me out here to break up with me.”
He pulls his head back in surprise. “Break up with you? I meant what I said, Stephanie. I love you. I don’t have to understand how it happened or why. All I need to know is that when I’m with you it feels right.”
“I feel it too,” I say. “So,” I ask, biting my lip. “How does the whole dominant and submissive thing work if we’re married?”
“What do you mean?” he asks. “Just like it did before, except now I know I’ve got all the time in the world to introduce you to every last tool in the arsenal. You’ll be my wife outside the bedroom and my submissive when the doors are closed. That simple. Of course,” he says with a grin. “I’ll admit I may just want you the good old fashioned way from time to time, too.”
I thread my fingers behind his neck and wrap my legs around him. “You can have me however you want. As long as it’s you, I’m happy.”
18
Epilogue - Tristan
Four years later
I press a button on the remote that came with our hotel room and grin like a little kid as metal shutters slide down over all the windows, sending the room into total darkness.
“Really, Tristan?” asks Stephanie. “We come to Germany for our anniversary and I swear you’ve been more entertained by the blackout curtains than the castles or cathedrals.”
I press the button to raise the curtains back up, then wrap an arm around Stephanie’s waist so I can pull her into my lap. “Germany, Rome, Norway… I don’t care where we go, I’m always going to be more interested in you.”
She smirks and gives me a kiss.
“But,” I say, “the blackout curtains are making it a tight competition.”
She tries to slap me but I catch her wrist and spin to pin her down on the bed. “Jamie isn’t going to be gone with Cole much longer, so you’re lucky I don’t have time to punish you for that.”
She makes a mischievous face. “So you’re saying I could get away with anything right now?”
“That’s not what I—”
I grunt when she drives her fingers into my stomach and starts ferociously tickling my weak spot. I’m forced to roll off her to protect myself, but she’s relentless, crawling after me and tickling me until I lose track of the edge of the bed and thump to the ground. Stephanie rolls right off the bed with me, grinning like a crazy woman as she tries to continue the assault.
I have no choice but to use my secret weapon. I reach my hand quickly between her legs and run my thumb over the spot that drives her wild on the inside of her thighs. It makes her pause as surely as if I pressed the pause button on a remote. She gives me a warning look that sends a message loud and clear: Don’t start what you can’t finish.
“Truce?” I ask.
She sighs. “Truce.”
Just as we’re both standing up from our scuffle, the door opens and Jamie comes in with Cole following close behind. He’s eight now, and tall for his age just like I was. In the years since the adoption was finalized, the three of us have come to feel like a real family in every way imaginable. The strangest part is how Cole doesn’t feel like a brother to me. Maybe it should
n’t be strange when I fill the role of father for him in every possible way and there’s such a big difference in our ages. I also didn’t grow up with him, which makes him seem even more like my son than my brother, but whatever label I put on him doesn’t matter. I love the kid, plain and simple.
“Were you guys being weird again?” he asks.
“What?” asks Stephanie. “No.”
“Your mom was trying to—”
Stephanie reaches over and covers my mouth with two hands, laughing nervously.
“She was probably trying to get frisky,” says Jamie.
“Jamie!” snaps Stephanie.
“Gross,” says Cole. He makes a face, but recovers quickly because he’s used to Jamie and I embarrassing his mom like this.
I just can’t resist doing anything to make Stephanie blush that perfect shade of red she gets. I think Jamie’s motivation is that she feeds on chaos and disorder. I’ve come to appreciate Stephanie’s friend in the past few years as someone who can make a boring situation interesting by sheer power of crazy. The woman might actually be a sociopath, which is even scarier when I remember that she still works with Stephanie as a social worker.
I lean back against the wall and take it all in as Cole and Stephanie slip into what seems to be a weekly argument about him needing new shoes because his feet are too big for his old ones. It’s a simple thing, and the two of them are grinning as they argue because it devolves to a point where Cole has his shoe off and is holding his bare foot up while Stephanie compares its size to the sole of his latest pair of shoes.
Jamie plays her part by nodding her agreement with Cole. “Way too small,” she says. “If his feet were hermit crabs and those shoes were shells, they would’ve moved on to bigger shells by now.”
“Hermit crabs?” asks Stephanie. “That was the best comparison you could come up with?”
“Okay, how about this,” she says, furrowing her eyebrows like she’s really racking her brain for the perfect example. “Him trying to wear those shoes is like having size eight feet and trying to wear size seven shoes. How about that?”
Stephanie sighs dejectedly as Cole turns to high five Jamie. “See?” he asks triumphantly. “Jamie agrees.”
“Jamie agreeing with you is about as valuable as the homeless man down the street agreeing with you,” says Stephanie.
“Hurtful,” Jamie says dryly.
“It’s just the beginning of the hurt I’m going to lay on you if you keep trying to make my life difficult,” says Stephanie.
I can’t help but smile as I watch the three of them dive back into a new argument that I don’t think any one of them actually cares about, because I know beneath the surface, we’re all happy. I can see it in the small smiles and grins they flash even in the middle of their disagreement. Most of all, I can feel deep down in my chest how this kind of thing is just right. We’re a normal family. We argue and debate, but no one actually gets mad. No one is scared right now. There’s no drunken father pulling off his belt and threatening to beat somebody bloody. There aren’t dirty needles on the coffee table and there isn’t filth lining every available surface.
We’re a family. A normal family like I never thought I’d be a part of. Well, mostly normal. I don’t know if every normal family has a BDSM dungeon in their house, or if every normal husband and wife still use a babysitter so they can go to BDSM clubs. But we’re as normal as I want to be, and ever since Stephanie and Cole came into my life, I’ve been happy.
19
Epilogue - Stephanie
Epilogue - Stephanie
Jamie took Cole out to grab lunch for all of us, which she’s doing as a favor for me. I haven’t told her why I wanted a chance to speak to Tristan alone, but she won’t have to wait much longer to find out. For the past half hour, I’ve been trying to build up the guts to tell him, but my stomach feels like it’s full of swirling butterflies and ice cubes.
“Tristan,” I say finally. “We need to talk.”
“Oh shit,” he says, dropping his phone and standing from the bed.
I realize in an instant what’s going through his head. It didn’t occur to me that he would think my news was bad, but I’m immediately brought back to the way he scared the living crap out of me when he led me out past the groundskeeper’s house on the day he proposed to me by not telling me what was going on. An idea occurs to me, and I keep myself from smiling with an intense mental effort.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I say, turning my back so he won’t see the smile that breaks through my composure.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I nearly lose my resolve at the slight hint of horror in his voice. I’m not used to seeing Tristan scared, but I guess every strong man has his weakness, and I’m proud to be his.
I manage to make it outside with him and a few steps into the well-manicured green-filled gardens behind our hotel. I stop beside a statue of a little baby cherub spouting water from a horn. I look up at the statue, trying with all my might to stop from smiling. “Nice statue, isn’t it?”
“Stephanie!” he groans. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
I swallow my laughter and sigh. “Well, I found something out yesterday.” I pause for several seconds before he reaches forward and grips my shoulders, looking into my eyes with a desperation that comes so close to making me lose it.
“What?” he asks. “What the hell did you find out?”
“We’re going to have one of these,” I say, pointing to the statue.
He looks at the statue with a dumbfounded expression. “A statue?” he asks finally.
I can’t hold it anymore and burst out laughing. From the look on his face, he doesn’t enjoy being left out on the joke, but he waits for me to regain my composure enough to speak.
“A baby. We’re going to have a baby,” I say.
He actually falls to his knees, eyebrows pinching upward as he looks at me in utter amazement. “You’re serious?” he asks. He jumps to his feet in a sudden shift of emotion, smiling while his eyes search my face for any sign of a practical joke but his lips slowly spread into a smile. “You’re serious,” he says again. “You’re fucking serious? We’re going to have a baby?”
“Yes,” I laugh.
He wraps me into a tight hug and spins me. “Fuck yes!” he shouts.
I try to shush him, laughing more as I look toward a stunned couple a few dozen yards away from us. “You’re going to get us in trouble,” I whisper.
“I don’t care,” he says, still beaming. He kneels down again and touches my stomach with so much care it nearly breaks my heart. He looks at it with searching eyes. “Are you going to be a girl or a boy?” he asks my stomach. “No,” he says, grinning to himself. “Don’t tell me. I want it to be a surprise.”
I wrap my arms around the back of his head, hugging him to my stomach and drinking in the moment. I close my eyes and listen to the trickle of water from the fountain and the rustle of leaves as the chilly breeze drifts by. In this moment, with my eyes closed and all the pieces of my life finally falling into perfect place, I think I actually feel Brian smiling down on me. I know now that I never really had to live my life a certain way to make things up to my little brother, that Tristan was right. Brian would’ve just wanted me to be happy. But I managed to find my own kind of redemption so I could forgive myself, and I just so happened to find happiness along the way, too.
I squeeze my arms tighter around Tristan. “I love you,” I whisper.
He stands up and hugs me tight, pulling back only long enough to kiss my forehead. “I love you too. Both of you,” he adds with a soft touch to my stomach.
20
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The Dom's Bride Page 14