Label Me Proud

by Stephie Walls

  “But my dad scrimped and saved for a year to buy this ring for my mom on their first anniversary, and he’s always told me how much you remind him of her. I used to think he meant you looked alike, but I realized today—when you went on your coffee run—that he meant the way you and I were together. Are together—”

  “Lee. It’s perfect.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “I love it. I don’t need fancy cars or big diamond rings. Just you.”

  I picked her up, lifting her with me as I stood. I leaned over so she could flip off the light, and then I carried her to the bed where I made love to my fiancée, and we tried not to bother Beau.

  Waking up, I still had Masyn in my arms, but she was flat on her back, and I was wrapped around her. She had her hand extended in front of her, tilting it from side to side and staring at the ring I’d put there last night.

  “You regretting your answer?” My eyes were still clouded over and my voice groggy.

  “Nope. Not at all. It’s beautiful, Lee. I can’t wait to thank your dad.”

  “About that…”

  She dropped her hand and turned to me, unsure of what I was about to add that I hadn’t told her last night. In my defense, she had been naked—and still was—and telling her she couldn’t move in wasn’t at the top of my priority list. Getting inside her was.

  Granted, I was only heeding half of the old man’s advice, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take the conversation at all. I wasn’t willing to stop showing her how much I loved her body and taking her to places where she screamed my name like I’d never heard. So, not living together before we got married might sound like a copout.

  “What?” she asked, hesitantly.

  “With Beau moving in—” No, I wasn’t going to put this on him and make her resent him. “Scratch that. Beau has nothing to do with it.” I took a deep breath and started again. “My dad and I had a bit of a heart-to-heart yesterday. And he convinced me that living with you before you have my last name isn’t the reputation you deserved to have to carry around Harden.”

  “Okay.” It wasn’t an okay like a woman says fine. She was sincere and perfectly all right with it.

  “You don’t mind?”

  She snuggled into me. “Well, I guess that depends on how long you’re going to make me wait to share that.”

  “My house?”

  “And your last name.”

  “I don’t know how long it takes to plan a wedding.”

  “Do you care about a wedding?”

  “The question is, do you?”

  She quirked her mouth to the side and lifted her should slightly. “Guys aren’t really into that kind of thing.”

  “Sweetheart, I’ll do whatever you want to do. Even wear a tux if it means I get you at the end of the day.”

  “Not you. My friends. They’re all men. Not to mention, my parents don’t really have that kind of money.”

  “Masyn, if you want a wedding, we’ll find a way to pay for it.”

  “I don’t. I wasn’t that girl who dreamed of Cinderella balls and lavish dresses. As long as my family, your dad, and Beau are there, we can have it at the courthouse for all I care. So…how long is it going to be before you make me a Carter?” She cocked an eyebrow and dared me to give her some outlandish date.

  “If you want my dad to be there, I’d say that’s the only thing keeping it from happening.”

  “So, then it’s settled. Once he’s out of the hospital and able to come to Harden, you’ll be stuck with me for life.”

  “I hate to tell you, sweetheart, but even if you’d never agreed to be my wife, I wouldn’t leave your side.”

  “Aww…Lee Carter, you’re a romantic at heart.” Her teasing tone and cocky grin earned her my fingers in her side. She struggled to set herself free and escape being tickled, but even on her best day, she didn’t have the strength to best me.

  “I’ll show you romantic.”

  Gasping for breath, she pleaded with me to stop, and her laughter danced in the air. There was nothing sweeter than hearing the sounds of her happiness and knowing I was the one who caused it.

  “Come on,” she begged, still writhing in my arms like a puppy who wanted to be put down to run. “Your dad’s going to be up with no one to entertain him.”

  “Nice try. It’ll just be more of the same, except you’ll have a partner in crime to help you pick on me. No dice, sister.”

  “I’m going to pee on you.” Her uncontrollable giggles left me with doubt over her sincerity, but unwilling to chance her wetting the bed and us having to explain that to Beau, I relented.

  She collapsed on the mattress next to me, her chest heaving—and fully exposed. Just as I rolled toward her, with my lips parted, ready to enjoy her again, she said, “Don’t you dare.”

  I didn’t heed her warning. Instead, I playfully bit her tight nipple and popped her on the ass. “Come on, sunshine. The old man’s waiting for us.”

  It turned out that Masyn’s family wasn’t as opposed to a wedding as she believed they’d be, and all those men she swore had no interest in attending a ceremony had a real issue with not seeing her walk down the aisle.

  After spending the week with Beau in Atlanta, the three of us came back to Harden worn out. My dad was getting stronger each day, but he had an uphill battle to fight. If it weren’t for the drill sergeant responsible for his physical therapy, he would have had everyone on that floor living in fear. But, Patty didn’t put up with my dad’s shit or his sass. I didn’t want to leave him, and we’d argued over my need to be there—in the end, I lost. My dad thought it was a waste of my time and insisted we go home. Although, he didn’t have a problem with us coming back every weekend so he wouldn’t be by himself. I didn’t stand a chance in hell of telling him no. Masyn was practically doing cartwheels at the thought of spending the weekends in Atlanta.

  By the time we’d spent the better part of nine days living in a hospital and a house that felt like it belonged to a stranger, and then driven three hours home, all I wanted to do was shower and hang out on my couch. Masyn didn’t stay long before she called it a night, and Beau wanted to get settled in his new room. He’d yet to tell his parents he was back, although I was fairly certain the guy he worked for spilled the beans. I stayed out of it. No need to cross Beverly Chastain before she came to hunt me down on her own—somehow, I’d take the blame for this.

  I escaped to the shower after kissing my girl goodbye, and I stood under the stream until the water ran cold. It wasn’t until I got out that I heard the racket at the front of the house and yanked on a pair of shorts to see why all hell had broken loose in the foyer.

  Less than an hour after Masyn left, her three brothers showed up on my doorstep. Beau happened to be the poor sap who greeted them, and I thought we might be saying our final goodbyes to him when he turned purple—not just splotchy, but all over. CJ had him by the shirt, while Ty and Kevin roughed him up a bit. They didn’t hurt him, but their interrogation tactics scared the shit out of him. Beau was a hair away from pissing himself when I interrupted.

  “What the hell, CJ? Put him down before you hurt him.” I’d had a long week and wasn’t interested in dealing with Porter drama. They weren’t the mafia or Harden’s enforcers.

  Those three terrorized kids when we were in middle and high school, but I thought they’d outgrown that shit before they each hit twenty. CJ pushed Beau against the wall—finally letting the soles of his feet touch the floor—and held his weight to Beau’s chest with his palm pressed firmly into Beau’s sternum.

  Stalking down the hall to pull Masyn’s middle brother off my best friend, Ty came out of nowhere and planted his fist on my jaw. Stunned, I fell back and nearly landed on my ass before I caught myself with the doorframe in the kitchen.

  “What the fuck is your problem, Ty? Jesus Christ, that hurt.” I rubbed the side of my face and opened my mouth wide to stretch out the muscles he’d just sent into spasms.

  “Wha
t’s my problem? What the fuck is yours?” he screamed at the top of his lungs. The tendons in his neck stretched, and his blood pressure skyrocketed, by the look on his face. Ty had completely lost control, and the veins in his arms bulged when he grabbed me again.

  I tried to bring things down a notch and return the noise level to an acceptable decibel. It took monumental effort not to retaliate, but three to one wasn’t very good odds, and Beau would be no help. I could hold my own, but the Porters wouldn’t fight fair. Together they were like a damn wrecking ball that never missed, and I sure as hell didn’t need to be their target.

  Grabbing Ty’s wrist—the one that was attached to the hand wrapped around my neck—I pulled at it until he released the vise grip on my throat and stood to face him. I lowered my voice and evened out my tone. “If you’ll tell me what has you three patrolling the neighborhood, I’ll try to help you out. Right now, you’re trespassing, and assault probably wouldn’t make Donna all that happy.”

  “You were gone a week, man.” He reminded me of Hulk Hogan when he’d talk through gritted teeth. Any minute now he was going to shake his head and rip his shirt down the middle.

  Getting Ty a paper towel to wipe the spittle off his mouth wouldn’t serve to diffuse anything, so instead, I tried not to look at it. Unfortunately, that left me with CJ and Kevin who were never considered the rational ones in the group. These three were acting like goons, and I didn’t have a clue why.

  “My dad had a heart attack. I went to Atlanta.” I hadn’t called Ty to let him know. I just assumed that news spread through Harden the way everything else did…like wildfire.

  “Is she pregnant?” Ty didn’t really pronounce the words so much as breathe them.

  “Who?” I’d been more confused in the last ten days than I had in my entire life combined. Riddles had to be a trait the Porters honed like an art because they all seemed to speak in them. At this point, I didn’t know whether to wind my ass or scratch my watch.

  “My sister!”

  “What? Hell no. Why would you think that?” Now I was pissed.

  “Then why can’t the two of you have a proper wedding? Why rush down to the courthouse? She deserves better than that, Lee.” His shoulders dropped, and he unclenched his fists at his side.

  Although, my laughter didn’t help ease the tension. But I hoped offering them something to drink would. I turned and walked into the kitchen as though there hadn’t just been an explosion of testosterone at my front door, and called over my shoulder, “You guys want a beer?”

  It took a little coaxing, but CJ released Beau, who then promptly locked himself in his room, and the fight club followed me out back to sit by the pool.

  “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, Lee.” Ty had taken the lounge chair next to me, and I couldn’t see the other two, but they hadn’t gone far.

  “Are you mad because I didn’t ask your dad first?” Nothing happened in the order I thought it would, although I had to admit, getting her dad’s blessing hadn’t crossed my mind.

  “I don’t want you to marry my sister just because you got her pregnant.”

  “Whoa, who’s pregnant? Masyn sure as hell isn’t.” I wasn’t going to add fuel to the fire by telling her brick shit-house of a brother that even if she were, there was no way she’d know yet. Nor did I want to consider all the times we’d had sex and never discussed protection.

  “Then what’s the rush to get married? Why won’t you let my mom plan a wedding? Masyn’s her only daughter, Lee. Women feed on this kind of shit.” Ty stared out over the pool and nursed his beer.

  I heard CJ and Kevin pull up chairs behind us, but they left the conversation alone. They had alcohol in their hands and the sun on their faces. I hoped that would be enough coupled with their eavesdropping.

  “I’m not the one racing down the aisle.”

  “I don’t get it. The two of you haven’t even been dating.”

  With my head against the lounger, I turned to stare at him, dumbfounded. “Really? You want to play that card? Don’t get me wrong, you’re right, there hasn’t been a label either of us stamped on our foreheads, but Masyn and I have been…us…for years. You had to know how I felt about her.”

  “A blind squirrel could have found that nut.”

  I would regret baking in the sun without a shirt or sunscreen on. The heat of the day was suffocating, and I desperately wanted to cool off in the pool, except I didn’t think my going for a leisurely dip would endear me to Ty any more than this conversation.

  “Your sister isn’t pregnant. And I didn’t ask her to race down the aisle.” I didn’t want to admit how the events occurred because I still ran the risk of him beating my ass. And it was a beating I’d deserve and take if that’s what happened. “Everything kind of came to a head after Beau’s wedding disaster.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Would it surprise you to know that because of all that, your sister and I finally unloaded the emotional baggage we’d both carried for years?”

  “Not really. Weddings make chicks crazy.”

  “You saw how she was two weekends ago at your house. Masyn had never even hinted at jealousy. Once I saw it, I couldn’t let it go. And I forced the issue—Masyn and me, I mean. She stays here most weekends, and we work together, and in my mind, moving in together made sense.”

  Ty growled beside me.

  I raised my hand to stifle his complaint. “Hear me out, man. When my dad woke up, Masyn told him, and it didn’t go well. He didn’t say anything to her because she’s the apple of his eye.”

  He snickered, knowing exactly what I meant, and took a long pull from his beer. “Donna’s got my dad on a leash like that. I’d hate to see how bad it’d be if he’d known her since she was little.”

  “Yeah, well, the next day, he reminded me of the kind of respect Masyn deserved, and it wasn’t shacking up with someone like me and having everyone in town run their mouths about her.”

  “Your dad’s a good man.”

  “He is.”

  “So how did my twenty-two-year-old sister end up with a diamond on her hand when no one knew you two were together?”

  “It’s my mom’s ring. I proposed last Sunday. It wasn’t planned, it just seemed right. And after she accepted, I told her I wanted her to wait to move in.”

  “How long?” He’d gone back to staring absentmindedly at the water or maybe the sky, hell, I didn’t know—it just wasn’t at me.

  “Until I gave her my last name.”

  Ty didn’t respond, and I didn’t hear anything from the peanut gallery behind us. It was one of those moments where the silence was painful, and the anticipation of Ty’s next move left me trying to fill the void, so he understood.

  “She doesn’t want a wedding, Ty. The only thing she cares about is having you guys, my dad, and Beau there.”

  “Mama ain’t gonna go for that,” he spoke into the beer bottle he held in front of his mouth.

  “I don’t care how we do it, seriously. And if I have to wait a year, so be it. But, Ty, you and your brothers aren’t going to scare me off. I love her, and she’s going to be my wife. I hope you’ll give us your blessing, but I need you to know…” I took a deep breath and debated on finishing that statement. “Even if you don’t, I’m still going to marry her.”

  He swung his legs to either side of the lounger and finished off the last of his beer. When he stood, he appeared more menacing than I ever remembered him, until he clapped me on the shoulder, and said, “You need to ask my dad for her hand, Lee. He’ll give you his blessing. Just do this right.”

  I bobbed my head and acknowledged his request.

  Ty gathered his crew with a snap of his fingers, and I heard their bottles clink in the trash can on the porch. Followed by the slide of the glass doors as they opened.

  “Hey, Lee?”

  I faced him and jerked my head up. “Yeah, man?”

  “She’s lucky to have you.”

 
The smirk I gave him replaced my goodbye, and he disappeared into the house. Ty loved his sister almost as much as I did.

  Epilogue—Masyn

  “Mama, this dress isn’t going to work.”

  “Masyn, honey, you’re walking down the aisle in five minutes. It’s going to have to work.”

  “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this. The courthouse would have been much simpler.” Not to mention cheaper.

  After Lee asked my daddy for his blessing, my mama had gone hog wild planning the only wedding she’d ever get to be involved in. It didn’t matter that I wanted to keep it small or that I wasn’t interested in having a ceremony in a church. In her mind, there was only one way to do things, and now, here we sat, six months, two weeks, and four days after Lee proposed.

  We were in the same church Lee and I had bailed Beau out of seven months earlier, and I sat in the same room I had that day, as well. Only this time, I wasn’t surrounded by snotty women who wore too much makeup and thought Harden was the armpit of America. My aunts and cousins were all here, and Peyton had fussed over me all morning the same way my mom had.

  I didn’t get what the big deal was. Lee Carter and I had been attached at the hip since we were kids. The only thing that would change when this was over was my last name and mailing address. Although, I had to admit, neither of those could come fast enough.

  “You look gorgeous, Masyn.” Peyton’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears, and seeing her now, it was hard to believe there was ever a time I’d been jealous of her. Not because she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous—she was—but, she’d also become one of my best friends.

  “I’m rethinking this whole dress idea.” I fidgeted in the mirror that someone had leaned against the wall. My palms were sweaty, butterflies thrashed in my stomach, and I was terrified of being the center of attention.

  My mom threw her hands in the air and stomped off to pout to one of my aunts about my attitude for the fourteenth time today. I’d played nicely through all of this. I couldn’t help that I was a mess today.

  Peyton stepped in front of the mirror and blocked my view. Her hands were cool when she placed them on my exposed shoulders. “Breathe.”