by Bethany-Kris
Siena grinned. “You think you can kiss me like that and then tell me I have to go to sleep? Really?”
“Well—”
“Take me to bed, love me, and then we’ll talk.”
John didn’t even think about it.
Not really.
He kissed her again.
“Deal,” he murmured.
FIFTEEN
After the kind of day John had, the only thing he wanted to do was come home and lose himself in his wife. Whether that meant watching her read, or holding her while she slept, or even better, getting to fuck away his worries and problems with her. She offered the latter sitting on those stairs.
He wasn’t about to refuse.
John understood once they came out of this haze together, he was going to have to revisit the shitty day and answer all the questions he found staring at him in his wife’s eyes. He would get there—he’d handle that, too, just like he managed everything else.
Not right now, though.
For the moment, he lost himself in the sight of Siena riding him to a slow finish in their bed while she still trembled from her orgasm just moments before. Those dark waves of hers fell over her naked shoulders. She used her hands on his wrists where he kept his palms flat to the small—barely noticeable—swell of her abdomen to work him with every lift and lower of her body. All those breathy, sweet sounds that crawled out of her were music to his ears.
He’d never get enough.
Not of her.
“Come,” she whispered.
Once, and then twice.
His name on her lips teased him.
When he did finally reach his peak, it came in strong and fast despite her steady, but slow pace. She took him deep and held him steady as he groaned out his approval for her while his cock jerked inside her snug, wet pussy.
This was what he needed.
So badly.
He bet she knew it, too.
After, with their sheets still smelling like them, John rested with his back against the headboard of their bed while Siena snuggled on top of him. With his palm flat to her stomach, and his other tight around her back, he finally felt more settled than he had in a long while.
Funny how that worked.
Her fingertips traced soft lines along the grooves of his chest while her breaths came out even and steady. Had she not been touching him, then he might have thought she fell asleep. Which, frankly, would have been easier. Then, maybe she would forget he promised to talk.
Except …
Well, he didn’t hide things from his wife.
Or he tried hard not to.
“Leonard has cancer,” he murmured.
Siena’s touches stopped all at once before her head darted up. Those wide eyes of hers met his own, and John gave a small shrug at the sight of her concern. “What?”
“Yeah, I found out right about the same time we learned you were pregnant. He’s been doing treatments and you know how fucking chemo is, Siena.”
She gave a small sigh. “Hard.”
And tiring.
No, exhausting.
“He wasn’t always going to be feeling well enough to do my sessions,” John muttered, “and so he decided to get me working with someone else.”
Siena’s brow dipped. “Who?”
“You don’t know him—better you don’t. Cree’s methods are … not at all like Leonard’s but honestly, I like the difference. One pushes me in a different way than the other does. And you know, Leonard had a treatment yesterday—one of his last—so that’s probably why he didn’t pick up your call today. He called to let me know he wouldn’t make it but that Cree was in town if I felt like I needed to sit down.”
Or rather, meet up with the man at a gym and get the piss beat out of him while at the same time, getting his thoughts and feelings picked apart by a man that John couldn’t hide shit from. Because yeah, he’d learned that about Cree since he started seeing the man regularly. If Cree thought something was up, he became a dog searching for a bone. And he didn’t forget shit. It didn’t matter if John randomly mentioned something in passing, the guy kept it locked in the back of his mind for future use.
Sometimes, it was annoying.
Other times, it helped.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Siena asked.
John let out a heavy breath, his arm tightening around her while he stroked her stomach with his other hand. “I just … I figured, you’re pregnant, you got a lot of shit on your plate, and I’m handling my business. There wasn’t any reason to give you something else to obsess over when you already do that with everything else, babe.”
She didn’t even deny it.
Strangely, though, out of all the people in his life, Siena was the one and only—next to his therapists—that could call out his shit, or see it for what it really was, and he didn’t get defensive about it. John didn’t put up walls with people who were there to protect him, his wife included.
It made him vulnerable, yeah.
He worked through it.
“Anyway,” John said, “that’s what got in the way today. Cree’s meeting places are unconventional, and when Leonard canceled today, I had to go elsewhere. I keep up with my sessions no matter what—I promise. But we shut the phones off. It’s a thing. I lost track of time, that’s all. I do that a lot with Cree.”
Siena cleared her throat. “That’s not a bad thing, though. It means you don’t mind being there with him, right?”
“I guess. After, I had to run over to Andi’s place because I missed shit with him today, too, even though I had business handled elsewhere. Except he was a fucking prick overstepping on me, and I had to let him know it.”
There.
He’d told her everything.
Basically.
No, he hadn’t given Siena all the details, but she also didn’t need them. She only needed the important bits so that she knew what was going on and why shit might seem different lately with him.
“Still could have told me,” his wife whispered. “And that doesn’t seem like Andi.”
“He becomes an asshole when he’s worried.”
John hated it.
He still saw it for what it was, though.
Once his cousin had gotten some shit through his thick skull and came back ready to apologize, then the two of them could sit down and properly hash all of this out. Simple as that. Right now, however, John needed some time by himself.
“When I start to feel like I’m not good enough to be where I am,” he said, letting one of his darkest thoughts finally come out of his mind, “the last thing I need is for those around me to think the same thing.”
It was funny—he hadn’t been able to tell Leonard that’s how he felt lately. Or even Cree. Yet, with his wife, the words came out too easily.
“Why would you feel like that?” she asked.
John swallowed hard. “I’ve just … been really up lately. It’s not bad, but it’s noticeable. I’m not bouncing back and forth or being irrational but it’s still there.”
“Not medicate-able, you mean.”
“That’s not even a word,” he said, chuckling.
“But still.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Thing is, when I go up, I always gotta come back down. I keep thinking about you and the baby and—”
“We’re fine, John.”
He met her gaze, and she held strong.
“We are,” she promised. “And so are you.”
Leaning in, she closed the small bit of distance between them to take a kiss. John let her. The rest of the evening and all his worries, well, they didn’t exist when they were like this. Siena would never understand how grateful John was that she could do that for him.
He’d love this woman forever.
She didn’t give him a choice.
SIXTEEN
Siena should have been more involved in her current conversation with Johnathan’s aunt, Kim, but she was a little busy with scanning the room to find her husband. N
ot that Kim was saying or doing anything to bore Siena, but she felt like her other job tonight was a bit more important than chitchatting about the weather at the moment.
“He just headed into the kitchen,” Kim said to Siena’s left.
Trying to laugh her distraction off, she turned towards the woman at her left only to find Kim was smiling at her as though she didn’t mind at all. “Sorry. I’m being rude, aren’t I?”
Kim shrugged. “I always wanted my eyes on Gio all the time, too. Sometimes, because I thought he was too on edge to be doing these dinners. Other times, it was just that I didn’t want to look away—what if I missed something? I get it.”
Well …
That had Siena nodding.
The woman wasn’t wrong.
Then, Kim asked, “But everything is good, right? I mean, with the baby and you two?”
Usually, questions like those would feel like someone was asking specifically about John’s mental health. Which, of course, would make Siena defensive because she didn’t care to answer those questions. This time, however, it didn’t feel like that at all.
“We’re great,” Siena replied.
It wasn’t a lie.
She and John were great. The baby was still looking and sounding perfect with every appointment she had for the pregnancy. Soon, they would find out the gender of their first child, too. By all accounts, on the surface anyway, things looked fine.
Perfect, even.
But it was what people didn’t know—and the things Siena and John didn’t share—that told another story. Like the fact her husband’s mood had started to severely drop over the last week. He wanted to spend more time standing in a shower or lying in bed than he did doing anything else. He had little to no interest in sex. That only meant one thing when it came to John.
The depression was coming.
Fast.
Well, that was partly a lie. The depression had already arrived. It simply had yet to reach its peak, and Siena wanted to be there when it did. Whether it happened tonight, tomorrow, or next week. John never explicitly said so, and while he talked a hell of a lot less when he was like this, she knew it was easier on him when he did have her and others around that he trusted when he found himself dark with thoughts and feelings that made him believe he was worthless.
Something he could never be.
Not to her.
For Siena, her husband was worth the world.
And more.
Leonard knew. A med change from his therapist had her husband irritated and quick to snap at others and wishing he could sleep more than he had to be awake. Not that he meant to, but it was a real possibility all the same.
Which was every reason why Siena was trying to keep an eye on her husband at this dinner party. Although, for most of the night, John seemed perfectly content and fine in the old Marcello mansion surrounded by his family and friends.
She still wanted to be sure.
Careful.
If someone did mention his mood or the way he whipped back and forth between being up and down—sometimes, it could happen all in a single conversation—and John didn’t want to handle the conversation that would surely follow, then Siena could.
But it was hard to do when he was in the kitchen, and she was in the dining room talking with his aunt.
“Do you mind if I go find him?” Siena asked Kim.
Waving a hand, Kim replied, “Not at all. We can catch up later.”
“Thank you.”
Siena found John’s reason for being in the kitchen. With his back turned to her, he chatted with his mother who was currently readying a dish of cheesy scalloped potatoes. Next to Jordyn, John’s father tried to sneak a piece of shredded cheese but ended up with his hand slapped by a wooden spoon.
“Fuck my life,” Lucian snarled under his breath. “You’re going to break my knuckles, woman.”
Jordyn smiled. “Keep your fucking hands out of my food. You know better than that. I know because your mother taught you better.”
John chuckled, and when Siena stepped in beside him, his small grin turned on her. It was harder to see the blank emptiness in his eyes when he was smiling. She found that most disturbing. Not John, no. But the fact something like depression could be so easily hidden by something like a smile.
She realized then just how carefully her husband had perfected hiding his problems. At the same time, he also didn’t mind asking for help when he needed to now.
It was a give and take.
A constant learning process.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Pushing up to her tiptoes, she pressed a kiss to his jaw.
“Hey,” he murmured back.
She gave him a questioning look—a simple raise of her brow that asked you good? John winked back, and tried to smile a little wider for her but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. She knew then that he was probably ready to head home and call it a night. Hell, dinner hadn’t even been served yet, but at least no one could say he didn’t make an effort to come.
Wasn’t that what counted?
She thought so.
“So, Lucian and I were talking,” Jordyn said, drawing Siena’s attention away from her husband for a moment, “and we were wondering if you both wanted to do a party after you find out the gender like a surprise for everyone. We could throw it and—”
“I don’t know,” Siena said quickly, wanting to give John the choice to say yes or no to that before anyone else became too attached to the idea. Just in case he really didn’t want to do it because then he wouldn’t feel required to agree. “We haven’t really talked about it.”
“Why not?” John asked. “We could figure something out. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, right?”
“No, of course not,” Lucian said. “We could even do dinner for just family if you wanted.”
“Yeah, I think—”
John’s words cut off when a familiar guest came to stand in the back entryway to the mansion’s large kitchen. He lifted a hand and tipped his head to the side, a silent invitation for John to join him. Andino didn’t make it seem like he was demanding anything, though.
Probably a good idea, considering everything.
“I’ll be right back,” John said to Siena and his parents.
Lucian cleared his throat when he glanced over his shoulder to see what had caught John’s attention. “Sure, son.”
John pressed a quick kiss to the top of Siena’s head and pressed his palm flat to her stomach before stepping away from the conversation entirely. That just left her and his parents to plan a gender reveal. If they noticed that something was off with John, well, they didn’t say. Then again, his parents rarely did mention that sort of thing now. They would much rather let Siena and John handle it alone, but they were always there if they needed help.
“Well,” Siena said, giving her in-laws a smile, “I guess we’re planning a gender reveal.”
SEVENTEEN
John followed Andino through the old mansion in silence. Side by side, the two men took their time heading to the upstairs office where—far more than once—they had both been dragged to in order to get yet another lecture about the importance of their last name and maintaining the dignity and respect of being a Marcello.
Now, he couldn’t forget it.
He didn’t think their legacy weighed as heavily on Andino’s shoulders as it did for his own, but John couldn’t say for sure, and he’d never thought to ask. Better he didn’t, maybe. They all had their own things to handle.
Nonetheless, the mansion brought back a lot of memories for John. Colored with nostalgia in every single corner, the past was never far from his mind when he was here. Every step he took inside the place, he could relive five different memories from years long past. He looked forward to the many more they were sure to make with their own children here.
The legacy lived on.
Once the two were inside the old office that didn’t get nearly as much use as it used to, John closed
the door behind them.
John was the first to speak. “Do you remember how they used to drag us into this office every single time any of them had something to say to us?”
Andino laughed under his breath. “Seriously, every time we came to this mansion. At least fifty percent of the time it was because I kicked somebody’s ass for talking shit about you behind your back. Man, I fucking hated when they did that.”
He grinned.
Because it was true.
“I worry,” Andino said, turning to face John with his hands shoved into his pockets. He shrugged his broad shoulders and glanced to the side as though he might find something interesting to stare at on the far wall. John understood the need to look away—it was always easier to admit your wrongs when you didn’t have to look someone in the face while you did it. “And you know, Haven likes to tell me I can become an even worse asshole in that case.”
John cleared his throat, rocking on his heels while he replied, “You certainly can.”
His cousin sighed.
The silence raged on.
John simply waited it out.
Sometimes, in this life with men like them, it was all about the waiting game. And the thing with Andino and John was the fact they were best friends. Always had been and always would be. Until the very fucking end. From the time the two of them were put together when they were still wearing diapers, they’d forever had each other’s backs.
Yeah, sometimes shit happened. Sometimes, they had moments like these. They always came back, though. Just had to wait it out.
Andino turned back to John, meeting his cousin’s gaze as he said, “I’m sorry.”
John nodded. “For being an asshole, or questioning my ability to do what I need to do?”
“Fuck, do you know Haven does that shit to me all the time? Makes me explain every single reason I’m sorry, what I did wrong, and why it was wrong. Drives me crazy.”
“Her right to do so. She is your wife.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m fucking with you,” John said, laughing under his breath. “I don’t need you to explain shit, Andi. Although, if not for your wife, you’d be a lot less tolerable, let me just say. I hope you know that woman really is your better half, man.”