Raven’s gaze flitted from Eric to Marie to Pierce and back.
“Somehow, I think this is the point where I say I need a drink.” She signaled the waiter.
Eric yanked her hand down. “You don’t drink.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way.” Raven peered at him. He and the young woman were dressed alike. “Eric, what’s going on?”
“You know I always try to keep my promises, right?”
Raven tilted her head.
“Right?”
“Okay and…?”
Eric swallowed hard, but looked his mother directly in the eyes. “And I promised that I wouldn’t have sex until I got married or reached eighteen.”
She merely blinked. “So you’re telling me that you’re not a virgin anymore?”
“Yes.”
Raven’s face went ashen. “But you’re not eighteen.”
“Technically, not yet.”
Her left eyebrow twitched. “And you’re not married.”
Silence.
Raven’s head titled to the left, eyes narrowed to slits. “And you’re not married.”
Marie lowered her gaze to the white tablecloth.
“Well see, that’s sort of the good news.”
Raven ruffled a hand through her hair, then turned her head to scan the various parts of the busy restaurant, before saying, “Bring that by me one more time.”
“I’m married.” Eric didn’t give her time to breathe before he added, “And I’m going to be a father.”
Raven’s jaw dropped. She recovered, but not too well. She stood, headed for the bar, and asked for a bottle of Dewar’s, then changed her order when she saw they had a bottle of good old plantation rum. She definitely needed 150 proof!
“Oh, come on, Mom!” Eric said, appearing beside her, shooing the bartender away. “It’s not that bad.”
To hell with the rum! Raven swiped the nearest glass, grabbed the closest bottle of liquor, and poured, almost topped it off. She turned her back to Eric and took a heavy swig.
Pierce went to her, removed the glass from her trembling hand, put his arms around her, and steered her toward the lobby and away from the curious stares of the other diners. Eric and Marie followed right behind. Eric’s strategy of having this meeting out in the open had backfired. Raven could barely hold her anger in check.
“Mom?”
The plea in his voice made Raven turn. “I never wanted this for you,” she said in a voice hoarse with pain. “This life of doing things so rushed—so ‘right now.’ You’re growing up so fast, making adult choices. You’re not even eighteen and, and—I don’t have my baby boy anymore.”
“Mom, I’ll always be your baby boy.” He reached for her, but she bristled at his touch. “Nothing will change that.”
“I know, I know.” She took a breath. “So now you’re married, and you’re going to be a father…will it stop now?”
“What do you mean?”
“This mad rush in life to be an adult. Can you be Eric now? Just Eric? Huh?” Her lips trembled, hell, her whole body was trembling. “Can you relax and enjoy life now? Instead of trying to cram it all in?”
Eric paled. Marie’s hands flew up to cover her own tear-stained face.
He had passed on three separate advances in elementary school because he wanted to be a kid a little longer. That view of taking things slow changed only when the doctors discovered the cause of his headaches: tumors in his pituitary gland and another close by. He only slowed his roll at graduating from high school, opting for the internship instead so he could go to college with his friends. But everything else in life was on fast forward.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Eric whispered, trying to hide the pain in his voice.
Raven’s bottom lip was held prisoner by perfect white teeth as she nodded. “You’ve taken so much from me. I haven’t been more than a friend or a sounding board for you since the day you threatened to take me to court. You’ve practically held me hostage, tying my hands behind my back and rendering me helpless.” She turned away from him.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” he said in a voice full of hurt as he tried to touch her again. “I never knew you felt that way. I’m sorry, Mama. I love Marie, and I wanted to do right by her. You know, set a good example.”
She whirled back to face him. “Sweetie, you can’t live your life trying to compensate for your father’s mistakes. He messed up! You’re allowed to make some mistakes. That’s how people grow, Eric. You’ve put all this unnecessary pressure on yourself to be perfect.”
“What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with holding myself to a higher standard?”
“Eric, nobody’s perfect!”
“You’re wrong. We’re all perfect, they just keep changing the standards.” He gave her a slow half smile.
Moments later, Raven couldn’t help returning his smile. He had thrown her own words back at her.
“Like, if Pierce was on point,” he threw a glance at the man standing near his mom, “he would’ve married you on the island. Then all this madness wouldn’t be about me.”
Pierce glared at him. “Boy, how are you going to play me like that?” he said through clenched teeth. “There’s more to love than your three-step program, Eric.”
“Three steps worked for my karate instructor and his wife,” Eric answered, his face stern and sure. “Deno and Liz were my age when they got married and were together fifty years before he died. Love works when people are friends.” Eric held out his hand to his wife. She moved closer. “Marie was my friend first. A true friend. She loved me before she even knew how much money I had in the bank. We can grow together, travel and—you know—do stuff. See the world, just like you wanted, Mom.”
Raven studied the young couple, then turned to Pierce who had put his arms around her. “You knew about this?”
He simply nodded.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“He made me promise not to.”
She moved out of his embrace.
“Raven.”
“Not now, Pierce,” she snapped.
Eric’s bottom lip trembled as he held back tears. “I apologize for making it seem like I didn’t need you, Mom—I just didn’t want you to feel responsible for how things turned out. I’m scared that I might miss out on something.” Eric moved closer to his mother. “I know my decision not to have the surgery bothers you, but I don’t want to spend years trapped in a body, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t do anything except have people take care of me. People doing diaper detail for a grown man is not pretty.”
“It wasn’t pretty when you were a baby, either,” Raven shot back, wrinkling her nose.
“See, we agree on something.”
Pierce said, “Raven.” She looked up at him. “What’s done is done, we can deal with anything.”
Did he say we? Her heart soared. Pierce would forgive her. He just had to!
“Can we compromise a little?” Eric asked. “I need you, Mom. Now more than ever. Maybe we could move here with you in Chicago, so you can finish mothering me.”
“And me?” Marie asked, sending a hopeful glance to Raven.
After what seemed an eternity, Raven held her arms out to her daughter-in-law. “Welcome to the family.”
Moments later, Pierce cleared his throat. Raven turned to him and walked into his open arms, beckoning Eric and Marie into the group hug.
“We’re going to have another wedding,” Marie said softly. “A real one this time.” She flicked a gaze at Eric when she said it. “This time my father and Pierce can walk me down the aisle.”
Pierce’s grin matched the flash of happiness in his eyes. “I’d be honored. Thank you.”
“And Mom can walk me down the aisle.”
“Eric, that’s not how it’s done.”
“It is now.” He frowned at the space widening between Raven and Pierce and said, “And speaking of weddings…”
Thirty-Eight
Eric sat
next to Marie on his bed, relieved that the conversation about his marriage and the baby was over. Even if it hadn’t gone so smoothly, at least it was over.
Now if he could only get his mom and Pierce down the aisle, and get Marie to stop pushing him toward having the surgery, life would be as good as it could get.
He walked to the window, braced himself against the ledge. Marie was riding him and it was reaching the point where he didn’t know what to do. He tried to think about having the surgery, he really did, but the old fears came crashing down on him.
“Dr. Taylor called again. Why haven’t you called her back about your latest scans?” she asked.
Oh, man! How to smooth that one over? “Baby, I just haven’t had time.”
“Why haven’t you rescheduled the trip to Baltimore?”
Eric whipped around to face her, glad that he hadn’t mentioned the fact that the headaches and nosebleeds had gotten worse. “With everything that’s been going on, there hasn’t been time. You know that I have responsibilities to my job.”
“That bull doesn’t fly with me.”
Eric winced.
“It’s like the only reason you’re embracing the possibility of death is because it shows that you’re mature or something.” She threw her hands up, storming away. “Hell, I don’t know what’s going through your damn mind.”
Eric’s eyes widened at her use of profanity. “Marie, there are some things in life that are beyond our control.”
“This is in your control.”
“Didn’t we have this discussion already?”
“And we need to have it again and again until you get it through your thick head that things are different now.”
“Not for me.” He turned to look out his window.
“Eric!”
Marie fumed, shoulders heaved as she let out a long, slow breath. “You’re giving up before even getting started. Eric, I don’t want you to leave me.” Tears flowed faster than she could wipe them away as she stepped to him, forcing him to face her. “I’m gonna fight like hell to keep you here.” She slapped his chest with her palm. “I’m gonna fight like hell, Eric! You’ve been man enough to do everything else in your life. To marry me and make a baby with me. If you love me, you’ll do what it takes to stay with me. Be man enough to fight to stick around so you can be a husband to me and a father to your child.”
❤ ❤ ❤
In the master bedroom, Raven stormed, “He’s my son, Pierce!”
“Raven, you’re not being reasonable.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “My son got married! For something that important you should have called me.”
“Should I have left it on your voicemail?” He walked toward her. “You weren’t speaking to me, remember?
She turned her back to him.
“And I’m not the only one who keeps secrets,” he said, angered that she would turn away at such a crucial point. “That whole Castle thing. What’s that about? Are you bi-sexual?”
“The woman I slept with last night said no,” she answered, then blinked as that statement echoed around them. “That didn’t come out so well, did it?”
Pierce shook his head, then walked away to lean back on the bed, waiting for something—anything that could clear up a near two-day absence without a call, text—anything!
“It didn’t compare to being with you,” she said softly. “I learned a valuable lesson. It’s not who you sleep with, it’s who you love. If I were in love with a woman, then things would be different. But I’ve never been attracted to a woman. Hell, before you, I had never had much of an attraction toward a man. That’s what worried me. I wasn’t sure what was right for me.” She sat on the edge of the bed.
“And I didn’t…” She swallowed hard, trying to come up with the words to explain things. “I wasn’t able to…” She pointed to her mouth, then did a quick gesture to her nether regions.
Pierce couldn’t hold back the twitch that showed he was holding back a smile.
“She didn’t seem to mind.”
“And I don’t mind either,” he finally said. “My issue, Raven, is that you could have told me all of this. You didn’t trust me enough.”
Raven lowered her gaze to the plush comforter spread out over her king-sized bed. She then told him everything that had transpired with Lady Ann.
Pierce moved forward, lifting her gaze to meet his. “I get that you had to understand if you were bisexual, but my issue here is trust. There has to be trust between us for a relationship to last.”
She nodded and released a long, slow breath. Moving away from him, she went to stand in front of the window.
For a man who was on the traditional side of the swing, he thought he had taken her little “not quite a tryst” pretty well. Would he be enough—just him? Would she constantly remember that “almost” experience at the Castle when they made love? Or, for that matter, would he? That thought alone unsettled him.
“And for some reason, all that time when you weren’t speaking to me, you were waiting for me to come to my senses,” he whispered. “When the truth of the matter is, I’m not the one who’d lost them.”
She spun around so fast her hair hit her in the eye. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means, Raven Ripley, that you don’t know when it’s okay to trust people. You don’t know when to let go. You fight about everything that’s not within your control. You don’t know when to relax and flow with life. Even in court, you didn’t realize you were fighting a battle the children didn’t want you to win.”
She glared at him. “You just don’t want anyone else in my life right now.”
“I resent that!” Anger radiated from him like heat from a fire. “The difference is that I can be objective.”
“That’s right! That’s because it’s not your family. You don’t know what it’s like to have these issues. You don’t have a family.” As silence hung heavy in the room, Raven closed her eyes. Her hands balled into fists as she let them fall by her sides.
Pierce glared at her, fury ripping through him.
“Pierce, I’m so sorry.”
“You should be,” he growled, still trying to get his bearings. “I know you’re in shock right now, but there’s only so much abuse I will take. You push me away at every opportunity.” He sighed hard, closing his eyes against his own pain. “I get it, Raven. I get it. I’ll never be enough for you. You only think of yourself—your needs. How everything affects you.” Pierce’s gaze swept the room. “Even that whole Castle…adventure. Not once did you consider that I might understand your need to at least try being intimate with a woman. Especially with how you’d been raised. I can understand and deal with anything that’s presented to me. This secrecy shit…there’s no place for it in our relationship. Not when we’ve gotten past the majority of our issues.”
She gasped, her eyes filling with tears.
“But this, Raven? This bitterness, this mean-spiritedness, I won’t take it.”
She moved toward him, only for him to step back.
“Anytime I say or do something that contradicts you, you go on the attack. You get mean. I don’t know what part of your soul that comes from, but it’s ugly. I’m going to leave before you say something else you can’t take back, or I respond with something that I’ll regret. I’m not that type of man. I’m a real man, Raven, one who loves you with all of my being.”
She moved toward him again, but he held out his hands to stop her.
“And you don’t want me to be a part of this family? Fine! You don’t want to compromise? I got that. It’s your way or no way.” Fury flashed in his eyes. “But I don’t work that way, Raven. I don’t want some half-ass relationship with a woman who’s hell-bent on pushing around everything and everyone in her life. I want a woman who trusts me and one I can trust. When you’re ready to include me in every aspect of your life, give me a call.” He whipped on his jacket and went to the door. “Until then, I’m going back to New York!”
>
Thirty-Nine
Three weeks later
As he sat in his office, Pierce replayed his trip to Chicago again. How could a woman proclaim love out of the same mouth she used to cut him so deep he didn’t know he was bleeding? He didn’t need her to remind him that he didn’t have a family. He was on the cusp of having a family, Ava, Eric, her niece and nephew—a real family—and she snatched it back every chance she could.
Maybe he had moved too fast with Raven, but if they had kept treading lightly, they would never get anywhere.
He pressed the intercom. “Steve, get in here!”
“Why the gruff tone?”
“We’ve got work to do.”
“Okay, first off,” Steve began, hovering near the door, “if you’re going to be a grizzly all day, then you need to take your ass right back home.”
“I’m not growling.”
“Yes, you are. And I can only assume it has something to do with Raven, so I won’t ask.”
Pierce glared. “Good, because it’s none of your business any damn way!”
“All right. On that note, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Steve answered as he backed away from the doorway.
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah! I’m not staying here for you to push me around.”
After a moment, Pierce sighed and took a deep breath. “All right.”
“So what happened this time?”
“There is no this time; it’s the same. It didn’t work out, it looks like it will never work out, and that’s all I’m going to say.”
“Oookay. So put that anger into something productive, something that has a future—like our new company.”
Pierce sighed, steepling his fingers under his chin. “All right, I’m game.”
“DeMarco and SOTE have signed on.”
“That’s good.”
“Sancita and Ehryck are in. Grace said she’s gonna stick it out with Simeon.”
“Damn! I was counting on putting her with DeMarco.”
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