Shit, I already had. I didn’t know why or how a man like him could fall in love with me, but I wasn’t going to question it. I was done questioning it. He was showing me every day that it didn’t need to make sense, it just had to work. An ex-con and a catering chef. We didn’t make sense, but we worked.
“You already do,” I said smiling. “We’re counting on you. Don’t become an asshole and break my heart,” I said, only half-joking.
“I won’t let that happen to you again,” he said. He was like this in my fantasies, strong and honest and funny. The man I imagined and the man he was weren’t that different. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a fantasy. It was reality. I never wanted to ask him to do something he didn’t want to, but everything I’d asked him to be, he was more. I believed him. I already knew his words were true.
All I wanted now was for him to show me.
Epilogue
Marcus
“Papa… Papa… Papa?”
“Huh? What is it Jaden?” I grunted, opening my eyes. Jaden was kneeling on the bed, leaning over me. Yup. Papa.
He meant me.
The Uncle Marcus thing had lasted just about as long as it had taken him to realize that papa was a lot easier to say. It had been a journey to get here. He gravitated more naturally to dad, but that was reportedly what he called Jared.
I didn’t know what he called Jared actually because we didn’t tend to be with him at the same time. Whatever it was, he didn’t do it that often since they didn’t see each other all that much. He had started strong but lost momentum and hadn’t been to the house in almost a year.
Adina was more anal about it than I was, gently reminding Jaden whenever he seemed to forget. He almost always remembered to call me Uncle Marcus when she was around. Almost. But when she wasn’t around, he just didn’t. Like now. I squinted in the light, trying to look at him; he had turned the light on.
“When’s Mommy getting back?” he asked.
I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face. Why was he so bad at sleeping? It had been better when he was younger because he’d just climb into the bed in Adina’s spot and sleep there till she got back. Now, when he was awake, he felt like I had to be too.
He was what his teachers called, a sensitive child. He worried a lot. He asked a lot of questions. He was a bad sleeper on a good day, but he straight couldn’t bed down when his mom was working late.
“She said around ten,” I told him yawning.
“What time is it now?” I reached for my phone on the bedside table, ten oh nine. Okay, so he had a point this time. She was late.
“Ten minutes past ten. Wanna keep her side of the bed warm till she comes back?”
He sat back on his heels.
“Can you call her?” he asked.
“She can’t answer the phone if she’s driving, Jay.” He looked down at me, thinking. I could see his mother’s face in his, the dimples and his nose and mouth. I could see Jared’s too, unfortunately, but that wasn’t the kid’s fault.
“Maybe she got lost,” he suggested.
“If she was lost, she would call us to go get her,” I said. I knew what was coming. We did this often. He would ask about his mother, then he’d just talk, about anything; whatever was on his spirit that he felt like sharing. I let him. Whatever I could do to make sure he didn’t grow up a sociopath who couldn’t trust anyone. “You’re worried about her getting lost?” I asked him.
“No. She drives really slowly so she won’t get lost,” he said thoughtfully. I chuckled. He wasn’t wrong.
“Alright,” I said, patting the vacant side of the bed, “let’s sleep. She’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Can we wait for her?” he asked.
“We can’t do that, Jay; you have school tomorrow.” He sighed again. He was a very dramatic child, about fifty years old in his head, but in a five-year-old’s body.
“Can we go to the kitchen?”
“What’s in there?”
“Snacks,” he said, smiling.
“You know you can’t have those after dinner.” He sighed again.
“I’m thirsty,” he announced. I sighed, giving in. I wasn’t getting back to sleep for a long while.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said. He smiled and grabbed my arm, trying to pull me after him. I let him. This was how we spent many nights. Our tradition, you could call it. I let him pull me into the kitchen. He scrambled up onto the counter and watched me pull the ingredients and equipment out. When he said he was thirsty, he didn’t mean for water.
Adina had taught me the recipe. Full-fat milk, honey, vanilla and cinnamon. Warm on stove till hot. Give to insomniac five-year-old and pray the full belly knocks him out. It was supposed to help with sleep. Supposed to. I waited till the concoction was nearly boiling then poured it into a mug, handing it to Jaden.
He took a long sip, holding the mug in both his hands. I poured the rest into a cup and had some myself.
“Papa?” he said.
“Hm?”
“Do you get nervous when Mommy’s late?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “but I know she’s going to come back, even if it takes a little while.”
“Yeah. She always comes back,” he commented, sipping his drink. I wondered whether I was reading too much into it, thinking he was somehow talking about Jared.
I heard the door unlock. Jaden dutifully put his mug down and slid off the countertop, sliding into one of the dining table seats. His mother didn’t like it when I let him do that.
“Marc?” she called.
“We’re in here,” I told her. She walked into the room smiling when she saw us. She kissed Jaden on the top of the head then came up to me.
“Hey,” she said, leaning up to kiss me. She put her hands on my chest; we had to keep it PG when the kids could see. “Is Emmy sleeping?”
“Like a rock. How was work?”
“Fine,” she sighed, leaning her head on my chest. She was tired. She spotted the mug I had been drinking from. “If it makes you feel better, he wakes me up when you’re gone too,” she said.
“He wanted to wait for you.”
“No, he just wanted to hang out with you,” she whispered in my ear. Yeah, that sounded about right. He woke me up because he’d rather be awake and chose me as the person he wanted to be awake with. Adina said it was me overcompensating for Jared not being there, but I didn’t see the harm in that.
Jaden was watching us, smiling. “And now he has to brush his teeth again before going back to sleep,” she said to him.
“I’ll put him down,” I said, “you go to bed.” She hugged him and kissed him goodnight. “You heard your mom, big guy. Drink up, let’s go.”
The walls in his room were still the same blue I’d painted them when he was a baby. Emory was rolled up like a ball, fast asleep in her bed on the other side of the room.
“Can you read me a story?” he asked.
“Not right now, Jay. It’s bedtime,” I said, kissing his forehead and mussing his hair. It was wavy, not curly like his mother’s, but not like his dad’s either. He didn’t like getting it cut, so it was fairly long. He was stalling now, keeping me in his room for as long as possible before I turned the light out and left.
“Can I sleep in your room?” he asked.
“Try to fall asleep here first, and if it doesn’t work, you can come,” I said. He said he’d do his best and rolled onto his side to go to sleep. I made sure Emory was alright before leaving the room. The pregnancy had been difficult, and she’d been born a month and a half early, but she’d gotten to three years with no problem.
Adina was just climbing into bed when I got back to our bedroom. She was wearing one of my shirts, which was long enough on her to be like a very short dress. I turned the light out and climbed in next to her, holding her, so she rested her head on my chest.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Mm-hmm. I spoke to Jared today,” she said.
“Bad news?�
�
“He doesn’t think he can make it for Thanksgiving,” she said.
“But that’s months away. He can’t free up his schedule?”
“He lives somewhere they don’t celebrate it,” she said. Amsterdam. He had moved to Amsterdam when Jaden was about two. The move had meant almost automatic sole custody for Adina, but he’d made an effort, at least in the beginning to show up—sometimes. The other option was going there to see him, but you needed a passport to do that, and you needed the approval of both legal parents to get a kid a passport. Jared would always say he wanted to make the trip, not make Jaden go see him, but he could have fooled me.
“What do you want to do?”
“My parents wanted to come up for Christmas. Would your mom take us again this year?”
“Mom loves the kids. Of course she would.”
“Just ask her first,” she said, sighing. I didn’t think Jaden felt it the way she did. He didn’t really know the guy all that well.
I wished Jared would just pick one, in or out, but it was probably more complicated than that. He couldn’t get his shit together enough to see his kid, though? If he really didn’t want to, then that was fine. It would be upsetting for Jaden, but he would get over it. He had enough people who did give a shit about him around him every day; the loss wouldn’t be that painful.
“You don’t have to be cautious with her; she won’t say no,” I said.
“She will ask us why we aren’t married yet,” she said accusatorily. “I don’t care that you’re on probation.”
“I care, honey. You can’t marry a guy who’s still on felony probation. It should be over before Jaden’s next birthday. We can do it then.”
“She thinks I’m weak for still letting Jared see Jaden,” she said.
“No. She doesn’t think you’re weak. She just hates him like the rest of us, and we’re waiting for the day you start to hate him too.” She sighed.
“If he keeps going like this, you might not have to wait that long,” she said. “He’s separating himself. I can feel it.” The year before, she’d had Jared’s last name dropped off of Jaden’s. After some yelling, he’d conceded. Now, he was going to let an entire year pass without seeing him. He already didn’t call. He was basically gone, how much more clearly did he have to say he didn’t give a fuck?
“When he does, it will be fine. He hardly even knows the guy,” I said.
“Yeah. You’re a better father than he ever was,” she said. “I just don’t want to tell him and see him disappointed.”
“We’ll tell him together. Willow’s coming this year; he’ll get to meet his cousins,” I said. “If he doesn’t want to see him, it’s his loss.” She kissed me, turning so she could straddle me.
“How long do you think we have till he comes here?” she asked. I hoped it was at least a little while. I felt her tit through my shirt. Her hand was down my underwear when the door opened. She sighed and rolled off of me as Jaden padded quietly into the room and climbed up into our bed, settling very deliberately right between us.
“Tomorrow morning?” I whispered, casting her a sorry look. She smiled and kissed Jaden, leaning over him to kiss me. “Twenty minutes,” she whispered. Sex, when you had kids, was hard. Since I’d started my new business and our schedules weren’t synched up, it was even harder. I was even harder.
At least if I was getting cock-blocked, it was for a good reason. The best two reasons. One more if Adina finally came around and we started trying again. I’d done it. Statistically, I was supposed to be back in prison by now. I had several extremely good reasons to make sure that never happened again. I knew all about chances and making them count. I couldn’t imagine where I would have been if I’d never met Adina. I didn’t want to know.
Whatever or wherever that life was, I was sure it was nothing compared to this.
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Introducing… Asher
The subsequent novel in the Heartbreakers & Troublemakers series. Available on Amazon.
About the Author
Hope Hitchens is a rising star author who exploded onto the scene in 2018 with her debut series of scorching hot contemporary romance novels entitled Heartbreakers & Troublemakers. You can find her work exclusively on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback formats.
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Marcus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 5) Page 19