by LJ Shen
“Whatever you need me to do, get it over with,” Wolfe barked.
My father leaned back, clucking his tongue and tapping a fist over his lip.
“If you truly love my daughter, Senator Keaton, if you sincerely care for her, you will strip from the one thing you never part ways with—your pride.”
“What are you asking?” I could practically envision Wolfe’s jaw as it locked in anger.
“Beg for her, son. Kneel.” Papa lifted his chin, somehow looking down at Wolfe despite my husband being several inches taller. “Beg like you made me beg for her when you took her from me.”
My dad begged for me?
“I do not beg,” Wolfe said, and I knew he meant it. Even my father knew better than to ask for something like this. He set Wolfe up for failure and doomed my marriage by asking that. Wolfe never bowed to anyone, much less my own father. I was going to burst in the door and set the record straight when I heard Papa speak again.
“Then you don’t love my daughter, Senator Keaton. You merely want your possession back. Because as far as I recall, she did a lot of begging and groveling when you took her from this house as your prisoner.”
I bit down on my lip, resting my forehead against the doorframe. It hurt me to see Wolfe hurting, but it pained me even more that I understood why he couldn’t do it. Why he couldn’t beg the man who had ruined his life. It wasn’t just about his pride and dignity. It was also about his morals and everything he stood for. About his family.
My father had stripped him from his pride once in front of his brother. He was not going to do it again.
“You’re not doing this because of her; you’re doing this because of you,” Wolfe accused, point-blank. My dad braced the edges of his desk behind him as he stared at the ceiling, contemplating this.
“Why I’m doing this shouldn’t matter to you. If you want her, you will stop at nothing, much less the floor.”
Tears prickled my eyes once again. My father was humiliating him, and as much as I wanted to step inside and order them both to stop this, I couldn’t. Because my father wasn’t wrong about one thing—Wolfe always held the power in my relationship with him, and if he couldn’t let go, even once, was this really a marriage, or was it a captive and master, glorified under the flattering light of lust?
Slowly, I watched to my utter shock as Wolfe began to lower himself down to his knees. I choked on my breath, unable to tear my eyes from the scene unfolding in front of me. My husband, the proud, take-no-bullshit, arrogant bastard was kneeling, begging for me. What’s more, he didn’t look an inch less superior than he did walking into this room. He tilted his face up, allowing me an angle from which I could see him clearly. He was the picture of conceited, his regal features sharp and open. His eyes were determined, his eyebrows arched in mockery, and his entire composure was unimpeachable. Based on their faces alone, you couldn’t tell which one of them was bowing down to the other.
“Arthur,” his voice boomed in the room, “I beg you, please let me talk to your daughter. My wife is, and always will be, the most important thing in my life.”
My heart burst in my chest at his words, and I quivered, feeling the heat of a thousand suns warming me from the inside.
“You will never make her happy for as long as you hang my sins over her head,” my father warned. My husband was still on his knees, and I couldn’t stop the tears anymore. They rushed down in the form of a sob. I slapped a hand over my mouth, afraid they’d hear me.
Wolfe smirked, his eyes flashing with determination.
“I do not intend to do that anymore, Arthur.”
“Does that mean you will stop messing with my business?”
“That means I will make an effort to play nice for her.”
“What about White and Bishop?” my father asked.
“I’ll do whatever I see fit with them.”
“I can take Francesca awa—”
“No, you can’t,” Wolfe interfered, cutting him sharply. “The only person who is in a position to take Francesca away from me is Francesca herself. It’s her choice who she wants to be with—not mine. Definitely not yours. You’ve killed my brother, then my parents. My wife is where I draw the line. You cannot take her. I will unleash hell if you do.”
I closed my eyes, feeling my body swaying from side to side. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the scent of the cigar made me want to throw up.
“Go to her,” my father said brokenly.
My husband got up on his feet.
Then, for the second time in my life, I swooned.
I WOKE UP COCOONED IN my husband’s arms.
He sat on the king-sized bed, my head resting on him in the exact same position we were curled in when we were in the barn, when he showed me Artemis. His spicy cologne and distinctive male scent engulfed me in comfort, and I pretended to be asleep a little longer, prolonging the uncomfortable conversation that waited at the end of my slumber.
He dragged the tip of his fingers over my back through my shirt, pressing a kiss to my hairline. I visited the memory of him kneeling in front of my father, telling him that I was the most important thing to him. Warm honey coated my heart.
“I know you’re awake,” I heard my husband murmur to my temple. I groaned, shifting in his arms. The thought that these arms were wrapped around Karolina Ivanova a week ago made me want to throw up all over again. I propped myself on my forearms, shooting him a tired look.
“You’re pregnant.” He looked down at my stomach as if he was expecting to see a bump. Seeing his face again was the greatest gift I’d ever been given. It was absurd to think I dreaded said face the morning after the masquerade. Shortly after, he became my favorite thing about myself. I became his reminder that there was something more than vengeance and justice in this world. We were co-dependent, and we had to co-exist. One without the other was a dormant being.
To be alive and not really living was a terrible curse.
“It’s yours.” I put my hand on his for emphasis.
“I know.” He ran the tip of his nose along mine, gathering me in his arms as though I was something great and precious and hugging me close.
“Does that make you unhappy?” I sniffed.
“Becoming a father? I always thought it would. I was sure life ended when parenthood began. But that was before I found someone worthy to start a family with. I’m still not entirely sure about my abilities when it comes to parenthood. Luckily, I know my wife will be the best mother this planet has to offer.”
Silently, my eyes raked the room. There was so much I wanted to say, but I knew that it could break something that was not yet even glued.
“What about you, Nem? Are you happy being pregnant?”
I straightened, swallowing my fear and letting the words rip from my throat before I lost my courage.
“I’m…unsure. We’re constantly fighting. We set a world record in miscommunications. And you just slept with someone else a week ago to get back at me—and not for the first time. I kissed Angelo last week, furious with the truth about you and my father, but I didn’t take it any further. We’re volatile and unfaithful. We don’t live in the same wing…”
“We will,” he cut me off. “If that’s what you want.”
“We need some time to think.”
I needed some time apart from him. Not because I didn’t love him, but because I loved him too much to make a conscious, healthy decision for our baby.
“There’s nothing to think about. I didn’t sleep with Karolina. I couldn’t do it. I wanted to—God, Nemesis, I wanted to fuck you out of my life for good—but there could never be anyone else. It is you that I love. It is you whom I want. It is you whom makes living a spectacular thing I want to experience, rather than participate in reluctantly, every day.”
I felt the tears sliding down my cheeks, fat and salty. We were so good at hurting each other. This had to stop.
“I kissed another,” I whispered. “I cheated on you.”
“I forgive you.” He cupped my cheeks in his big hands. “Forgive yourself, and let’s move on. Come back home, Nem.”
“Nothing happened in that hotel room.”
“I don’t give a fuck what happened between then and there. I believe you, but it makes no difference. I want to start this over. The right way.”
“I need time.” The words broke me. Maybe because they were brutally honest.
I needed time to digest everything that was happening. To make sure this was not just another grand gesture he was going to offer and forget about the next morning. We fell in love fast and slow. Hard and soft. With everything we had in us, yet we both refused to give anything away. We didn’t have time to digest what was happening. We clashed into each other’s lives with our walls still up. We needed to start over. We needed to flirt. We needed to distribute the power between us, this time more equally. We needed to learn to fight without wounding each other. Without running into other people’s arms. Without dragging and tossing each other into rooms like wild beasts.
“It should be my choice to be with you. You understand that, right?”
Wolfe nodded, standing up before he changed his mind. I could tell it took a tremendous effort for him not to demand from me what he used to think he deserved. He made his way to the door, and I wanted to take the words back and go with him. But I couldn’t. I had to be better for the person inside me.
A person I was going to be able to save, like my mother couldn’t.
Wolfe stopped at the threshold, his back still to me.
“Can I call you?”
“Yes.” I let out a breath. “Can I text you?”
“You may. Can I book you an appointment with an OB-GYN?”
“Yes.” I laughed through the tears, wiping them quickly. He still didn’t turn around to look at me. Wolfe Keaton wasn’t much of a negotiator, but for me—he broke his rules.
“May I join you?” His voice was grave.
“You better.”
His shoulders quaked in a soft chuckle, and he finally turned around to face me.
“Go on a date with me, Mrs. Keaton? Not a gala. Not a charity event. Not an official outing. A date.”
God.
Oh, yes.
“I would love that very much.”
“Good,” he said, looking down and chuckling to himself. I had to remind myself that this was the same cruel man from the masquerade. The one I swore to hate for the rest of my life. He looked up, his face still tilted down, with a shy yet devastated gaze.
“Will I get lucky on that date?”
I threw myself on my pillow, covering my face with my arm, the sound of my laughter drowning the click of the door as it closed.
Two days later, we paid our first visit to my new OB-GYN. Barbara was in her fifties with cropped blond hair, kind eyes, and thick glasses. She did an ultrasound and showed us the peanut swimming in my womb. Its little pulse pitter-pattered like tiny bare feet down the stairs on Christmas morning.
Wolfe held my hand and stared at the screen as though we had just discovered a new planet.
We went to lunch after that. Our first public unofficial outing as a couple. He invited me over to our house. I politely declined, explaining I made plans with Sher and Tricia from my study group. I tried to bite down my smile when I broke the news to him. I hadn’t had friends my age ever since I moved back from Switzerland.
“Nemesis.” He arched an eyebrow when he drove me back to my house. “Next thing I know, you’ll be attending frat parties.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” Parties weren’t my scene. Besides, the ones I was used to were fancy and demanded a dress code my pregnant self wasn’t eager to follow. Even in my first trimester, I opted for loose, comfortable attire.
“I think everyone needs to go to at least one frat party to see what all the fuss is about.”
“Would it bother you?” I asked. I wanted to put across that he didn’t have this kind of power over me anymore.
“Not at all. Unless Angelo is your date.”
That was a fair request, which I could no longer deny it. I took out my phone from my bag and tossed it into his hands.
“Check this.”
“What am I checking, exactly?”
“I deleted his number.”
He stopped the car in front of my house and killed the engine. He handed me back my phone. “I’ll take your word for it. What changed your mind?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m in love with this guy, and he has this idea in his head that I will run away with my childhood sweetheart.”
Wolfe shot me a dirty look. “He is tragically in love with you, too, and I don’t blame him for being adamant about keeping you.”
There were many more dates between Wolfe and me after that day.
We went to the movies and to restaurants and even to hotel bars, in which we both didn’t drink—me because of my age and pregnancy, him out of solidarity.
We shared a bowl of french fries and played pool and argued about books. I found out that my husband was a Stephen King fanatic. I was more of a Nora Roberts fan myself. We stopped at a bookstore and purchased each other books to read. We laughed when Wolfe told me he nearly kicked the Hatch’s out of our house that time they visited us because Bryan had an erection as impressive as a baseball bat while I played the piano.
Andrea, my cousin, called. She said that she’d been thinking, and she reached the conclusion she could no longer not speak to me just because my father didn’t approve of the husband he himself chose for me. She asked for my forgiveness.
“I wasn’t being a good Christian about it, doll.” She snapped her gum in my ear. “Come to think about it, I wasn’t even a good manicurist about it. I bet you bit into those nails like nobody’s business without me reminding you to stop chewing on them.”
I told her the truth—forgiveness cost me nothing, and more than that, it enriched my soul. We met for a cappuccino the following day, and I bombarded her with all the twenty-first century questions that sat on my tongue.
Some days later, Wolfe announced that we were taking a weekend-long trip to visit Artemis. I wasn’t in a condition to ride her, but I enjoyed taking care of her and making sure she was doing okay.
A month ticked by. A month in which my husband called every morning to wake me up and every night to tell me good night. A month in which we didn’t fight, or cuss, or slam doors. A month in which he did not withhold any information from me, and I did not refuse his every request, simply because he’d made it. I let the EPAs escort me to school, didn’t break protocol, and still managed to make a handful of friends. Wolfe worked hard but always made sure to put me first.
I still wasn’t wearing my engagement and wedding rings—I left them at his house the night he went to the black-tie gala with Karolina Ivanova. But I never felt as if I belonged to someone else in my entire life more than now, ring or not.
We fell back in lust just as you do into a rabbit hole—fast and frantic. Wolfe, I found out, was quite fond of having sex in unusual places. We had sex in his office and in a restroom at a wedding, on the bed in my old room when my parents weren’t home and against his bedroom window, watching over the pristine street.
He fingered me under the table during an official black-tie dinner and thrust himself into me without warning when I bent down after a shower to open the bottom drawer in the bathroom and retrieve my blow dryer.
I loved every second of us in bed because no one ever needed to wonder when it was time to retreat back to their spot, their wing, or their house. We always fell asleep together and woke up together, insulated in this new, exciting thing called us.
The morning I woke up with a small, visible bump in my lower belly—it felt hard and tough and exciting—my mother walked into my room and sat down on the edge of my bed.
“I’m divorcing your father.”
I had a thousand things I wanted to tell her. From thank God to what took you so long? but I settled for a simple nod,
squeezing her hand in mine to give her strength. I couldn’t be more proud of her if I tried. She had a lot to lose. But she was willing to lose it, anyway, if it meant winning back her freedom and voice.
“I think I deserve more. I think I deserved more all along, I just didn’t know that it could be possible. I know that now, through you, Vita Mia. Your happy ending inspired mine.” She wiped away a tear, forcing a smile on her face.
“My story hasn’t ended just yet.” I laughed.
“Not yet,” she agreed with a wink, “but I see where the plot is going.”
“Mama.” I clutched her palm, tears brewing in my eyes. “The best part of your story is yet to be written. You’re doing the right thing.”
Clara and I helped Mama pack her bags. Clara suggested she should book a hotel. I shook my head. It was time for me to go back to where I belonged. And it was time for Wolfe to play nice with both of our mothers—his and mine. I picked up the phone and called my husband. He answered on the first ring.
“I’m ready to come home.”
“Thank fuck,” he breathed. “What took you so long?”
“I needed to see that you meant it. That my freedom was really mine.”
“It is yours,” he said gravely. “It has always been yours.”
“Can Mama and Clara come stay with us for a while?”
“You can bring an entire hostile army into the house and I’d still welcome them with open arms.”
That evening, Wolfe threw all our suitcases into the back of his car with Smithy’s help. My father stood at the doorway and watched us with a glass of something strong. He did not say one thing. It didn’t matter that Wolfe bowed down to him for ten seconds weeks ago. Senator Keaton was still the person who had won everything in the grand scheme of things.
My father had lost, and the game was over.
Once we got to the house, Ms. Sterling (I insisted on calling her Patricia now that I knew she was my mother-in-law), led my mother and Clara to the east wing to get settled. Wolfe and I climbed up the stairs behind them. When we made it to the second floor, I turned toward my room.
