King d.Avid met Brianna at the door. He hugged her. And even though she felt bad that she was lingering so long in his arms, for some reason she just couldn’t manage to find the strength or the mind to pull away.
King d.Avid walked her over to the living room like she was one of those large walking dolls from years ago. They sat down, still linked together, on the couch. He didn’t utter a word, just looked at her as though she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“How are you?” he finally said.
She nodded, afraid that even one sound would open up the floodgates of her crying again. As long as she didn’t think too long, too deep, or too much, she was okay.
He kept one arm around her and just held her. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
She nodded her yes answer.
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. About three . . . four hours ago, maybe,” she said in a small whisper. “I had a little something for breakfast.”
“Well, I had Chef make a fruit tray and some other healthy things. It’s here on the table. I want you to at least eat some fruit. They say fruit is good for you.”
Brianna nodded. She knew he was meaning “good for the baby.”
King d.Avid picked up the tray and held it before her. She shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said. “I’m not really hungry right now.”
He put the tray back down on the table. Picking up a large, perfectly red strawberry, he held it up to her mouth. She shook her head again. He smiled and put the berry up to her lips just the same. She looked into his eyes. He smiled again. She bit the strawberry. After she finished that one, he picked up yet another piece of fruit and repeated the process . . . chunks of cantaloupes, honeydew melons, pineapples, mangos, peaches, and grapes, plucked from a bunch.
After she told him she was truly full, then, without thinking, placed her hand on her stomach, tears began to mist his eyes. He held up his hand as asking permission to touch her stomach as well. Brianna looked down, then slowly took his hand and gently placed it on her abdomen. He instantly laughed. After a few minutes, he took both of his arms, wrapped them around her, and just began to hug and rock her.
He hugged and refused to let go. “Marry me,” he said, after what felt like fifteen minutes of nothing but him holding her without a word being exchanged between them.
Brianna instantly pulled back from his embrace. “What?”
He smiled, then dropped down onto one knee, took both her hands, and said, “Brianna, I would like for you to be my wife. Marry me.”
Chapter 36
O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee.
—Psalm 69:5
Brianna frowned at King d.Avid. “But you don’t know me,” she said. “And you definitely don’t love me. How are you going to ask me to marry you?”
“I know enough, and right now I love you and our baby enough for it to do nothing but grow into more than either of us can imagine,” King d.Avid said. “You’re the right woman for me. I feel this so much in my spirit. I can’t explain it. But I feel this is what you and I are supposed to do.”
Brianna shook her head. “My husband just died. How can you be asking me to marry you like this, knowing everything that you know? This is wrong on so many levels,” she said.
“No. It’s right on so many levels. Other things we may have done in the past could be considered wrong or just the wrong time. But to meet someone that you believe God has—”
She vigorously began to shake her head. “Don’t you dare bring God into this. You and I both know the truth. We know what we did. And what we did was wrong. And now, my husband is gone, and you’re down there on your knees asking me to marry you as though this is normal . . . that it’s what we’re naturally supposed to be doing.”
King d.Avid smiled. “I know you might not agree with me on that. But Brianna, somehow I believe you and I were meant to meet someday and be together. I believe it was ordained.”
“What? You’re really crazy, aren’t you?” She tried to pull her hands out of his, but his grip was firm.
“Hear me out. This is not as crazy as you might think. Do you remember the first time we met?”
“Of course I do. I was ten and you were much, much older than me. And if you had looked at me in anyway other than as a ten-year-old child, you’d be considered a pedophile.”
“I didn’t see you then as anything other than a ten-year-old child. But what I was going to say is that, on that day, you told me something . . . something that a woman at church had spoken over you and your future. Do you remember? Because I certainly do.”
Brianna dropped her head. “I remember. She said I was going to be great or produce something great one day. She saw me as royalty, ruling in the office of a queen.”
“Well, I can recall your exact words,” King d.Avid said. “They were, ‘I plan on being the queen of something myself. Just not exactly sure what I intend to rule over. But I’m going to be somebody great, or at least produce something great one day, just like you. I promise you that.’ You said a woman at church had spoken a ‘Word’ over you. Well, I believe in that Word that was spoken. It was prophetic. Maybe somehow you and I got in God’s way of how He planned on bringing things about between us. But I believe we were destined to be together and to do something great for the Kingdom of God.”
Brianna struggled again to pull her hands out of his.
“I’m not going to let you go until you agree to be my wife.”
“This is crazy, David. You don’t fix one mistake by compounding it with another. You and I did something we shouldn’t have. That’s a fact. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be down on your knee right now.”
“And a little FYI here: I’m not as young as I used to be. So if you could show a bit of mercy and say yes pretty quickly, then me and my knee—both knees, in fact—will greatly thank you.”
Brianna shook her head without cracking a smile. “You can’t joke this away!”
“Who’s joking? I want to marry you,” King d.Avid said. “That’s a fact.”
“How many times have you already messed up by marrying the wrong person or maybe not the wrong person, but it was too soon . . . or at the wrong time?” Brianna asked.
“Four times married and divorced, two times officially engaged, and this last lady who claims we were engaged is absolutely off her rocker. There’s no way I ever planned or intended to marry someone like her, I don’t care what she’s claiming in the tabloids.”
“See, that’s seven women. Six you felt were the one God had called you to, a few of them you have children with. I’m sorry, but your track record is nothing to write home about. And I don’t plan on being number eight.” Brianna shook her head. “So you need to get up off the floor and save your knees and let’s talk about something else.”
King d.Avid got up and sat next to her, reaching once more and taking her left hand in his. “Brianna, let’s just say you would be number eight. Eight is the number of new beginnings. When I saw you at the beach, do you know what I heard in my spirit?”
Brianna looked at him and drew her head back away from him. “You saw me at the beach? When?”
“Back in early May when you were there with your friend Alana.”
“You saw me? I didn’t know you were there.” She cocked her head to one side. “Wait a minute. Chad. Of course! He came to the beach house where we were staying.”
“Yes. He came upon my instructions.”
“That was your beach house Chad came from that evening?”
King d.Avid nodded. “Yes. Mine.”
“So when did you see me? I don’t recall seeing you at all. The beach was pretty much deserted the two days I was there.” Brianna looked at him with a locked gaze.
“That evening. When you went into the outside shower and came out of it wearing nothing but a cute little purple robe.”
Brianna widened her eyes. “You saw that?”
“Yes. And I’ve
since informed Vincent that he needs to put a roof on that shower.”
“Then you also saw me when I went into the ocean waters?”
“Yes.”
“What else?” Brianna asked, tilting her head down as she stared even harder into his eyes, almost willing him to speak the truth. “And I want you to look directly in my eyes so I can tell if you’re lying to me or not.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Brianna. Not now; not ever. Do you hear me? I’m making a promise to you right here and now: if you ever ask me anything, I don’t care how difficult it might be to answer it, if it’s at all within my powers to give you the answer, I’m going to,” King d.Avid said.
“Okay. So tell me what you saw.” Brianna folded her arms.
“I saw you walk into the ocean. You wore the robe until you were sure your body was hidden by the ocean’s waters. You then slipped off the robe and submerged your entire body, including your head, into the water. Which, I’m going to admit, I thought a bit strange.” He chuckled. “You even had me worried there for a minute or two. I almost ran from the roof where I was standing at the time, thinking I might need to save you.”
“Save me? Save me from what?”
King d.Avid grinned. “I didn’t know what you were doing. When you went into the waters like that, your hair not protected to keep it from getting wet, and then you immersed completely in the waters in some kind of a ritualistic way. I didn’t know if you were trying to drown yourself or what.”
Brianna laughed. “Drown myself?” She laughed some more, a hearty laugh this time where she was almost forced to hold her stomach. “Please. Oh, my goodness! There’s no way I would ever try and commit suicide. Not ev-er.”
“I eventually figured that out. But what were you doing?”
Brianna closed one of her eyes as she contorted her face a little. She looked back over at him. “I was doing my domesticated, improvised version of mikvah.”
“Oh,” he sang the word. “Mikvah, huh?”
“Yeah. So, you’re not going to ask me what mikvah is?”
“Nope. I happen to know what a mikvah is, thank you very much.”
“You do?” Brianna said, allowing her surprise to shine through.
“Yes.” He grinned, then leaned in closer to her face. “A mikvah is a place of pooled water used for a process of purification, repentance, restoration, and if you happen to not be of the Jewish faith and convert, it denotes the completed status of conversion.”
“I must say, I’m impressed,” Brianna said.
“You’re impressed? Well, I happen to know a Jewish guy at the recording studio. So now will you marry me?”
Brianna laughed. “What?”
“Don’t you see? It’s our destiny. We were meant to be together. We both know mikvah.”
“No, we’re not,” she said adamantly.
“Yes,” King d.Avid said, grabbing her hand and caressing it softly. “We are. So you might as well quit wasting time and just go on and consent. You know you can’t outrun the calling or the will of God. And for whatever reason, at least I believe it to be true: we’re supposed to be together.”
“You really are serious, aren’t you?”
“I promise you, I feel so strongly in my spirit about this; I can’t explain it.”
“Well, I believe you need to go and dip yourself in a mikvah or do something for purification. But truthfully, you need to ask God to forgive you. Because what you’re saying right now is going to get you in a lot of trouble with God, a whole lot.”
“I’m just speaking what’s in my heart and in my spirit,” King d.Avid said. “I truly believe you and I were already destined to be together at some point in our lives. But even if I’m wrong about that, one fact does remain. And that is that you and I have a baby on the way.” King d.Avid promptly got back down on one knee again.
“Don’t do that!” Brianna said, trying, without success to pull him back up.
He grabbed her left hand. “Brianna Bathsheba Wright Waters, I don’t want this baby of ours to come into this world without a father. I know you don’t believe me, but I truly do love you. I do. And for the record: I’m not asking you to be my wife just because of the baby—”
“Okay, stop it,” Brianna said, effectively snatching her hand out of his. “This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong. I sinned against God and against my husband when you and I laid down together. I got pregnant, and this baby is not his.” Brianna shook her head as she rolled her tongue around inside of her mouth. “Just saying all of this leaves a sour taste in my mouth.”
“Brianna, in a perfect world we would all do the right thing.” He grabbed her hand back. “But we don’t live in a perfect world. The fact remains that you and I did sleep together. The fact remains it was a sin. The fact remains we asked God to forgive us. I believe that He has. Granted, you did get pregnant from that one night that I still don’t regret spending with you. I hate I sinned. I hate it. But I don’t regret being with you. Your husband was tragically killed. I know all of this hurts, but they are all facts.”
Brianna began to cry, but King d.Avid would not let go of her hand, nor did he stop. “The fact remains, my dearest Brianna, you are carrying my child. That’s my baby you cradle in your womb, no matter who you were married to when the baby was conceived. And I would love more than anything right now to be a husband to you and a father—a present, in my child’s life, father—to him or her. So”—he caressed her hand, and reaching up, he brushed her tears away—“please do me the honor of being my wife. Please give me the opportunity to prove to you just how much I really can love you.”
“What will people think if you and I get married? Huh? Answer that. Especially so soon after my husband’s death? It’s only been a little over a month. Not even six whole weeks.”
King d.Avid stood up and pulled Brianna to her feet. “A month is longer than some folks in the Bible waited. But tell me: what will people think and say when you start showing? What will you say when people start asking you about the baby that you’re carrying? You’ve already said you’re not going to lie. Everybody will assume the baby is Unzell’s. You’re going to have to deal with a lot more than you want if you’re by yourself as you go through this. But”—he softly brushed a strand of hair from her face, then lovingly tucked it behind her ear—“if you marry me, then no one will say anything to you about the baby. I’ll help make sure of that.”
Brianna leaned her head back. Her tears began to roll toward her ears now.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you cry. That’s not what I’m trying to do here,” King d.Avid said, pulling her forward and wiping her tears with his thumbs. “I want to make your life easier. I can do that for you. I can. If you don’t want to marry me because you don’t love me right now, then fine. Marry me so that I can make things easier for you. I owe you that much. It’s something I want to do for you . . . and for me.”
“So you would marry me knowing that I’m not in love with you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me that would be okay with you?”
“Absolutely,” King d.Avid said. “We can date while we’re married. Get to know each other better. I’ll gladly give you all the time and space you need. I promise you, there will be no pressure coming from me. We don’t even have to consummate the marriage until you decide you’re ready. In fact, when you’re ready, I have a special place I want to take you. And I think you’ll really love it. All you need to do, when you’re ready, is to tell me: ‘Take me to that special place.’ ”
“What if I’m never ready? Then I’ll just be the eighth woman you were wrong about.”
“There won’t be another. I promise you that. You’re the one God has sent to me. I found you, which is absolutely a good thing. I won’t lose you. We’ll work through whatever problems come our way. I’ll be a good husband to you and a good father to our baby.”
“And what are we supposed to tell people about this baby?�
� Brianna said, quickly glancing down, then back up.
“Whatever you decide you want us to. If you want people to think the baby is Unzell’s, I’ll not take that from you publicly. But in every sense of the word and in every aspect financially speaking, this child will be mine and will lack for nothing. Nothing.” He cocked his head one way, then the other. “But if you want people to believe this baby is mine, conceived on our wedding night, we can do that as well. However, if you want to go the route of this baby being mine, we don’t have a moment to waste getting to the altar. Because as it already is, anyone who can count will be able to count from the time the baby is born to when we were married and figure out something is a little off.”
Brianna flopped down on the couch and placed her head inside of her hands. She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do!”
King d.Avid sat beside her, lifted up her head, essentially pulling her hands from her face. He took both her hands into his. “Let’s start by you agreeing to marry me. Let’s start there. Then, we’ll get married. After that, I’ll be right there by your side. And together, we’ll decide what to do . . . as one. Together. All right?”
Brianna looked unwaveringly into his eyes. “All right,” she said. “I’ll marry you.”
Chapter 37
Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.
—Psalm 19:12
“What do you mean, you’re married?” Alana said, standing near the door of the house that belonged to Brianna. “You’re kidding, right? I know you’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding, Alana. I got married.”
Redeeming Waters Page 21
