by Tara Wylde
“It’s something you can work on, change. Next time, instead of leaping to the worse possible conclusion, think happy thoughts. Tell yourself a bad joke. And talk to the other person before hurling accusations. Okay?”
Lucas stops beside my bed and stares down at me. I stare at my hands.
“Next time?” He says the words slowly, as if he can’t quite believe what he's hearing. “At the match, I said I wanted to talk to you, but … things happened and we never got the chance.”
“Lucas, there’s something I need to tell you first.”
I need to get off my chest first. If I don’t I’ll lose my nerve. “When Eileen … when I thought I was going to … you know. The only thing I could really think about was you. I’ve said this to you before, once, but you were asleep so I guess it doesn’t count. You probably don’t want to hear this, but I made a promise to myself that if I lived, I’d tell you that I love you, more than anything else in this world, more than I ever imagined possible.”
Lucas doesn’t say anything. The cheap clock above the door ticks away the seconds one … three ... seven. Unable to stand it any longer I sneak a peek through my lashes at Lucas.
He’s standing stock still, the biggest, happiest grin I’ve ever seen spread across his face.
He leans down and plants a feather soft kiss on my lips.
“Alexis,” he whispers, his breath fans across my face. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I love you and I want to cancel the terms of our marriage contract and make this a real marriage. One that stands the test of time.”
Epilogue - Lucas
Eight Months Later
I find my pretty wife sitting in our private box, her legs curled up underneath herself and her MacBook propped on one thigh. A cup of herbal tea steams beside her.
I brush a kiss across her brow before looking at what has her so engrossed. “Fourteenth Century vases?”
“Mmm.” She tears her attention away from the computer screen long enough to tip her head back for a proper kiss. “I’ve found some that might have been made by a Moravian farmer who lived in the Northern part of the country.”
“Uh huh,” I close the laptop and set it aside, before wrapping my arms around her and lifting her up. A moment later, I’m sitting on the chair and she’s on my lap. “I paid for this box with the idea that you’d be able to watch the competition in peace and comfort. Not so you could work.”
She wraps an arm around my neck and cuddles close, her curves fitting perfectly into my contours. She kisses my neck, her lips unerringly finding the spot behind my ear that sends lightning bolts of pleasure to my cock.
“I paid attention to the most important bit. I watched your round.”
“And –?”
She smiles against my skin. “You’re the greatest fencer in the world. The way you handled the competition. Masterful.”
“Spoken just like a good wife. Now you should watch. Roderick’s about to start.”
“I can think of something else I’d rather do.” She nips my jaw as her hands slide under my shirt, her nails scoring my skin.
“Roderick expects us to watch. He’ll want to know what we think.”
“Mmm,” Alexis wiggles around, her sweet ass rubbing back and forth across my cock and nearly making me cross-eyed until, finally, she straddles me. “I think we can make something up, don’t you?”
“That doesn’t seem kind.”
Her hands unfasten my jeans and suddenly I don’t give a rat’s ass what Roderick thinks or wants. Or whether it’s kind.
Sometime later, while lying on the floor of the private box, I shift so I can see Alexis’s face. She curls into my chest and smiles up at me.
“That was fun.”
I stroke her hair away from her sweaty face. “If there’s one hundred rabbits standing shoulder to shoulder in a line and ninety-nine make a single backward leap, what do you have?”
Alexis’s eyes gleam.
I’ll never tell her this, but the first time I laughed at her joke, just before she was loaded into the ambulance, I hadn’t really found the joke funny, I’d just been so relieved that she was well enough to tell bad jokes, the laugh just exploded out of me.
But her reaction showed me just how much she values a sense of humor, so during these last few months, I’ve made an effort to shed some of my dignity. An effort which includes learning how to tell the bad jokes Alexis loves. As I’ve gradually felt less self-conscious about spewing nonsense, I’ve noticed how much she genuinely enjoys my efforts.
On one or two occasions, I’ve even used a joke to ease a tense situation. I know, baby steps. But I’m trying.
“Why do I get the impression that one steadfast rabbit isn’t the correct answer?”
I snort. I’m pretty sure she actually knows the punch line of every joke I’ve told, but she always acts like she’s never heard it before. It’s one of thousand or so different things I love about her.
“A receding hare line.”
Alexis giggles and cuddles even closer. “Fantastic, tell me another.”
I search my memory. Alexis is a walking dictionary of different jokes but I struggle to remember two or three at a time. I finally decide on one I don’t think I’ve told her yet.
“Do you know why the skeleton decided to attend the bar-b-que.”
Alexis doesn’t answer. After a moment, I realize she’s fallen asleep. Not surprising. These days she falls asleep at the drop of a hat.
I carefully shift my position so I can look down on her face. More than a year after making the hasty decision to marry her and eventually falling in love with her, I think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, both inside and out.
Sighing with contentment I rest my hand on her lower belly, measuring the soft swell and gauging how much the child within has grown. Right now, they’re a cluster of cells, but soon those cells will turn into a recognizable form and shortly after that, my country will welcome the newest member in the line to the throne and I’ll hold my first child in my hands.
I don’t care whether it’s a boy or girl. All I ask is that they’re healthy, full of life, and that they have their mother’s enormous heart and unbreakable sense of humor.
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