“I don’t know what to say.”
“Right now, don’t say anything. Just think about what you want to do next. Now”—he shoveled a giant bite of cheesecake into his mouth then swallowed—“what was it that you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I, uh, I—“ I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t tell him I was pregnant right after he’d given that whole speech about being proud of me. “Nothing. I only wanted to hang out.”
“Liar,” he said, pointing his fork at me.
I blanched.
“I don’t know what you—”
“You just wanted cheesecake.”
Heh.
“You caught me.”
I lopped off a huge chunk of the slice and inhaled it.
Protein.
Twenty-Three
Jake
This would either be a spectacular success or I’d go down in flames.
I was sure that any sane person would put gambling odds on flames, but I chose to be an optimist as I straightened the last branch on the Christmas tree, hid three more Easter eggs, and laid out the Scrabble board. I adjusted the volume on the karaoke player and then set the table.
Steak knives. Chopsticks. Fondue forks.
Go big or go home. This was my last shot--the elusive third date--and I wasn’t going to waste it.
There was a knock at the door, and I peered through the peephole. Tori stood on the porch, mindlessly rubbing her tummy. She wore that flirty pink skirt she’d bought at the mall on our shopping excursion a few weeks ago.
We’d hung out since then after work, grabbing a quick bite to eat or strolling the walking trails at Piedmont Park. The woman could wolf down a taco in a way that scared me a little. We’d gone shopping a couple more times, although she’d bought more stuff for pregnant women in need than for herself.
But I was always careful to clarify that it wasn’t the third and final date.
Tori hadn’t argued with me, and we’d spent hours talking on the phone and texting back and forth over the last few weeks. She hadn’t once tried to make the case that all those everyday moments added up to a date.
That had to be a good sign. Or so I kept telling myself to keep myself from going crazy.
She also hadn’t made any mention of our activities that night at her apartment. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to read that one. It had been one of the most erotic experiences of my life. I thought Tori had had a good time. Well, more than a good time.
But what did I know?
I also thought she should have been able to tell I was head-over-ass in love with her ages ago.
As I opened the door, I realized that this was the first time she’d ever been to my house. All one single cramped bedroom of it.
“Hey,” I said.
Her dog traipsed inside and promptly jumped onto the couch after making the sniffing rounds.
“Hey.” She glanced around. Her forehead crinkled up in confusion, just as I had expected.
“Come on in.” I ushered her inside.
“Did I miss a memo?” She pointed at the Christmas tree. “Or maybe a few months?”
Then she noticed the small pile of sand on a tarp in the corner with a shovel and pail.
“Or...should I have brought a swimsuit?” That was when she saw the fondue set and the Scrabble board and the Happy Birthday banner. “I’m so confused.”
“Tori, if I’d had my way, if there hadn’t been any other complications in our situation, I would have asked you out on a real date the moment we met. And then I would have kept dating you and wooing you until you agreed to marry me. And then I would have kept dating you. Because I liked it.
“But things were complicated, and they’ve only gotten more complicated. I can’t help but feel like we were both robbed of three years’ worth of dates. So that’s what this is. Three years’ worth of dates. Every Christmas that I wasn’t able to spend snuggled up next to the fireplace with you. Every birthday I didn’t get to try to figure out what you didn’t already have that you might want and then fail miserably at it. Every beach getaway. Every random Tuesday night playing board games or watching movies or just hanging out. Together. That’s what I want, Tori. What I’ve wanted this whole time. To be together.”
“Jake, I--” She stared down at the floor, avoiding eye contact. Not good.
“Wait.” I placed my hands on her shoulders. “You said I get three dates. Give me that. Give me tonight. Please.”
“Okay. Tonight.” Her eyes danced with mischief. I thought I’d melt into a puddle then and there.
Hers. I was hers. And our baby’s. Whatever role she wanted me in, I’d take it.
Father figure. Babysitter. Manny. Boyfriend. Lover. Fiancé. Husband.
God, let me be whatever she needs. Just don’t take her away from me. It came out a silent prayer--half pleading, half demanding.
“So,” I finally said, “what do you want to do first? Trim the tree or slice the birthday cake?”
“Are either of those sexual euphemisms for throwing me up against the wall and banging me until my knees give out?”
“Just wait until I dip my stick into your fondue.”
She snickered.
“Fondue actually sounds really good. Or cake. Or any food, really. Sushi. Sushi sounds amazing.”
“Sushi isn’t allowed.” It seemed to be the one thing that all the pregnancy books could agree on.
“I know. It sucks. I’ve been craving it so hard, too.”
“We always want what we can’t have.”
“Yeah.” Her hand drifted back to her stomach, but she quickly put it down. “So about that food?”
* * *
After the most random meal ever--fondue, pizza, Thanksgiving turkey, takeout curry, and cupcakes--I beat her ass at Scrabble.
“‘Quickly’ and ‘zenith?’” she yelled. “You cheated.”
“How can someone cheat at Scrabble?”
“I don’t know, but you did.” She sifted through her tiles. “My best word this whole game was, ‘hot.’”
“See. Right there. You could have done, ‘hotly.’” I pointed out the ‘y’ she’d missed.
“‘Hotly’ isn’t a word,” she said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Use it in a sentence.”
“The Scrabble game was hotly contested.”
“That...grrrr.” She picked up her unused tiles and flung them across the coffee table.
“Boy, you don’t like losing, do you?”
“I can get a little competitive, yes.”
“A little?” I plucked one of her tiles out of the couch cushions.
“Okay, a lot.”
I decided to scratch board games from our list of future activities.
“What next?” I said.
“It’s your choice tonight, remember?”
“Lay on the beach?” I pointed to the sand pile.
“You’re going to be cleaning that up for months, you do realize.” She scooted around the coffee table and sat down next to me on the couch.
“Worth it.”
“I didn’t bring my swimsuit,” she said.
“There’s always skinny-dipping.”
“I don’t see any water.”
“Neither do I.” I brushed my hand down her cheek and planted a kiss on her collarbone. It was pure ecstasy to feel her delicate skin shiver under my lips.
“Or we could skip the beach entirely,” said Tori in a breathy voice.
“What did you have in mind?” I let my kisses drift downward to the hollow of her neck.
She raked her nails gently through my hair, and a low rumble of approval came from somewhere deep in my core. I was putty in her able hands.
But then she paused and squirmed away, lifting my head away from her chest.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“I don’t….Look, are you sure you’re okay with this? With us sleeping together again?”
“Tori, I’ve told you how I feel about
you, but maybe I’m not being clear enough. I love you. I want to be with you. And I’m willing for that to take whatever form you need it to. I’ve already let you know that I want it to be more than friends, benefits or not. But if that’s all that you’re comfortable with for now, then so be it.”
Tori closed her eyes and bit down hard on her lips. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I could read her like an open book, but in this moment, when it mattered so much, I couldn’t tell a damn thing she was thinking.
Screw it.
Go big or go home.
I scooted away from her and eased myself down to the floor in front of her. I fished the silver chain that I always wore around my neck from under my shirt. Dangling on the end was the simple solitaire set into a white gold band of inlaid diamonds that I’d been carrying around since the day after I found out she was pregnant.
“Tori, I love you. And I’ve loved you for a long time now. We fit together perfectly in every way that matters. Would you make me the happiest man alive by marrying me?”
“You’re only asking because you accidentally got me pregnant, Jake.” She shook her head, tears gathering on her eyelashes.
“That’s not true. And I can prove it.” I grabbed my wallet and took out a tattered envelope, stuffed in the very back fold, and held it up. The edges were worn, the paper yellowed.
In black Sharpie, scribbled across the front I’d written, T’s Ring.
“Two years, eleven months, and five days,” I said.
She shook her head, not even bothering to try to hold the tears back now.
“That’s how long I saved up for that ring. Long before our quote-unquote accidental pregnancy.” I took her hands in mine and squeezed. “I love you, Tori. I want to marry you.”
“I can’t marry you, Jake.”
“If this is about your brother, he’ll understand. He may be mad at first, but—”
“It’s not about Nate.” She pulled her hands away.
“Then what—?”
“Jake, I can’t marry you because I’m already married.”
Twenty-Four
Tori
There’s quiet, and then there’s quiet.
And then there’s the kind of silence that makes your eardrums ache, searching for any hint of sound.
Jake was one step up from that. He rocked back on his heel, and his lips parted. His face went ashen, paler than the ridiculous sand he’d piled in the corner.
“What are you talking about, Tor?” he finally said.
“I’m married.” I twisted a loose thread from one of his throw pillows around my finger.
“Again...what are you talking about? When? Who? Does Nate know about this?”
“Oh God, no.” I shuddered to think about what Nate would have done if he’d known about that part of my reckless teenage behavior.
“Can you start at the beginning?” said Jake. “Who are you married to?”
“His name was...is Travis. We started dating my junior year of high school. Well, I was in high school. He was older.”
“How much older?” Jake’s eyes narrowed.
“Six years older.” I gulped. Even more than a decade later, I still felt the shame pressing down on me every time I thought about it. Nana had forbidden it, of course. But what could she do to stop me? I’d sneak out at night or lie that I was going to a friend’s house, all the while meeting up with Travis.
He was the quintessential misunderstood bad boy. Or at least that’s what I had told myself at the time.
Now, I could see him for what he was. An emotionally abusive asshole.
“I was seventeen,” I said. “A virgin. I’d made out with a few guys at parties, but that was about all. I’d never had a real boyfriend before Travis. We’d been dating a few months. Then he started pressuring me to have sex. ‘If you loved me, you’d do it.’ All that crap.”
Both of Jake’s hands were curled into fists, his knuckles white with strain.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly.
“No, it’s not okay. You were a kid. He was an adult.”
“I know. And you’re right. It wasn’t okay. But what’s done is done.”
“Did he force himself on you?”
“No. Not physically. I was just starved for affection and intimacy, and he was willing to offer it. For the price of sex. But I was still a small town girl and had this inner voice shouting in my ear, probably a weird combination of Nana’s and Nate’s, that he didn’t really love me….”
“Good.”
“Unless he married me.” I gulped.
“So he married you to get you to have sex with him.” Jake practically spit the words out.
“Yes.” I cradled my bump. This tiny little human being inside me wasn’t even born yet, and I would do anything to protect her. Anything.
It was only now that I could fully grasp the panic and anger that Nana and Nate must have gone through when they found my note that I’d run off with Travis.
“Nate tracked us down three days later, but it was too late.”
“But you said he didn’t know.”
“Not about the marriage. He thought we were shacking up.” I grimaced. “Not that it was much of a wedding. Some guy that Travis found on the internet performed the ceremony in the parking lot of a McDonald’s.”
“Wait.” Jake shook his head. “You didn’t go before a judge? Or a pastor or justice of the peace?”
“No.”
“And you said you were seventeen. Nana would have had to have given her permission for you to get a wedding license.”
“I didn’t sign any kind of license or anything. We lied and told the guy I was eighteen.”
“Tori.” Jake let out the kind of sigh that could take paint off a shed. “You’re not married.”
“Yes, I am. I said, ‘I do,’ and...maybe some other stuff? I can’t really remember. We’d been drinking.”
“Oh, my God, Tori. You are not married. There was nothing legal about any of that. You were a minor. There was no parental permission or license. You were drunk and you lied about your age.”
“Are you mad at me?” The words slipped out. In that moment, I felt like my seventeen year-old self again. My scared and lonely and ashamed seventeen year-old self who so desperately wanted approval from anyone who would give it.
“Am I mad at you? That fucking asshole paid someone fifty bucks to trick you into sleeping with him. I...I want to rip his balls off. But you. You have nothing to apologize for. Certainly not to me. Tori, I would give anything to have a time machine to be able to go back and protect you from him and from that. That shouldn’t have been your first sexual experience.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m over it.”
“Are you?” Jake tenderly cupped my chin in his hand. The question seemed sincere.
I had to stop and really think about it.
“I am. I’m okay.” I nodded. “It wounded me, and it left a scar. But I’ve healed.”
It had been a gradual healing, and looking across from me, I realized that Jake had been a huge part of that healing.
Then I started snickering.
“It was terrible sex anyway. I think that’s the reason that when Nate found me, I left Travis without a fuss. That boy was lousy in bed.”
“Man,” grumbled Jake. “He was a grown man. And he should be in prison.”
“Who knows?” I said. “He might be. The last I heard of him, his new girlfriend was even younger.”
Jake swore and flopped back against the couch next to me. He reached over and drew me into a side hug.
“I’m so sorry you went through that. And, God, Tori, you went through it alone. Have you been keeping it a secret all this time?”
“Yeah. I think that was the hardest part, especially after Nate started Crainfield. I was terrified that Travis might put two-and-two together and come and try to extort money out of Nate or blackmail me. That was why I never told anyone the full truth about Travis.”
“He’d be a complete idiot if he ever tried. He really could get slammed into jail for statutory rape. I’m thankful Nate found you when he did.”
Jake kissed me on the crown of my head. Talking about my past, it was like I could feel the power of it dissipate. My mistakes had no control over me that I didn’t hand to them.
“Me, too.” I shuddered to think at what might have happened if my brother hadn’t intervened when he did. Travis hadn’t been physically abusive...yet. But there was no question in my mind that it could have headed that way.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “At the time, I cussed Nate a blue streak and told him to go to hell. But I get it now. Why he’s always been so protective. He’s a good brother.”
“And he’ll be a great uncle.”
“He’s going to spoil her rotten.”
“Not if her daddy does first.” He rubbed my belly and shook his head. “Oh, God. We’ve got a daughter in there. I’m going to spend the rest of my life worrying about evil dicks, aren’t I?”
“Pretty much.” I laughed, snuggling up to him, tucking my feet under me. “Not all dicks are evil, though.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m rather fond of yours.”
“What a coincidence. My dick is extremely fond of you, too.”
“Is it now?” I let my hand drift down to tease the fly of his cargo shorts open. “Well, let it know that I’ve missed it these last few months.”
“It’s missed you, too.”
“Has it?”
“More than you know,” he said with a growl and lifted me onto his lap. “I thought I’d go crazy when you left. And then you came back looking hotter than ever.”
“Hotter than ever?”
“Hotter.” He nibbled my left earlobe. “Than.” And the other. “Ever.”
A sigh escaped my throat, and he caught my lips into a kiss that was pure, powerful desire.
“I want you, Tori. Will you have me?”
Into Trouble: A Best Friend’s Sister Forbidden Romance Page 8
