"I can just see it now. Us on the bestseller list. Auddie Cranston. And Sloane Livingston."
"Oh," I said, heart thudding hard suddenly. "About that..."
Gunner - 9 months
"This is so sad," Sloane said, leaning into me slightly.
"It's supposed to be a happy occasion," I reminded her as we watched Jules talking animatedly to Aven and Miller.
"I don't mean for Jules," she said, taking a deep breath. "I mean for Kai." Her voice sounded a little thick, drawing my attention down to actually find her eyes somewhat glassy as she stared at Kai across the room. As he watched Jules flash around a ring. A diamond. On the fourth finger of her left hand.
The poor fuck.
She was right.
I might never have gotten his thing for Jules. And most especially his steadfast determination not to act on his feelings. But there was no denying the man had been fucking head-over since the first week he started at the office. It had only grown since then. It had become something almost painful to watch - his unwavering dedication, and her complete ignorance of it.
We'd all known this moment was coming.
In fact, we were all a bit surprised it had taken this long.
She'd been dating a guy for about a year. They had moved in together after three months. The shit was serious. We'd been expecting this to happen for almost five months now.
We'd even said that we thought it would be good. For Kai. So he could finally move on, find a girl who understood how into her he was.
But seeing him now, fuck.
I felt bad for even thinking that shit.
I don't know if I had ever seen a man look so devastated.
And then Jules's head turned toward him, bright, excited, eyes and smile just beaming. "Did you see, Kai?" she asked, thrusting her hand out at him.
I knew that must have been a punch to the gut. Fucking knocking out all his air.
But this guy, this guy who - as far as I was convinced as I watched this - no woman would ever deserve, he swallowed back his pain, grabbed her hand, and gave her a smile that would be convincing to anyone. Especially Jules who was always so clueless about him.
"I'm so happy for you, Jules," he told her, giving her hand a squeeze.
"Okay. Fuck. You're right. This is sad," I agreed.
Sloane - 2 years
I never gave much thought to this before.
To settling down.
To building a life that was more than just my own.
It had just never seemed like something I could have, so it was pointless to wish for it, to look for it, to dream about it.
It was possible now, though.
Mateo was all but running every aspect of my company. I really didn't even need to go into the office all that much. So, well, I didn't. Just here and there, to consult on big projects, for staff meetings, to approve new hires.
I had ample 'free time,' something I barely knew even existed before. I spent a lot of it with Gunner. The rest, on art. Sometimes for the books with Auddie, sometimes just for fun, for myself, for the walls in our homes, for our friends.
So things had always been changing, shifting, going in a direction that was new to me.
But this, this was the newest of it all.
My hand felt heavier.
That was silly, of course. I had worn rings all my adult life. Many with stones just as big as this diamond.
It wasn't a physical thing.
It was deeper than that.
Because it wasn't just a ring.
It was a ring that stood for something.
That promised things.
Things I hadn't given much thought to in the past.
Not even after Gunner and I started genuinely living together, after he had caught me looking at apartments in Navesink Bank, slammed my laptop shut, and informed me that I would be living with him. Since I had been the one to decorate his place - from paint colors to art to new tile and countertops and curtains - it did seem fitting.
That had just felt like a rational thing to do, to live together. Since we spent most nights together. It was impractical to pay another rent, another round of utilities.
This was different.
"Duchess," Gunner's voice called, making my head snap up as I realized I had been staring at my own hand for what had to have been a long few minutes. "You alright?" he asked, smirking a little at my obvious discomfort.
"Yeah. This is just... I don't know. It's big."
"Yeah," he agreed, nodding.
"I never gave much thought to settling down."
"I figured. Me either. Before you, anyway. It didn't sound like my kind of thing."
"But?"
"But, as it turns out, you are my kind of thing. And the things I like, I lock down."
"That is very romantic," I told him, words dripping with sarcasm.
"It is though, if you think about it."
"I mean, if you think about it, it is kind of archaic," I countered, smiling. "You want to make someone be with you, so you get the government involved to make it harder for them to leave."
"Cynic," he shot back, but he was smiling. "You want to give it some thought?" he asked, the slightest bit of a guard back in his voice.
Did I?
I mean, shock aside, did I actually need to think about this?
About marrying this man who had started to mean so much to me.
About continuing to build a life with him.
Maybe a family with him.
Did that actually require more than a second's thought?
The answer to that was simple.
"No. I don't need to give it any thought. Of course I want to marry you," I told him, lacing my arms around his neck, pulling his body flush to mine, crashing my lips to his, trying to make him see how I was feeling since I didn't quite know the words to describe it.
"Love you, duchess," he said as his forehead pressed to mine.
"I love you too," I told him, from a deep place I never knew existed until he had unearthed it for me.
Sloane - 4 years
"Stop staring at me like I am about to explode," I demanded, knowing my tone was surly, and just this once, not particularly caring.
I was fat.
I was swollen.
I had a nose that didn't look like my nose.
I had skin that decided to start getting all splotchy.
And I had something pressing on my bladder twenty-four-freaking-seven.
He could take a little snippy.
"You're working too hard," he objected, watching as I walked across our New York apartment. In my heels. No matter how many times he told me to take them off.
Gunner, usually the most laid-back, easy-going, mind-his-own-business man had become a freaking helicopter, hovering around me every moment of every day since the stick turned blue.
It should have been sweet.
And, really, at the beginning, it was.
He refused to even let me bring my own clothes to the dry-cleaner, insisting that was too much for me to carry.
While the doctor said I was perfectly healthy, he had me on practical bed rest right from the first trimester. And, well, I didn't mind it then. Since I was sick all day and night those first three months or so.
But now, now that all that had passed, I was sick of bed. I was sick of him lecturing me about not eating enough - even though I was clearly putting on plenty of weight if the basketball under my shirt was anything to go by. I was sick of him jumping if I so much as slid a little in my sock-clad feet like I was going to fall, whack my head against the counter, and also spontaneously go into labor.
It was too much.
He was being too much.
It might have come from a place of love, but he was going to love me right into the nuthouse at this rate.
"Gunner, I have to get this line of diaper bags out," I objected, waving a hand at the sketchpad I had set up on an easel because sitting down was giving me a stabbing in my back lately.
"We promised them by fall. I have about half a day left to get this design to Mateo before he has a stroke."
"Let him have a stroke. You need to rest."
I needed a martini, that was what I needed.
Just another four weeks, I reminded myself.
"Sloane, you have been..."
"Oh thank god," I said when my cell started ringing. I practically dove for it. And, as expected, he did his jumping thing like he was ready to catch me if I fell. I took it with me toward the bedroom, needing some space. "I'm gonna kill him," I informed Auddie as a greeting.
"Uh-oh. What now?" my best friend - and business partner - said.
"Apparently, sketching is too strenuous an activity for me," I told her, rolling my eyes.
"It's funny."
"What is?"
"How these big, tough guys turn into these anxious messes when they become dads."
"I'm not delicate," I objected.
"But to him, you are," she reasoned.
"I need to work."
"You want to work," she corrected.
"Hey, whose side are you on?" I shot back, smiling because she just was able to calm me down like that.
"Give him a little slack, Sloane," she said, sighing out a bit wistfully. "He's out of his depths here. His life has been all hard. He never had much exposure to softness. And there's nothing softer than a baby."
"The baby isn't here yet!"
"Right, but you are. And you are y'know... growing it inside you. He is worried something could happen to the two of you. He wants to make sure you are taking care of yourself and the little one."
She wasn't wrong.
"So, I can just hope that when I push the baby out, that he transfers all this overprotective, overbearing part of himself onto him or her, right? And I can go back to wearing heels without getting side-eye from him?"
"Ah, well, we can hope," she said, not helping at all. "If it is a little girl, he will be all about being her big daddy protector. If it is a little boy, he will be all about playing catch and teaching him to be a little man. I think things will go back to normal between you two," she told me.
"How are the girls settling in?" I asked, knowing they had been having some issues with their new school. In New Jersey. Not Navesink Bank where Gunner and I spent most of our time, but close enough that I could see them much more often. She claimed she moved here because the publisher was in New York, and it was smart business sense to be nearby. But we both knew it was because she wanted to be closer to me, to us.
"They're doing better. I found them a friend group, so they've been happier about that. They can't wait to meet their little cousin. Margo said to tell you to tell him or her to come out already."
"Duchess, maybe pacing in heels isn't the smartest thing to do when you're pregnant," Gunner said from the doorway, making me have to take a slow, deep breath before speaking again.
"Yeah, tell Margo I am thinking the same thing."
Sloane - 10 years
"He'll be fine," Ranger assured me as we both leaned on the railing of the pen, watching as Gunner hefted our son onto the back of a donkey. With no saddle, I might add.
You'd think I would be used to this by now.
That punch to the gut that was fear anytime Gunner did something with Nico that was somewhat dangerous. Which was almost all the time.
Nico.
That was what Gunner wanted to name him.
He was technically Nicholas because I had insisted. Because maybe he would want to grow up and be a businessman someday. To do that, Nicholas would work a lot better than Nico.
Though, I think it was clear from the moment that kid could use his own legs to get into trouble that he wasn't going to be a businessman. He was too active, too curious, too drawn to things that would leave him with scars and stories someday.
He would be like his daddy. And all his uncles - and some of his aunts.
And that was fine by me.
I was all for whatever made him happy, a lesson I learned much later in my life that I wanted to make sure he learned as early as possible.
But in having a more hands-off approach to whatever brought his little self joy, it meant that I had to have an almost constant knot in my stomach, worried about another cut, another fall, another trip to the hospital for an X-ray.
We'd lucked out so far.
No broken bones.
But I knew that was coming.
Possibly today.
"There's not even a saddle," I objected.
"Donkeys are pretty calm. If it were a horse, I'd make them saddle him."
"You're no help," I told him, giving him small eyes that he just smiled at.
Smiled.
Ranger.
A lot had changed for him too.
Which had everything to do with the woman inside the cabin that she had made him expand slightly who was making us coffee that wasn't the consistency of sludge.
"He's a kid. He's gonna get bumped around a lot. If you make yourself sick every time, it is gonna be a long ass decade or so ahead of you."
He wasn't wrong.
Even Auddie told me to calm down.
The girls were always crying at his age. Something was always bruised or bleeding. You learn to get used to it.
There was some truth in that too. I didn't almost black out whenever I saw blood now, though I did make Gunner deal with the cuts if they were really nasty.
"You don't know what the hell you're doing," Ranger declared to Gunner who was trying to give Nico what were, apparently, the wrong directions on how to correctly ride a donkey without a saddle.
With that, he hurdled over the fence, none-too-gently pushing Gunner out of the way, and taking over himself.
Gunner came back to me, shaking his head.
"He's crazy about our kid," I declared, watching the two of them.
"He needs to make one of his own, so I can teach mine this kinda shit."
"You've never ridden a donkey," I countered as he moved in behind me, pressing his front into my back, putting his hands wide on either side of mine on the rail.
"Ridden a horse and a camel. Can't figure it would be too much more difficult than that."
"Ten years," I said, shaking my head.
"Hm?" he asked, nuzzling into my neck in a way that was creating very inappropriate feelings in my body.
"Ten years, and I still learn things about you that I never knew before," I clarified.
"I'm interesting as fuck. That's why you married me."
"Really? I thought I married you for your body," I said, smiling a little when he chuckled into my ear.
"Keep it in your pants, would you? We're leaving in an hour. Then you can get as much of this body as you want," he declared, and he was close enough that I could feel it when he flexed his chest muscles behind me.
"I'm worried about him," I admitted, meaning Nico.
"It's a long weekend," he reminded me. "We've left him before," he added.
"Yeah, with Quin or Smith or Kai or Lincoln or Miller or even Finn. In Navesink Bank. All of an hour away if he needed us. Not out here in the woods with the bears and the half-feral dogs."
"And the snakes," Gunner added.
"Not helping!" I said, slapping the top of his hand.
"Come on, if there is anyone he is safe with, it's Ranger. For a multitude of reasons. And then we can go up to the city and have a fuckfest without worrying about someone happening in."
"Well, when you put it that way..." I said, smiling.
We didn't do it often, weekends away. Maybe once every six months or so. We had worked out a system with the rest of his coworkers - who were really like family - as well as Auddie. Someone would always be happy to take the others' kids with the agreement that when they wanted to go away, you would take theirs. It gave us all the chance to not just be parents, but to be human beings, and husbands and wives again. It was a nice break. And when you got back, you were refreshed, excited to slip back into mom or da
d-mode.
"Ten years," he said, something like wonder in his tone.
I thought that too every once and a while.
Ten years.
You could explain it so many different ways.
Ten Christmases.
Ten anniversaries.
Ten books, in my case.
Ten different lines of handbags and diaper bags.
But ten years.
With this man.
This man who, had life not tossed him in my path, I never would have given a second thought to, I never would have gotten to know, fallen in love with, made a life with, raised a child with.
It was amazing how much could change, how much impact a person could have in your life. Sometimes in big ways, but also sometimes in a million small ways.
With Gunner, I had both.
He came in like a battering ram, knocking me off my usually very firm footing.
And then every single day, he changed something. He helped me see something in a new light. He taught me things. He shared things with me. He pushed me out of my comfort zone, so I could experience something new.
It was a strange thing to think of my life before.
How empty it had been.
Full of pride, sure, but that was it.
No joy.
Not like now.
I found a reason to smile every single day.
At Nico.
At Gunner.
At the two of them together.
There was so much joy that I felt like I was going to burst at times, sure I wasn't built in a way that could hold it all. But I did. Just when I thought it was full, my heart would simply swell to make room for more of it.
All because of this man.
"And you're still a fucking freak about the dining table," he finished.
And there it was.
A little more joy.
A little more swelling to accommodate it.
Ten years.
And a lifetime still to go.
XX
The Ghost Page 22
