by Grace James
108
That Christmas was better than I even dared to hope it would be. My sister and her husband were there, too, which meant that my parents’ attention had to be divided between all of us – and therefore they couldn’t spend the whole time scrutinizing my and Blake’s relationship.
Even better, after several bourbons Blake and my dad started debating who the best guitarist of all time was. That went on loooong into the night, at which point the rest of us went to bed and left them to it. Blake told me the next day that they didn’t let up until 4AM, when they were both so drunk they’d forgotten what they’d been trying to decide in the first place.
From then on, my dad’s animosity towards Blake grew less and less as time went by.
But by far the best thing about those two days happened on our final morning there.
We were packing our things back into our duffel bags when Blake suddenly said, “Hey, remember that Christmas when you were dating Con and I snuck those gifts in with the ones he bought you?”
I stopped what I was doing and looked at him in surprise.
Although the therapy was helping – Blake had transferred from Liam, who he was seeing in LA, to a local therapist who he saw once a week – at that point, the topic of Connor was still one we tended to avoid most of the time.
“Um, yeah,” I said slowly. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. You bought me fishnet stockings and handcuffs that I ended up opening in front of my parents.”
He chuckled. “That was so fucking funny.”
“Only you thought that!”
“Nah, you thought it was funny, too.”
“Not at the time!”
“True. At the time you were all like, You’re such an asshole! I hate you!”
I laughed at his impersonation of me. If I remembered right, I had called him that.
“But Con was still way more pissed than you,” he continued. “We got into a fight outside a bar. He almost got the jump on me that time out of pure fucking rage.”
“Yeah, I saw the black eye you had when I got back to town,” I said wryly.
“Yeah…” Blake’s grin turned wistful. “He could throw a helluva punch.”
After that, it was like something shifted. Blake got to a place where remembering Connor wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and the floodgates opened. It all started to come out.
He talked about the funny – and usually morally questionable – things that they’d gotten up to when they were younger. I could tell with a lot of those stories that Blake skimmed over the parts that involved girls. I usually busted him on it, just for fun.
With the good came the bad, though. Blake told me about all the times he’d tried to get Connor clean, how he would go along with it for a little while but would always start using again…and about how, in Blake’s opinion, Connor was the ‘cleanest’ he had ever been while he was dating me…
That was a source of a lot of guilt for both of us.
But – finally – we talked about it.
And Blake was able to put it into perspective for the first time.
No, Connor’s life wasn’t easy, but no-one ever forced him to deal with things the way he did. He had Blake and good friends who all loved him and wanted to help him. But, ultimately, Connor was in charge of Connor. His decisions were his own.
When Blake accepted that, I could almost see the weight rising up off of his shoulders.
As moments went, I guess that was kind of a big one.
And through all of those ups and downs, Blake kept his promise…
…until one day, around six months after he first proposed to me in my parents’ front yard, he didn’t ask me to marry him.
109
I woke up alone in our bed – which by that point wasn’t hugely unusual. Sons of Sinners had finished their album a couple of months before and had been doing a lot of promotion since then, which meant Blake had been travelling more. But that morning I was surprised that he wasn’t still asleep next to me because we’d been out for the traditional Sons of Sinners Pre-Tour Meal the night before and we’d both gotten pretty toasted.
I sat up in bed and stretched, casting my eyes over our suitcases which were lying open on the floor near to our closet, where Blake had put them the day before. We’d meant to start packing right away, but then we’d gotten distracted…and then it had somehow been time to get ready to go out.
We’d definitely have to pack that night though, because we were leaving the next morning for approximately seven months. Yep, I was going, too. For the whole tour.
Being a worrier by nature, I’d gone back and forth on the whole quitting my job and leeching off my boyfriend thing – until Harvey sat me down and told me to get a clue. He’d basically said I could still do the admin stuff for The Academy while I was away and threw in how I would essentially be ‘networking’ for the venue, too. That last one was a stretch, but I went with it, especially when he promised that my job would still be waiting for me when I got back.
Honestly, though, I would’ve gone even if I’d had to forfeit my job. There was no way I could be apart from Blake for that long.
Unable to keep the excited smile from my face, I got out of bed and started downstairs to find the delicious guy that I got to call mine – but when my bare toes touched the hardwood floor at the bottom of the stairs, and I caught sight of Blake sitting at the kitchen table with his back partially to me, my smile evaporated.
He was holding the blue velvet ring box in his hand. It was open and he was staring down at the ring with an expression on his face that made my heart seize up in my chest.
Sadness.
As I stood there, silently watching him, he snapped the box shut and then tossed it into the fruit bowl in the center of the table – where he kept it, saying it was so he had it handy each morning when he proposed – before he took a drink of his coffee and scrubbed his hand through his hair, letting out a deep sigh.
My insides were twisting up.
I knew that if I walked over there now he’d pick up that box, get down on one knee, and say, “Marry me, Princess?” fully expecting me to say “No.” And when I did say no, he’d be sweet like he always was.
But I was hurting him with every refusal.
That realization hit me with full force right then.
And, maybe, if I really didn’t want to marry him, I would’ve been able to brush it off. But I did want to marry him; I’d just been holding out on him.
I’d told myself it was so that we could do things ‘properly’, and so that we could build up our trust in each other again – and that was true. But it was more than that.
I’d liked having him propose to me every day because I needed the reassurance.
That was the first time that I thought that maybe he needed some reassurance, too.
I padded towards him, my heart thumping hard in my chest at what I was about to do.
He looked up when I was a few feet away and smiled.
“Hey, you,” I said as he turned in his chair as if to get up – but I stopped him when I got between his legs and sank to my knees.
His smile turned into a smirk and I knew just what he was thinking as he settled back on the chair and opened his legs wider: Good morning, blowjob.
I bit my lip to stop myself from giggling when I said, “Down boy.”
His brow furrowed but his smirk remained when he said, “You can’t get on your knees like that and not blow me, Princess.”
“I can’t?” I teased, putting my hands on his sweat pant clad thighs and running them upwards to his bare hips where they came to a stop.
“Nope, too mean.”
“Oh…” I nodded, pretending to think seriously about that. “Okay, but I’m on my knees for another reason.”
He still looked amused, if a little puzzled. “Which is…?”
I bit my lip again nervously. “Blake, you got under my skin from the second I met you. You’ve challenged me in ways no one else eve
r has. You’ve shown me what it feels like to be truly loved, and I hope you know how much I love you. You got deep inside my heart years ago and nothing will ever get you out. I respect you, and I admire you, and I want more than anything to be your wife –”
He sat up suddenly in his chair, shock rushing across his face as his hands came down on mine. He opened his mouth to say something but I beat him to it.
“Blake, will you marry me?”
For a beat, his mouth worked silently, then he grabbed my upper arms and hauled me up to straddle him. His hands plunged into the back of my hair as he brought my mouth to his. “Fuck yes, I’ll marry you,” he breathed across my lips before his mouth crashed into mine.
110
Blake
I wanted to be a rock star all my life. I wanted to write music and perform most of all, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be rich as a motherfucker too. When you come from nothing, you think money makes a big difference.
It doesn’t, by the way.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to know I can buy whatever I want. It’s a rush. But unfortunately, you’re still stuck with you no matter how many stacks you have sitting in the bank.
You can’t pay off your demons with dollars.
It takes more than a black card and a couple dozen awards to dig yourself out of the pit.
Only one thing can do that.
And only one woman ever made me feel it.
Amy Scott, the Princess in the fucking tower.
And those dreams I mentioned? Making a living from music. Being a rock star. Having more money than any one person should have? That was all I cared about before I met Amy.
After I met her – well, fuck. Shit got complicated.
I never felt that way about anyone before. Every single other woman was just something to do. Literally. A fun little distraction.
But Amy?
She turned me inside out from the moment I met her. From the fucking second I saw her standing there in my back yard, everything changed. I knew what I wanted more than anything – and it was her.
The bitch of it was, back then there was no way I could have her. I’ve never been very good at accepting that I can’t have the shit I want, so maybe that goes some way to explaining why I was a dick to her at the beginning.
Point is, even when I didn’t think I’d ever be able to lay so much as a fucking finger on her, she was still the light at the end of the tunnel.
My saving grace.
The angel on my shoulder.
Can’t tell you how many nights I spent back then, wishing I could be a better person so that she’d look at me with something other than disgust. Wishing I could be someone she’d respect. I stopped short of wishing I could be my fucking cousin, ‘cause I did have a little self-worth, but you get the picture. (I say that with a grin, by the way. The bitterness is in the past.)
The real fucking kicker was when I finally got her – then lost her the very next day. I told the truth when I said that Amy going back to Connor nearly killed me. Aside from his death, nothing ever had me so close to the edge.
And yeah, I know I fucked up when I left her the way I did.
Twice.
But in case you haven’t already figured it out, I’m an arrogant fucker. I don’t like to admit when I need help. After my mom died, I never had much love in my life. I was alone for a long time. And when the really rough times came, the only way I knew how to survive was to cut myself off from everyone and everything.
So, I hurt the woman I love more than anything while I tried to protect myself.
The Asshole of the Year Award goes to me.
But, honestly, I always thought she’d be fine. I know that makes me sound like the dumbest shit on the planet, but she was always so damn perfect – so fucking strong – that I just assumed she’d be better off without me anyway.
It took her busting into my house and calling me out for my cowardice to make me see that it wasn’t just about me anymore. That I wasn’t really alone. That even if I shut myself away and cut myself off from her, she was still right there with me.
All I was doing was condemning us both to the dark.
That’s what got me to wake the fuck up and deal with my bullshit.
Her. It was all for her.
Years ago, Amy managed to find the little spark of light that I still had inside of me – and she never let it go out. She held on to it and kept it burning through everything.
She loved me when I sure as fuck didn’t deserve it.
She understood me when I didn’t even understand myself.
She saved me when anyone else would’ve cut me loose.
I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of that – because, somehow, I achieved every dream I ever had…but none of it meant anything until I had her.
And now I’m the luckiest motherfucker that ever walked this earth, ‘cause I have it all.
The day Amy proposed to me (and, shit, I still can’t believe she did that) we called up our friends and family and got married at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas that night.
I would’ve given her the whole ten-million-dollar-celebrity-circus-wedding if she wanted, but thank fuck she didn’t want to wait that long.
We both just wanted to be married.
We said our vows at midnight, and then jumped in my old Chevy pickup and headed for the hills. We had to be on a tour bus by 10AM the following day, but that night we needed to chase the moonlight.
When we parked up, I laid her out on the hood of my truck. The pale light played over every soft curve, glinting off the wedding band on her left hand and turning to quicksilver in her eyes as I covered her beautiful body with mine…
And I was finally home.
END OF PART TWO.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank YOU! Yes, you. Thank you for coming on the Sons of Sinners journey with me, and thanks for taking a chance on an indie author. It means so much that out of all the books out there you chose to give up a few hours of your life to read mine. I hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know these characters as much as I’ve enjoyed writing about them.
I love to hear from my readers, so if you would like to get in touch, or if you would like to be added to my mailing list (I NEVER spam!), you can email me at [email protected].
Now to the Betas/Proofies/Amazing Women I Get to Call my Friends: Emma, who’s support, insight and willingness to psychoanalyze fictional people with me will always hold a special place in my heart! Also, Serena, the wild card horror girl who joined the romance junkies – the amount of time we spent discussing “rimming with love” while chowing down on pepperoni pizza still makes me chuckle. And Anna, who’s ability to sniff out a stray apostrophe is second to none. Thank you all for helping me with this book! I hope you know how much I appreciate it!
Finally, my family: Thank you for putting up with a wife and mother who spends half her life lost in a daydream. Just know that I daydream about you, too.
