Brawler (26 page)

Day 4: My nerves are killing me. Looking at the clock, I notice it’s almost time for Macy to go to her banquet. My stomach starts hurting, my head starts pounding, and my willpower is shot. I could just show up, pretend I was in the neighborhood. Walk in, make a grand gesture, sweep her off her feet and bring her home. Or, as Rogan’s text just said, I could sit here, shut the hell up, and wait.

At seven p.m. Rogan and Venessa will be here, and I’m pretty sure he’s on board, but it’s her I have to convince. The only way I’ll get them to bring her here after her banquet is if they trust me not to hurt her again. It’s only five p.m. now and I’m pacing. Instead of wearing holes in the carpet, I make a sandwich, turn on a cartoon, and give everything a once-over.

Now, I wait. I’m not good at waiting.

When I hear his truck I run to the door, flinging it open. They don’t greet me with smiles, but they do come in. Not saying a word, Venessa starts looking around. She’s never been inside my house, so she wouldn’t notice anything. Rogan however, has. He too looks around and then raises an eyebrow at me.

Looking at Venessa, he whispers to her. She nods and then he speaks. “You got us here,” he says. “Convince her.”

“Uh,” I stutter. “I don’t know what to say to convince you, well either of you, but how about instead you just have a look around?” Stepping back, I sit on a stool in the kitchen but notice Rogan takes her hand and proceeds to give her a tour.

Wringing my hands with fucking worry I just sit there. I hate just sitting here, but I have to let them do what they gotta do. The nerves are so high I stand up and pace again. I may even be getting lightheaded, shit. But it’s when I hear “Holy fucking shit!” that I realized I’d been holding my breath.

Walking back out to the living room Venessa isn’t glaring at me anymore; Rogan isn’t, either. They both take a side, Venessa on the left, Rogan on the right, and with three words they give me hope.

“We’ll bring her.”

With that they walk out the door, but just before they get to his truck, Venessa turns back to me and smiles. I’ll be fucking damned if she wasn’t a crying a little bit, too.

S
tanding there holding onto Rogan my heart is stuttering, my mouth is dry, and knees are knocking together. Why am I here? What does he want to say? It’s too early to work out custody; it’s also too early to know the sex, and if it’s to yell at me again, I’ll probably go cry in a corner. Rogan must be sensing my thoughts, so he’s pulls me closer to his side. I glance back at Venessa in the truck and she does the weirdest shit I have
ever
seen. She gives me a thumbs up.

I bust out laughing.

It’s all I can do. Venessa has never given a thumbs up in her life, ever. Fist bumps, chest slaps, or an ass pinch, sure. Thumbs up? Nope.

Unfortunately, when you’re pregnant, laughter can quickly turn to tears, and I proved that when Jonas opened the door looking gorgeous and sad. My laughter went to sobs just like that. Every ounce of numb I’d had fled, and I couldn’t fight it back anymore. Rogan didn’t know what to do, I sure as shit didn’t know what to do, but Jonas did.

When his arms open, I take two steps forward and bury my face in his chest while he holds me tight. I hear him tell Rogan he’s got it, and next thing I know, I’m lifted off my feet and carried into the house. He stands in the foyer letting me cry, making no move to set me down. I wrap my arms around his neck, take in his perfect smell, and I force myself to calm the fuck down. Hoping the worst is over, he takes me to the couch and sits down with me in his lap. He takes his hand and lifts my chin, and I do one better by sniffing back the tears that want to fall, but I won’t let them.

“Princess,” he chokes, and all I can do is sniff and hiccup.

He buries his face in my neck, so I give those last few tears their freedom and let them fall. One way or the other, tonight I decide I have to stop crying. As I calm down, I hear singing. It’s familiar, too. Although he isn’t letting me move much, I am able to look over my shoulder and see that
Sleeping Beauty
is playing, and the song I recognize is “Once Upon a Dream.” Fuck me! Here come the tears again!

“Tha — that’s —” I try, but I can’t stop hiccupping to tell him.

“You’re my Princess,” is all he says, but the look on his face says so much more.

“Am I still your Princess?”

“You’ll always be my Princess,” he whispers.

“Why am I here, Jonas?”

“Because this is your palace,” he says, standing us up. Taking my hand he walks me down the hall to the bedroom. Opening up the door I see it’s everything from the bedroom at my house now combined with his. “This is our chamber,” he says, pulling me into the room. His things, my things, all combined to make it “our” room. Somehow he managed to get my things from my house, bring them here, and blend our things together.

Walking me to the spare room he opens the door, then says “This is your laboratory,” showing me a setup that looks a lot like the lab I work in, metal stool included. Just at a glance I can see it’s all here. As amazing as it is, how did he know how to do this? Before I can ask he is wrapping his arms around me, my back to his front, then he walks us across the hall and opens that door for me, but doesn’t say anything. Because he doesn’t have to.

My breath catches,, my right hand going to my belly, my left grabbing his, bringing it to rest on my belly, too, while I just stand there and stare. The entire room is made up of Disney characters. Bookshelves loaded with the classics, a rocking chair with a yellow chenille throw, a monitor, and toys made up from every character I can think of but most of all… a crib.

 “This is our nursery,” he whispers, placing both hands on my belly and holding me tight.

Turning around slowly in his arms, I just stare at
him
.

“You did this?” I whisper. “For me?”

“No.” he whispers back. “I did this for us.”

“It’s — it’s —” I struggle, sniffling again.

“It’s our fairytale,” he says, pulling me toward the crib. Picking up a small bear he hands it to me. “You’re my Princess,” he tells me. “You make me feel like a fucking king, Macy. Be my queen?”

Taking the bear from my hands he pulls a delicate ring from a pretty yellow bow tied around the neck, takes my left hand, and slides the band gently onto my finger.

 Seconds.

It only takes seconds, and then it happens. My entire focus just… shifts, again. What once held importance no longer did. The unknown is my new reality, one I look forward to. My newest challenge isn't something that can be learned from a book. It is on the job training. The most important job ever has taken root inside of me. Marriage and motherhood are my new roles, yet I've never even held a baby, and that’s okay because he’s with me and we’ll learn this together. The man in front of me is making my fairytale come true by asking me to be his wife.

He’s making us a family.

All of my anger, hurt, and insecurity leave me just like that. My eyes go from my hand to his face, then back. I almost want to laugh again because, dammit, he’s good!

My silence must be freaking him out so he whispers, “Princess?” rubbing the back of his hand up and down my face gently.

“Can you just let me not like you for a while? It's the least you can do, since I’ve always wanted to be royalty.”

He stood there stunned for a second, then blinked three times, followed by sweeping me off my feet again and carrying me straight to our chamber

I
’m dreaming.

I have to be. Ain’t no way the woman in my arms just agreed to marry me before I was able to explain why I acted like such a fucking fool. I figured she’d hit me, or at the very least make me beg for it, and I would have. But when she reaches up to kiss my neck I realize if this was a dream, it is the best goddamn dream I’ve ever had.

“Never wake me up,” I tell her, laying her down gently onto our bed.

She smiles at me, just a small smile, and it unleashes something inside my chest. I want to thump it, I want to shout, I want to lock her in this room and make her dependent on me. I want her to need me as much as I need her.

Crawling in next to her, I move the hair away from her neck, kissing her shoulder. She runs her finger through my hair then pulls hard. Getting my attention, I look up and see she has a very determined expression on her face. Oh shit. What’d I do now?

“We need to talk,” she whispers, and I just nod because she’s right, I have some explaining to do.

“I need to ex —”

She covers my mouth with her hand.

“Let me amend that,” she says. “I’m going to talk, you’re going to listen.” Again I nod but inside I’m freaking the hell out.

She leans to her side, starts running her fingers up and down my chest, and fuck yeah, that feels nice. But it’s when she starts to talk that I forget all about what her hands are doing and focused on what she is saying. The new and improved Jonas is going to be a listener.

“When we met, you were asked to follow me. You said yourself you did it because you wanted to,” she begins. “Then you thought Venessa was a threat, so you protected Rogan from her, which upset me, so I tazed you. For weeks after that, you still looked after me. When you showed up in Gary’s basement I ran to you because not running to you wasn’t an option. I needed to feel safe and you did that for me.”

Then she looks down and continues. “Since then, you’ve been rescuing me left and right, and I never even said thank you. Instead, I insulted you, pushed you away. When I didn’t understand what was happening with us, even when you tried to make me see, I refused, and because of that I pulled a gun on you.” Lowering her voice she whispers, “I ran from you. I shouldn’t have ran. But you came for me because you wanted to, and you had to watch me take someone’s life.” She sniffles, but keeps going. “You stayed by my side in the hospital, you gave me a home.”

She glances up to me and our eyes lock. “You’ve given me so much, and all I’ve given you is drama. I know I have a lot of it; you didn’t deserve any of it. I see how you watch me you know, wondering if I’m going to break apart. But it’s you that keeps me from shattering, Jonas. I understand why you thought the worst of me, it fucking hurts, but I do. I’ve given you no reason to see me any other way. You were angry because I was sneaking out, you were angry because I could have been hurt. That wasn’t right of me, and I know it.” She sits up and straddles me, but I’m speechless, I have not a fucking word to add here.

“When you walked out even as I watched you go and heard the door slam, I knew that even though you thought I had done those things, I’d hoped you could still love me, that it wasn’t just about the team.”

“Princess …”

“I have to finish, Jonas,” she says. “I’ve never met anyone who can surprise me like you can. Yes, you have a temper, but you also have humility, and when they told you the whole story you felt horrible, I saw it. Yes, I wish you would have listened and saved us all this, but it’s a lesson. It was a misunderstanding. You don’t owe me an apology. I don’t want one. What I do want to do is say … thank you.”

She leans down and places one hand on each side of my head and looks me dead in the eyes.

“Thank you for loving me,” she whispers. “Thank you for doing all of this for me.” She kisses my nose “For us.” Sitting up, she takes my hands, placing them on her belly. “For our family.”

“My turn,” I grate out, sitting up. She wraps those long, beautiful legs around me and settles in to listen.

“I’m a fuck-up,” I tell her. “I’ve never taken anything seriously until you. I do owe you an apology, but I won’t say it if you don’t want me to. I’ll show you instead. Been doing a bang-up job of saying shit to you I shouldn’t; I need to learn to listen. I need to control my temper, and listen, I know that. I’ll work on it. I love you so much it fucking hurts, Macy. It hurts. You’re giving me a family; I ain’t never had one of those. But I promise you, I won’t fuck that up, I fucking vow it. I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll grow up, I’ll stop —”

Covering my mouth again, she whispers, “Stop it,” then says, “I love you for you, Jonas. I don’t want you to change anything, not even your temper. But the listening thing is a good idea.”