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There was nothing left for me back home. My life was here now.
Uhhh wtf
I let out an awkward breath before glancing over to the bleachers where the moms sat. Jax would call them cougars, and Madoc would just call them. Well, before he was married, anyway.
“That’s it?” I asked, not believing her. “If you miss me so much, then get your ass on a plane and come see me,” I teased. “I can’t.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why?” “Because of this.” And she stood up, revealing her very pregnant belly.
“Mom?” I hadn’t blinked. “Is this some kind of joke?” She offered a sympathetic look. “I’m afraid not,” she explained. “Your sister is due to arrive within three weeks . . .” Sister?
Holy shit, she’s fucking pregnant. Sister, she’d said. And all of her brothers. “So it’s a girl,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Yes.”
“Madoc will be the one playing with all of her toys with her. Jax will be climbing mountains with her on his shoulders. But you’re her shield, Jared. The one who will make sure she is never hurt. I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. Quinn Caruthers needs all of her brothers.”
“I couldn’t be there for you and for her, Jared,” Madoc explained. “I don’t want to go into it. It’s Tate’s business, but I had to choose, and I’m not going to apologize for that. She needed me more.”
“Jared.” Madoc cleared his throat. “We just told you that your girl tried to cut down your tree. The one you tattooed on your back.” His hard voice got louder. “That the house she’s lived in ever since you’ve known her is up for sale.” “She’s not my girl,” I barked. “She’s not anyone else’s, either!” Madoc shot back. “Tatum Brandt loves one person. You. She will always love you.” His threatening growl was almost a whisper. “She breathes for you, no matter how much she denies it or tries to hide it.”
“You should’ve come back for her a long time ago,” Madoc scolded. “I did,” I growled, lashing out at Madoc. “Six months after I left I came back, and she was with somebody else!”
“If she wants him,” I told Madoc and Jax in a calm tone, “then let her be with him.” Madoc let out a bitter laugh. “Take off your pants.” I popped my head up. “Why?” “Because I want to see what a man with a pussy looks like.”
I learned back in high school that I was who I was, and I slept a lot better at night when I didn’t make apologies for that.
At ten years old, Jared was my friend. At fourteen, my enemy; at eighteen, my lover; and at twenty, my heartbreak.
No matter how much I liked to think that I had grown up, being around Tate brought out the bully all over again.
Hes a bitch
“She’s changed,” I commented to him, slipping on my black helmet. He nodded, keeping his eyes focused on his task. “She’s definitely harder to impress now, so step up your game.”
But my mom said that everything is hard the first time. The more you embrace change, though, the easier it gets.
I’m a better man, but there’s never been a better woman for me. There’s never been anyone like you, he texted.
He didn’t break eye contact as he tipped up the bottle and took a drink. I knew that look. The one that said he was two seconds from hitting Ben or kissing me. And both would cause a fight.
“Everywhere you kiss her,” Jared belted out to us from behind—and I noticed bystanders turning to look—“just remember that my tongue was there first.”
Okmg
“Challenge accepted, Tatum. This time I don’t want you hurt,” he continued, his breath falling over me as he got in my face, “and I don’t want you small. I just want you. Do you hear me?” He jerked me into his body. “It will be my ring on your finger and my kids in your belly someday.”
“You’ve always bullied her.” She sighed and took a seat. “Always. You might’ve been nicer about it when you were little, but all you had to do, even when you were eleven”—she smiled—“was hook an arm around her neck and lead her where you wanted her to go. And she always followed.”
“A man who stands in front of a woman does nothing more than block her view. She needs a man standing next to her, so grow up.”
“I’m never letting you go again, Tate,” I whispered, almost desperate. “I’m your friend forever, and if that’s all I get, then that’s what I’m taking, because only when you’re here”—I took her hand and placed it on my heart—“do I feel like my life is worth a damn.”
I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “I never wanted other women.” His thick voice was practically a whisper. “I left so I could be a man for you. So I could come back to you.”
You tell the guy you’re dating that your boyfriend’s back.
“He kind of has me send flowers to her grave every year on April fourteenth,” she admitted, wincing.
“Please don’t tell him I told you,” Pasha grumbled. “He’ll bitch, and then I’ll have to listen to it.” Flowers. He sent my mother flowers.
Jax smirked at me as he spoke to Madoc. “Well, he could just get over it and ask her to marry him already.”
Jax’s eyes dropped to his lap, and I’d never seen him so vulnerable. “I can’t sleep without her next to me,” he almost whispered about Juliet. “I love coming home and smelling her cooking. Seeing how warm she makes the house.” He still wasn’t looking at either of us, and my chest felt tight. “She gives me everything,” he continued, looking up at both of us. “I want to give her my name. I’m going to ask her.”
Jax was going to ask Juliet to marry him.
“Piss off,” I barked and then looked ahead at her significant gain. “God, she’s good.” I heard Jax swallow. “Yeah, she’s got great reflexes. Better than you, apparently.”
“Yeah, well,” he said warily, “your dick is hard, dude, and it’s kind of freaking me out. We’ll talk later.”
I looked down to see, indeed, I was still completely jacked up from the episode outside. My chest shook with laughter. “You don’t like it?” I called after him. “Freud said everyone was bisexual, right?” “Yeah, fuck you,” he shot back.
“At home.” I leaned up and kissed her cheek and then her forehead. “I want a bed.” “Whose home?” I kissed her nose. “Ours.”
Jared took my keys, unlocking the front door of my house—or his house, now that I knew he had put in an offer—and
“That’s Jared’s,” he told me. “He left it here when he came home a year and a half ago.” Jared’s . . . ? What? “He left it here when he came home to propose to you,” he finished, the solemn look on his face clearly waiting for my reaction.
Wtf
“You are the love of his life,” Jax continued, “and there was never any question that he was going to make his way back to you and fight for you sooner or later. What’s important is that you both move on. You’ve got a life to live, memories to make with each other, and babies to have.” He shook my face with his last words, bringing me back. “Don’t waste another minute.”
didn’t knock. Barging into the room, though, I slowed, seeing Madoc standing by my mom’s bed with the baby already in his arms. “I got her first,” he teased. “Sorry.” He wasn’t at all sorry, judging by the shitty-ass grin on his face, but it was okay.
“We’re your brothers, little girl,” Jax cooed. “Yeah.” Madoc laughed. “You’re so screwed.”
“She’s so small,” I said more to myself than to the others. “She’ll grow,” Jax commented, peering over my shoulder. I shook my head, not believing that I was once that little. “So helpless . . .” Tate finally appeared at my side and kissed her forehead. “A girl with you three as her brothers will be anything but helpless.” She laughed.
I laughed so I wouldn’t cry. “I feel like my heart is breaking, and I don’t know why. What the hell?” “It’s love,” I heard my mother say. “Your heart isn’t breaking. It’s growing.”
“Oh, God!” We all turned, stunned out of our baby trance as Juliet dove for the wastebasket and vomited, turning away from us to hide her display.
Shes pregnant
“Well, is something wrong? She’s my girlfriend.” Jax’s worried eyes were trying to connect the dots just like the rest of us. But with no luck. “Not at all.” Her voice sounded light. “It’s very common to have a hard time holding anything down in the first trimester. She’ll be fine. Just make sure she drinks as much water as possible.”
“Twelve years,” I continued, “and I have never stopped wanting you, Tate. Not for a single day have I been free of you.” I put us forehead to forehead, nose to nose. “I want everything. I want you to finish school. I want the wedding with our friends and family. I want the house, and I want our kids, Tate.”
“And if you don’t want some of that or any of that,” I pointed out, “then I’ll bend, because above anything else”—I looked her in the eye—“I want you.”
“Because it’s also a bet,” I retorted, the mischief thick in my voice. “If I win, I get to propose to you in front of all of these people.” He rolled his eyes, walking away from me. “And it’ll make you feel really feminine in front of the huge crowd and their phone cameras,” I went on, talking to his back. “And it’ll be a superinteresting story—if not a little unmanly—to tell our children someday. And my father will probably lose all respect for you, but when I get down on one knee, baby,” I teased, “you’re just going to melt and swoon.”
“How did he take the news?” I asked, looking over at him and seeing Madoc giving him shit. “A lot better than me.” She sighed. “He has a case of water in the trunk and actually put a blanket on me, as if it’s not summertime,” she complained, sounding cute. “He already YouTubed how to deliver a baby in an emergency, so I think he warmed up to the idea pretty fast,” she joked, laughing.
“We were never careless, even after two years of being together. I definitely wasn’t prepared for this.” She stared off, and I followed her gaze to see her watching her boyfriend. A slight smile graced her face. “But he keeps touching my stomach, like he’ll be able to feel it move already.” She laughed. “I would never have tried to have a baby right now, but I just look at him, and all of a sudden I can’t wait. We’re actually having a baby together.”
“Tate!” Jared shouted, his voice being drowned out in the crowd. “I’m not doing this!” “If you don’t,” I called over my shoulder, “someone else will, and I won’t be as safe with them as I will be with you, right?”
Shaking my head, horrified and relieved at the same time, I realized the irony. He’d put me first. Just like he’d promised.
“You’re absolutely crazy!” I heard him yell as he made his way through the crowd. “Does Stanford know how reckless you are?” he attacked.
