Chapter 37
chapter thirty-seven
Ryan
Today’s Learning Objective:
Students will revise history.
Emme sat on the four-poster bed in a t-shirt and shorts, her legs folded in front of her and a small pillow clutched to her chest as I paced the room. I hadn’t bothered to put on a clean shirt. I figured it would be easier for her to gut me without clothes getting in the way.
The sound of crickets blew in through the open windows and the floorboards creaked beneath my feet. Neither of us mentioned returning to the party, and I appreciated the hell out of that.
But it meant I had to confess everything else. Even with all this time on my side, I still didn’t know the right way to do it.
“That night when we met up for dinner, back in March,” I started, “I was going to tell you everything about the franchise deals and the Wallaces and how your father was involved. The plan was?—”
“I do enjoy being the subject of everyone’s plans,” she said.
“—to ask you to come to some of my events and make it look like we were together.” I shrugged as I added, “I was going to wait until it was all over to bring up the pact.”
She pushed her fingers through her hair, grumbling, “Why, pray tell, did you not?”
I stopped pacing and shifted to face her. “Because you were breaking, Em, and I had to do something. Everything was going wrong for you and I couldn’t leave you like that. You had this terrible ex—and fuck, I didn’t even know the half of it—and I couldn’t let you go on hurting like that.”
“Then you didn’t plan on proposing?”
I laughed, dipping my hands into my trouser pockets. “No, that was a game-time decision.”
“Why?”
I stared at the quilt for a second before saying, “You were talking about how the only thing you wanted was to be with someone, how you just wanted to be loved and—and I was right there, Em, just fucking waiting to give you that. The words were out before I even thought about them.”
“I don’t recall you trying to take them back.”
“Why would I? You said yes.” I shrugged. “It was all I’d ever wanted.”
She tilted her head to the side, her eyes narrowed. “And my dad? Why did that have to be a secret? I would’ve been okay with it if I’d known. I would’ve been on your side. I would’ve helped. Why couldn’t you clue me in that you were using me for leverage there?”
“Except you weren’t the leverage.” I curled my hands around the footboard. “Charles was never a serious contender for the soccer clubs. He might’ve thought he was, but that’s not how it went down.” When her brows pinched, I continued. “There were a lot of bidders. He was one of them—and I should’ve told you that, but I knew how it was going to shake out for him and I didn’t want to add to your stress. You already had enough with that fucking ex and the headaches with your class, and Ines and then your apartment. I wanted things to be good for you, for once.”
“I can hear his name without freaking out,” she said.
“I know, baby, but I just didn’t want to add to your worries. Especially not with the issues he’s dealing with. It’s a well-known secret in the industry that he’s had problems with alcohol and spent some time in rehab. I hate that you were the last to know.” She turned her attention to the window and kept it there, her jaw clenched. “The Wallaces are high off their own hypocrisy and they didn’t want to be anywhere near those issues. They kept him engaged to jack up the price and I suspect he realized that toward the end, which was why it was so easy for him to bow out.”
“You’ve known this? The whole time?” she asked, the words barely audible.
I nodded. “They strung him along up until the final days, but they never intended to sell to him. They’re dicks so they made a lot of noise about me being a feral bachelor or something?—”
“Like a wildcat?”
There was a laugh in her words, and it took me a minute to realize she was teasing me. A grin lit my face as I said, “Yeah, like a wildcat.” I watched as she absently zipped her pendant along the chain. “When I met you that night, I told you I needed to make it look believable. That you were the only one who could help me clean up my image. I told you I had to get married. It had to be you. None of it was true.”
Her fingers froze on the necklace. “What?”
“I could’ve asked anyone,” I said. “Hired someone, even.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I spread my hands out in front of her. “I waited all these years and—and I didn’t want anyone else. I’ve never wanted anyone else. So, if I had to pretend, I was going to do it with you. And I was going to pray to all the gods I don’t believe in that you liked pretending with me enough to make it real.”
“Why didn’t you just…tell me?” she asked.
I motioned to the championship wins on my torso. “You hate football.”
“You know that’s not the case.” She tossed the pillow aside. “That’s just something I say because I’m disgustingly dramatic and I’m still patching up my childhood traumas.”
“I spent all of high school listening to you tell me you’d never date a player.”
She chucked the pillow at my head. I caught it and threw it back. “You never asked if that included you.”
“Emmeline. Listen to me.” I leveled her with a gaze because we just couldn’t fuck around right now. “I have wanted you for half my life. I don’t remember what it’s like to wake up in the morning without thinking about you. Everything good in my life has your fingerprints on it and you’ve been there for me to lean on through all the bad times.” I grabbed my discarded shirt off the floor and held it out for her. “I buy shirts with little orange blossoms on them because I want all the reminders of you I can get. I don’t know who I am without you, and I don’t want to find out.” I rested my hands on the footboard again and leaned toward her as she swept her thumb over the delicate stitching on my shirt. “But I knew if I dropped all of this on you from the start, it would change things between us. I couldn’t risk scaring you off. I couldn’t risk losing you.”
“Were you ever going to share any of”—she skimmed a hand down my arm and that single gesture stitched my soul back together—“ this with me?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She laughed. “Any time soon?”
Another nod. When she rolled her eyes, clearly not buying it, I added, “I was going to take you to the Seychelles for a honeymoon next week. I figured a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean was the safest place to confess fifteen years of secrets.”
“Because I wouldn’t be able to leave? Or no one would care if I strangled you?”
“Pick whichever answer you like best.”
She laughed then, loud and deep, and it reverberated like a crack cleaving through ice. I rounded the bed and sat in front of her, pushing aside my shirt and taking her hand in mine. “I went about this all wrong.”
“You did,” she agreed.
“I overthought and overcomplicated everything.”
“All of it.”
“I put you in a terrible position with your dad last weekend and I basically assaulted you tonight, and I swear to god, those are the last two things I ever wanted to do to you.”
She gave me an unimpressed glare. “I hope no one caught that tackle on camera because you’ll be laughed out of the League.” She ran a hand over my shirt again. “But it’s nice that I’m not coming down from an epinephrine injection right now.”
“Muggsy, what were you doing at an oyster bar ?”
“I’ll have you know I had the entire situation in hand,” she said. “You were the one who caused a scene. Did you see yourself? You jumped over a table. Have you been working on your vertical conditioning? Because that was impressive. Insane, but impressive.”
We shared a laugh and I brushed my thumb over her rings. Quiet settled between us, and for a moment the only sound was the cry of crickets in the fields outside. “Will you let me have another chance?”
“A chance at what?”
A rush of emotion and exhaustion and blinding need welled up inside me, and instinct ordered me to wrap my arms around my wife and rest my head in her lap. “At being yours.”
An excruciating minute passed and then another before Emme moved so much as an inch. But then she huffed out a breath and her fingers speared through my hair, and it was like my parachute finally popped open. “I was specifically instructed to request a beagle in these negotiations.”
I turned my head to catch her eye. “A…beagle? You want a dog?”
“I was also told to ask for a trip to Paris, but I think the Seychelles checks that box pretty hard,” she went on as she traced the ink on my shoulder. “What’s this?”
Glancing back, I said, “Gemini, for my June baby.”
I watched as her teeth sank into her bottom lip. As she understood it was just another piece of her that I kept with me. Orange blossoms on my heart and stars on my shoulder. “I can’t believe I never noticed.”
“I’ve spent a long time making sure you didn’t.”
She swept her hand down my spine as she asked, “What are you going to do with all that time now that I know your secrets?”
“The beagle will keep me busy.”
She brushed her fingers through my hair again, up the back of my neck. It brought a shiver out of me, a blessed relief to my frayed nerves. I held her tighter as she said, “You’re on the road too much. We’ll get a dog when you retire. I’m not ready to be a single dog mom. Not in a high-rise condo.”
“Does that mean you’re coming home?”
Shrugging, she said, “Someone told me it’s legally mine so…”
I growled against her torso. “Emmeline.”
She stopped stroking to grip my hair. “Don’t put me in the dark ever again. Promise me you’ll tell the truth—even if it’s ugly, even if you think it’s going to hurt.”
“I promise. I’ve loved you for a long, long time and in a lot of different ways. I’m going to love you in new ways tomorrow and ten years from now. The only life I want is one where I get to do that.” I sat up and reached for the bag I’d abandoned on a nearby chair when we came in. “It’s not a beagle,” I said, taking out the heavy box, “but I hope you like it.”
She stared at the box for a second before pressing both hands to her cheeks. Her smile lit the whole room. “You remembered,” she whispered.
“I tried to find the best one,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “I might’ve overcomplicated that too because there’re eight more waffle irons back at home.”
Her eyes went wide with delight. “I guess I’ll have to test them all out.” She ran a hand over the box, smiling. “I can’t believe you brought a waffle iron to Rhode Island.”
“I brought the waffle iron to Vegas,” I said. “It was the last of your birthday surprises.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and pulled in a long breath. Then, “I’ve loved you for a long, long time and in a lot of different ways too. And I think”—she ran her hands up my arms, over my shoulders, and clasped her fingers at the back of my neck as she gave me a small, devious smile—“I think it’s a fantastic thing that I had the foresight to make you promise to marry me.”
I dropped a kiss on her lips. “And I had the foresight to convince you to go through with it.”
Downstairs, a door banged open and raucous laughter and shouts filled the house. There was a stampede to the second floor and then Grace, Shay, Jamie, and Audrey appeared in the open doorway. Their cheeks were rosy and their eyes bright, and Jamie had one hell of a hiccup going.
That party must’ve gotten a lot more interesting after we left.
Grace pointed at me as she ran an assessing glance over Emme. “Do I need to beat him up?” she asked.
With a laugh, my wife said, “No, please don’t. There’s been enough bloodshed for one night.”
“If you say so,” Grace said, a slur loosening her words. “But I am going to make him sleep in the barn.”
“No, you’re not,” Shay said.
“You have a worse place in mind?” Grace asked her. “With the goats? You have chickens. What about the chickens? I enjoy punishment and suffering. There must be both.”
I shared a glance with Emme. She smothered a laugh behind her hand.
“Where are the dudes?” Jamie asked. “Can’t we just send him off with them?”
“They’re at my place and we’re not doing that unless he wants to bunk with Gennie,” Shay said. “That’s as rough a punishment as any.”
“Let him stay here,” Audrey said, the words soft and squished together. “Listening to us cackle for the next few hours will take care of the suffering.”
“And we’ll be stealing his gal away, so that’s plenty of punishment,” Jamie added.
“I could be convinced of this,” Grace said, stroking her chin.
“Here’s a better idea,” Emme said, holding up the box. “Ryan’s going to help me whip up some waffles while you change into comfy clothes and fix your faces.”
“Oh, let me go find some blueberry jam. Must have jam for waffles,” Shay said, already darting down the stairs.
Emme nodded after her. “If that’s what’s important to you, sure.”
“It is a jam farm,” I said.
She smiled at me, wide and soft and wonderful, and it jump-started my heart. “Excellent point.” Swinging her attention back to her friends, she said, “After waffles, everyone’s getting a very big glass of water and some under-eye patches because I’m not letting a single one of you walk down the aisle tomorrow looking like old newspaper. Got it?”
“Yes, Mom,” Audrey said, heading down the hall.
“She’s a tough maid of honor,” Jamie called as she stepped into the room next door.
“The best there is,” Grace said, still watching us from the doorway. She pointed to me and then made a throat-cutting gesture. “I can dig a deep hole and I don’t believe in second chances.”
When we were alone again, I said, “I should file that under Grace being Grace rather than a serious death threat, right?”
“Grace is a serious death threat,” she said. “But tell her you’re thinking about getting me a beagle. That might change things.”
I gathered her in my arms and pulled us down to the mattress. She held on tight and it didn’t matter that we were in an awkward position or that her friends were on the other side of the walls and they would claim most of her attention tonight. I had everything I needed.
Though one thought pushed its way to the front of my mind.
With my lips on her neck, I said, “There’s something else I should tell you.”
“Is it crazier than your postcard stamp tattoos?”
“No,” I said quickly, but then doubted myself. “I was going to buy your building. In the North End.”
She was quiet for a second. “To evict me? And force me to move in with you?”
“No, I wanted to get the fucking roof fixed,” I said.
“Oh, no, that’s fine. That’s entry-level crazy.” She traced the orange blossoms on my chest, her eyes bright. “Wait, were you going to tell me that you bought the building?”
“Probably not.”
“You were just going to buy the building, fix it up, and never mention it to me? And then what? You’re a landlord on the side? How does that make sense?”
“I’d figure it out when the time came,” I said. “Just had to get a read on the situation.”
“Such a quarterback.” Her shoulders shook as she laughed. “My god. I really fucking love you.”
I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love you. Always have. Always will.”
I woke to dappled sun streaming in through the large, old windows and my wife tucked up against me, her backside nestled in my lap. A mild breeze billowed the diaphanous curtains, carrying with it the scents of green and saltwater. I ran a hand over her hip, across the soft of her belly, and then lower, into her sleep shorts.
I just didn’t see how life could get any better for me. There wasn’t a single thing I’d change.
When Emme stirred, she shot a glance at me over her shoulder, eyes bleary. There was a white cast on her face from some kind of skin product and hot pink half-moon stickers under her eyes. The gods must’ve smiled down on us because I didn’t see any bruising from last night’s incident.
“Are you petting me?” she asked, nodding down the length of her body to where I gently stroked between her thighs.
I kissed her shoulder. “Is that a problem?”
She shook her head. “No, but waking me up this way seems like a hobby of yours.”
“And what a fine hobby it is.” I slipped a finger along her seam and back up to circle her clit. “What time did you come to bed?”
“A little after two.” She stretched, the movement pushing her ass right against my shaft and forcing a groan from me. “Shhhh.” She turned her face to moan into the pillow. “The walls are thin.”
I knew all about that. I also knew Audrey talked in her sleep and that Jamie’s phone had three different notification sounds. Didn’t care. “Then be quiet, wife.”
I worked her shorts down to her knees, kicked off my boxers, and pushed into her just like this, with my mouth on her shoulder, her plush, gorgeous ass cradled in my lap, and my rings on her finger.
She reached back, her arm twisted around my waist and her other hand layered over mine as I went on tracing her clit. We moved in slow, lazy thrusts like we had all day, all weekend to get lost in each other.
We didn’t and that became increasingly apparent as doors banged open, showers turned on, vehicles rolled up outside—but we did have the rest of our lives and that was good enough for me.
A string quartet played a song by The Smiths as I took in the lush grounds of Twin Tulip. It wasn’t the dusty, fallow field I’d expected. Quite the opposite. Trees and flowers burst from every corner in a scheme that I could only describe as cultivated chaos. Gentle hills rolled down toward the sparkling blue of Friendship Cove. It was like a secret garden with a wickedly wild side.
I understood now—and I kinda loved it.
I followed a rough-hewn stone path to the outdoor ceremony site. More than two hundred white chairs sat in a semicircle before a vine-draped arch. I spotted Shay’s husband off to the side and headed in that direction.
“This is your place, right?” I asked him, motioning to the grounds. “It’s incredible.”
“This is my wife’s place,” he said with a decisive nod. “I help her with it.” He pointed to a line of trees at the far side of the gardens. “Our farms and pastures start over there and extend around the cove and back over Windmill Hill.”
“I take it you do more than jam.”
He laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. I like having new projects on my plate.”
I slipped my hands into my pockets and rocked back on my heels. “Yeah, I know something about that.”
“We’ve been kicking around the idea of opening a tavern on a piece of land a little closer to town,” he went on. “A comfortable, local place. But those things take a ton of time and planning. And money.”
I glanced over at him. McKerry owned a pub in his hometown. Hersberler was a partner in a restaurant group in Baltimore. Since those two never shut up, I knew what these things cost. “Let me know if you want a silent partner.”
“How silent?”
“I just got married, bought eight soccer teams, and have a national title to defend. Really fuckin’ silent.”
“But you’d make time to show your face once in a while?”
“If it made my wife happy, I’d move here.”
He gazed at me for a second. “Then I’ll keep that in mind.”
I murmured in understanding and we stood in easy silence for several minutes. I didn’t get the impression this guy cared much for small talk. I couldn’t have been happier.
“Did the girls stay up all night?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, they had waffles, watched a movie, and did something with face masks. They were out by two.”
“Waffles? Okay.” Noah pointed to the mobile phone in his hand, saying, “This group chat might kill me. He wants to know if we have fire blankets at home and if either of us have opinions on smoker grills. Did you see what he named the group?”
“No, I must’ve missed that. I’ve had my hands full since giving my wife a bloody nose last night in front of forty people,” I said.
Noah held up his screen for me. “He started with The Real Househusbands of Rhode Island, but changed it to Wife Guys this morning.”
I choked out a laugh. “Maybe he realized you’re the only one living in Rhode Island.”
“He’s going to change the name every day. I can feel it coming.” With a shake of his head, he added, “I don’t know how anyone has the time for all this.”
“You should see my family chat.” I opened my messages and scrolled through the new ones in the past day. Claudia was still busy posting headlines and pics from our wedding announcement last weekend. “My four sisters, my mother, and my grandmother are nonstop with it. I miss ninety percent of the conversation. More during the season. They don’t seem to mind.”
He ran a finger under his collar, nodding. “Then it’s not just me.”
I clapped him on the shoulder as the music changed and the guests started filing into their seats. “Nope.”
I grabbed two champagne flutes from a passing server and ducked away from the cocktail hour to find my wife. Grace and Ben posed for photos in the garden while Shay and Emme lingered nearby, occasionally stepping in to fix the bride’s dress or hair between shots.
“For you,” I said, handing Emme a glass. She all but snatched it from my grasp.
When I offered the other to Shay, she waved it off, saying, “No, but thank you. I need water first.” She dropped a hand to Emme’s arm. “I’ve got this. They’re almost done.”
Emme frowned. “You’re sure?”
She laughed. “This is the twenty-ninth wedding we’ve had here this year. I know the drill.” Pointing to the opposite side of the farm, near the barn, she added, “Take the long way around. We planted a load of sunflowers and hollyhocks over there.”
After a moment of discussion where Grace confirmed several times that she’d survive without her maid of honor for a few minutes, we took off toward the sunflowers. We passed a pair of tire swings hanging from a tree that had to be older than everything in this town and a cluster of rosebushes twined around the weathered frame of an old brass bed.
When we reached a high point on the hill where the early evening sun bathed the cove in warm, golden light, I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. She touched her glass to mine with a smile.
“I like this place,” I said.
“Me too.”
“Would you want to have our big party here?”
She tipped her glass back and drained the champagne. “I have a secret of my own, you know.”
Now this caught my attention. “Oh, do you?”
Nodding—and so pleased with herself—she said, “I’ve been thinking about having our next wedding here since the day you visited my school.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Do you see now? How annoying it is when someone has an important thought but keeps it to themselves?”
“All right. Fine. I’ll take that penalty.”
“I didn’t bring it up because I knew if I suggested it, you’d go along without question. I wanted you to come here and see how dreamy this place is and then realize that we should have it here.”
I brushed my lips over her temple. “You wanted both of us to choose it.”
“Mmm. Yeah. Seems only fair to reach this decision together, since I was the one who roped us into this pact, and you’re the one who held us to it.”
“With that in mind…” I cleared my throat and pulled a folded paper from inside my breast pocket. She eyed me warily as she opened it. I shrugged. “What’s mine is yours,” I said easily. “Just drawing a line under it.”
She shook the paper at me. “Why does this say I’m the co-owner of your soccer clubs?”
“Because you are.”
“But why ?”
“You made this deal happen just as much as Jakobi and I did,” I said. “And I wanted to make it clear that you’re not leverage, you’re not a chess piece to move around the board. You’re my best friend and my partner, and as long as I live, I’ll never again make you feel like you’re anything less than my equal.”
She swallowed hard as she scanned the page. “You didn’t mention this last night.”
“This stake was yours regardless of whether you gave me another chance or sent me packing. I wasn’t going to let it get in the way of that decision.”
She arched a brow. “I’m not that easily bought.”
I traced the pendant around her neck. “Believe me, Muggsy, I know.”
She threw her arms around my torso, squealing a little as she held me close. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You deserve everything,” I said into her hair. “Get used to believing that.”
“Should we go back to the party?” she asked, her head resting on my chest.
I motioned to the wall of sunflowers behind us. “Let’s take a pic.”
Emme set our champagne glasses on the stone path and tucked herself against me as I held up my phone. I held her waist tight and pressed my lips to her neck, and she giggled and squirmed when I nipped at her skin.
She picked out the photo, one where we were both laughing and the breeze hit the sunflowers in a way that they seemed to sway toward us. I loaded it to my social accounts and she helped me find Twin Tulip’s account to tag the farm. She buried her face in my arm with a giggle when I typed out the caption.
Wifey.