91. Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter ninety-one
Carrie
Reid and I travel to a Brooklyn rescue to meet Snowflake but stop by a pet store and buy supplies just in case we end up taking our new kitty home. The minute we walk into the home of her foster, she’s at my feet meowing. I kneel down and start stroking her back and I’m in love instantly. Reid knows it, too. He chats with the foster a few moments and then kneels beside me, stroking Snowflake’s head. “We’re new cat parents, aren’t we?”
I smile. “Yes. We are.”
“I should tell you,” the foster, a woman in her mid-forties with dark, braided hair, says, “My daughter started calling her Kesha, after the singer she loves, and she answers to that now.”
Reid eyes her and then me. “It’s better than Snowflake.”
“It’s kind of cute,” I say, picking up Kesha. “You’re cute.” A comment that earns me purrs and face rubs. “She’s so sweet.”
“Orientals are lovers,” the woman says. “She will be on your lap and at your feet all the time.”
Reid stands up. “What do we need to do to make Kesha part of the family?”
Family. I really love that he just used that word about us and Kesha. “You’ve done the application,” she says. “And Kesha seems sold. She’s yours.”
My eyes light and I set Kesha down and stand up. “Thank you so much.” I look at Reid. “I think you need a Kesha tattoo and then everyone will ask who she is.”
He laughs and wraps his arm around me kissing me. “You’re a crazy woman. Now you’re about to be a crazy cat lady.”
“Yeah. Isn’t it great?”
A few minutes later we have Kesha in her cute pink bag in my lap and we’re headed home. “I wonder if she’ll try to take down the Christmas tree?” I ask. “Cats like to do that.”
Reid gives me a sideways look. “Now I have a Christmas tree and a cat to try to destroy it. Talk about a change from last year to this year.”
“You also have a woman in your bed every night.”
“For the rest of my life, baby,” he says. “When are we getting married?”
“I really hate we can’t do Rockefeller Center at Christmas, but it’s ten days away. That would be nuts.”
“What about before they take the tree down? I looked it up. It comes down the seventh. I can have Connie see if she can find us a place in Rockefeller Center between New Year’s and the sixth, but that gives us about two weeks to plan a wedding. I still think it’s too fast.”
“It is pretty fast,” I agree, “and as much as I love the idea, I want us to enjoy our first Christmas and we have all this stuff going on with the company and our fathers. Maybe we should just pick a day in March. That gives us three months to plan.”
“March it is, then,” he says.
I stroke the kitty and add, “I think we should go with whatever Saturday we can find a place we like for the wedding.”
He pulls to a stoplight and takes my hand. “Perfect, baby.” Kesha pops her head out of the carrier and meows. We laugh. “She agrees,” I say, and for the first time, in perhaps my entire adult life, I’m happy. I didn’t realize I wasn’t before, but I know now that I was living without really living. Reid has changed me as well and I think I need to tell him this and soon.
Once we’re home, we set the kitty up with all her new things, which include a bed in about every room we’re ever in. There is lots of fluffing, purring, and general kitty cuteness. Reid and I settle onto the couch to work and we are walked over, and our pens and papers are shoved to the floor over and over. What’s really remarkable to me is that this man who came off as so hard and cold is a magnet to our kitty and so very good with her. Reid hid so much behind his wall, and it’s really an amazing thing to see him show his true self now.
Come bedtime, we snuggle under the blankets and about the time that Reid has his hand on my breasts, and his cock between my legs, Kesha jumps on top of us. Reid actually laughs, kisses her nose and sets her on the floor. “You wait,” he says. “I get her first.”
And he does.
Get me first.
He proceeds to make love to me, in a tender, sexy way that has me falling in love all over again. When we’re done, it’s like Kesha understands because she’s back on the bed, and a few minutes later, I fall asleep with Reid at my back and Kesha snuggled in front of me in the crook of my body. My little family. I love them. This is perfect. We’re perfect and I’ve decided my man is also perfect.
Sunday morning, Cat and I decide to meet at her favorite coffee shop which has all kinds of fun pastries on the weekends. I bundle up in jeans and a sweater as well as my coat, and leave Reid to his work and our kitty. I laugh as I leave the apartment and glance at him sitting on the couch, his computer in his lap right in front of the kitty, who is also in his lap. If I didn’t soften that man up all the way, Kesha is going to finish the job.
A while later, as I sit at a table with Cat munching on pastries and sipping coffee, I share that moment with her, and she smiles. “I love what you’re doing to him. Our mother would, too.”
“So he tells me,” I say. “He talks about her. More so as time goes on. I know about the letter. It affected him. He hates that she thought he would be like his father.”
“It’s amazing to me how you’ve changed him. I mean, he told you about it. I feel like that is big with Reid.” She lets out a breath. “Mom didn’t know about the murder of his girlfriend. I didn’t know. Does Gabe know?”
“Honestly, I don’t think so, but for some reason, I haven’t asked that. I assumed that he didn’t, but were they in school together?”
“No,” she says. “They actually were accepted into different schools, so you must be right. He told no one. He shut us all out.”
“He felt like you were like her. Like you’d sacrifice yourself for someone you loved so he didn’t want you to love him. He used his asshole persona to just keep everyone away.”
“Obviously, that wasn’t a healthy response,” Cat says. “Should he see someone?”
“I don’t think he will and I think he’s healing.”
“I’ll trust you on that because he does seem better. I just don’t want it to somehow come between you two.”
“It won’t,” I promise. “I think I’ve become his sanctuary of sorts. He was affected by your baby news. He talked to me about it, though.”
“Because of the divide between us, right? I know he talked to me with your prodding. Thank you for that.”
“It was more than the divide between you. He told me—I hope it’s okay—he told me about the blackmail. He was upset that you must have been aware you were pregnant when that was happening.”
“I was,” she says. “It was—hard. I didn’t want to ruin the moment for me and Reese so I waited, hoping I could somehow make it special, despite all of that mess.”
“And did you?”
“Oh, yes. Reese made it special. That man is the world to me, but enough about me. You and Reid. The wedding. I got a list of place for you in the Battery Park area with open dates.”
“You did that for us?”
“Of course,” she says, covering my hand with hers. “You’re family now, Carrie, and we need you in this family.”
I tear up. I can’t help it. I have not felt a part of a family ever in my life. “Oh, honey,” Cat says. “Why are you crying?”
I tell her about my mom and talk about my dad, I feel as if I have a new friend in Cat. After breakfast, we head over to the pier location where Cat suggested we have the wedding and I’m in love. It’s cozy and gorgeous, right off the water, and I can’t wait to have Reid come see it. So much so that I set up an appointment to bring him back.
Cat and I part ways on the pier and I’m walking toward our building when suddenly a man is standing in front of me. Elijah Woodson. “You do know he fucked my wife, right?” he demands. “In my house, in my bed, as a ‘fuck you’ to me for crossing him in business.”