Chapter 39 Russell
Russell
Gus is a natural.
I know this because even after my big announcement on the stage, even though half my brain is thinking about Jules and where she is, what she thought, and if she’s going to take me back, most of me is consumed in watching this kid on the stage.
He moves around like he really is a wise man, and it’s captivating.
For the play, they’ve whipped up a twist on the classic nativity scene, something a little more modern and inclusive of other religions and winter celebrations.
It’s very morning show, but also pretty funny.
I’m impressed with their ability to really make something that appeals to everyone.
What must only be ten minutes later, the play is ending, and I’m clapping for Gus, a tear in my eye at the sight of him on the stage, doing what brings him joy.
“Russell!”
With the applause still filling the space around me, I turn to see Jules running up the steps, her security badge bouncing against her chest as she does. Her eyes are locked on mine,
and somehow, someway, she looks a million times more gorgeous than she did the last time I saw her.
Her hair is loose, and she’s wearing some sort of fur stole that covers her shoulders, and under—
I go completely still.
It’s a red velvet dress.
I’d recognize that dress anywhere. I remember it bunched up around her waist, remember how impossibly soft it was under my fingers.
When she gets to me, I can’t stop myself from reaching out to touch the fabric, a shiver running the length of my spine.
“It really was you,” I whisper, and when I shift my gaze to hers, I find her already staring at me, her eyes wide and tearful.
We have a lot to talk about. Details to smooth over. Apologies to make.
But there’s something I want to do first.
Dropping to my knee, I reach into my pocket and pull out a ring—a new one I picked out yesterday. One not with a fake fiancée in mind, but thinking of Jules.
My jewel.
Up on the stage, after giving my speech, after Gus ran out to me and I held him for the first time in my life as his dad, I’d asked him for his blessing.
“I’m not a real wise man,” he’d said, a joke that was surprising, especially coming from a five-year-old.
“Gus, I’d like to marry your mother,” I said, to which he responded, I thought you already were.
With that version of his blessing, I stare up at Jules now, love, gratitude, and joy all sloshing around inside me, the feeling almost too much to bear. It makes my heart feel like a helium balloon, pushing out against my thoracic cavity.
“Jules,” I say, taking her hand in mine and watching as she brings the other palm to her mouth. “It’s always been you, since that night five years ago. It’s been way too long to wait, but if I had to, I would do it all over again. Would you do me the honor of being my wife?”
She nods against her palm, and I stand, slipping the ring onto her finger and taking her in my arms, holding her like I’ve wanted to since that day in the park.
I meant what I said earlier.
I’m never going to let her go again.
When I become aware of clapping and cheering around us, I pull back from Jules to find a small group gathered—Orie, Sienna, and a woman that must be Ettie with another little boy who must be Dawson.
And Alena, bundled up, one of the twins strapped to her chest, her smile wide and proud. For a second, I see a flash of my father in her, and when I smile back, we’ve shared something more than just this moment.
A family growing, expanding. Her kids now knowing my own.
“Kiss!” someone shouts, and when I glance to the side, I realize Orie is holding Gus up, and Gus holds up a small green bundle that dangles over me and Jules.
“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”
“Alright,” I say, turning like I’m going to kiss Jules. At the last second, I reach up and grab Gus from Orie. Gus drops the mistletoe, laughing and squirming, and Jules and I smother him with kisses, hugging him tight between us.
“I love you,” Jules says, and I feel her hand on my arm, somehow feel her warmth reaching me through the kid between us.
“I love you, too,” Gus and I say at the same time, which sends him back into another fit of giggles, and fills me with a sort of contentment I’ve never felt before.
A contentment I’ll be chasing with these two for the rest of my life.
When Jules is standing next to me in my private elevator, wearing that fucking dress and standing close enough that I can feel her body heat, I almost don’t believe it’s real.
Perhaps sensing Jules and I had a lot to talk about, Ettie insisted on Gus coming back to her place for a sleepover with Dawson, and promised to text Jules each time he took his meds, and to keep an extra close eye on him.
Then, Jules came with me. Got in my car, rode with me back to my apartment. And during each step of the process, part of me wasn’t convinced. Was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But now, she steps out of the elevator with me, coming to a stop, glancing at me, then back at the apartment.
“Russell,” she says, her voice pitching up. “What—what happened to your stuff?”
Everything is gone. The living room, which was once decorated in a simple, monochromatic modern style, is barren. No couch, no coffee table. The way I last saw her in this home, sitting on that couch with her face crestfallen, has been wiped clean.
Jules pushes against my arm, “Russell—is it even possible for someone to break in here? It looks like you were robbed!”
“I wasn’t robbed,” I say, reaching down and taking her hand, still surprised when she allows me to. “Come on, I have something to show you.”
The interior designers were confused about my vision, but people don’t generally argue when you throw thousands of dollars at them to get the job done.
Following along behind me, her hand in mine, Jules climbs the stairs, pulling her stole tighter around her shoulders as we make our way.
“Three days ago,” I say, turning to her in the hallway.
“Orie talked some sense into me. I realized that my resistance to taking that paternity test was based on my past, and not on the future. Not on you, Jules. And once I figured it out, I could only hope that you’d still be willing to take me back once I worked through my shit. ”
She stares at me, her throat working. I reach into my pocket and tap to the messages from Calvin, opening the photo of the lab results.
“Oh my God,” she whispers, bringing her hand to her mouth when her eyes land on the POSITIVE typed neatly next to results. “I—I knew it was you but…it was you.”
I nod, feeling only slightly nervous as I take my phone back and slide it into my pocket.
“Yeah. You were right. And I’m sorry for resisting the test. I just…
I’ve believed this about myself for so long that it was hard to let go.
Hard to believe that I could ever deserve something as good as you and Gus. ”
Jules starts to tear up, a watery smile playing over her face. “God, this is like a telenovela or something.”
That makes me laugh and breaks me out of the nervous tension that seems to be wrapping around my body.
This is Jules. The woman I’ve known somehow for five years, or several months, or maybe even really just for now.
No matter where the clock really started, I know that I want to keep getting to know her for as long as she’ll let me.
“Three days ago, when I realized I would do whatever it took to have you back, I called in some interior designers, sold or donated all the other furniture here.”
“Russell, why—”
“Because, you and Gus are coming to live with me.” It’s a bit of a gamble, pulling out this commanding voice for something like this, and so soon after Jules has forgiven me, but it pays off when her smile grows wider and her lip starts to tremble, tears breaking out over her face.
I pull her into my arms, smooth her hair away from her face. For as long as we’re together, I want to do everything in my power to make sure she never feels like that again. And it sure as shit isn’t going to be from me.
“So,” I say, clearing my throat and pulling back when her breathing levels out. “I sold or donated everything, and there’s just one bedroom I had them go ahead and decorate, since I had a pretty good idea of what it should look like.”
With that introduction, I reach out and open the door we’re standing next to, revealing the bedroom I put together with Gus in mind.
The bed is a soft sage green, with a semi-circle, padded fabric headboard, scales and a horn completing the dinosaur around the mattress.
The walls are painted a soft blue. One wall features a pastel jungle scene.
There are plushies and toys, and an expansive—but empty—closet, and a little reading nook with a huge bookshelf in the shape of a tree, the trunk lined with shelf after shelf of all the kids books I could find.
Above the bed is a little balcony he can climb up onto, which slides down into a padded play area.
“Oh my God,” Jules says, for the second time tonight. “Russell, this is—I don’t even know what to say—”
“I want you and Gus in my life. I want to be the perfect husband to you and father to Gus. This feels like the second chance I never thought I was going to get,” I say, breathing through the words, no matter how badly I don’t want to say them.
“I know you already said yes, Jules, but that was with the pressure of an audience. If you—”
Her answer to that comes fast and warm, with her body pressing against mine, her hands tugging my face down so she can kiss me silent.
It’s been too fucking long since I had my hands on her body, and I instantly find her hips, those curves that are so addictive to me.
And it’s this dress, the same one I balled in my fist five years ago. The same night I met the woman who drove me mad and ruined everyone after.
Reaching down, I pick her up, and she wraps her legs around my waist. It’s easy to carry her across the hall to a nondescript guest bedroom, where I lay her down on the mattress.
After Jules figures out what she wants our bedroom to look like, I’m going to do this with her a million ways.
I’m going to make a different bed with the evidence of how much I want her, and how I worship her body, her breath, the noises she makes when I press the pad of my thumb to the most sensitive parts of her.
But for now, I spend my time on her, lowering my mouth between her legs, tasting her, and loosening her for me. When she comes against me, her thighs on either side of my face and her fingers looped tightly in my hair, I can’t stop myself from humming against her.
She tugs me up and I take her mouth with mine, her taste still lingering on my tongue.
When I slip inside her, it feels like coming home. She digs her heels into me, pushing me deeper, begging for more, and I have an idea.
“What—what are you doing?” she asks, when I draw back, cock hardening even more at the thought of what I’ve wanted to do for five years now.
“Keep your legs tight around me,” I command, and she does what I ask. With her wrapped around me, and this fucking impossible dress bunched up around her hips, I carry her over to a clear wall and press her up against it.
Her eyes go wide, and she starts to laugh, “Russell—”
The laugh dies in her throat when I grab her the way I wanted to, all those years ago, holding her up with both legs in the air, nothing between her and me, an erotic and filthy position that’s been stuck in my head since I first found her on that balcony.
When my cock edges into her, I find her warm, wet, and wanting, and can taste her desire at the base of my throat.
“I’ve wanted this for five years,” I growl, leaning down and speaking the words against her ear as she gasps against me. This is it—this is the deepest I’ve ever been inside her, and I’m obsessed with the way I have her trapped against the wall, her head tipping back, her eyes shutting in ecstasy.
“Say my name,” I growl, and she does, gasping it, calling it out as loud as she wants as I thrust up and into her.
Roughly, I reach up and pull her dress down, so her chest spills out, tits bouncing with each movement of my hips.
The sight of it sends me over the fucking edge, my cock pulsing once before I release inside her, hot, sticky, and right.
It’s everything. I’ll never stop wanting this, never stop wanting her.
“Well, shit,” she breathes, having gone boneless in my hold, her head lolling forward. “We should have done that a long time ago.”
I laugh, then lower her down, unable to keep my eyes off her chest.
“Come on,” I growl, cock already stiffening again. Maybe the day will come that Jules doesn’t make me crazy like this, but I can’t even imagine it. “I’ve got a few more I’d like to try tonight.”
She laughs as I gather the dress in my hands and strip it off over her head, leaving her gloriously bare. I scoop her into my arms and carry her over to the bed, heart thudding, body readying for another round.
“If I didn’t know better,” she breathes, when I lay her down, getting my mouth on her tits. “I might wonder if you’d been planning this for a while, doctor.”
“Oh,” I mutter, looking up at her, both satiated and wanting at once, body wild with the thought of the rest of my life with this gorgeous, bewildering, brilliant, fucking insanely, sexy woman. “You have no idea.”