10. Rosie
10
ROSIE
M y face squinches as I study the containers of food on the counter from the riverboat restaurant. Carter got us takeout, and as much at it would all be delicious on a normal day, right now the smell of warm cheesy potatoes is making me want to turn my nose away.
He glowers at me. “You don’t need to say anything. I can read your face right now.” He slides all the food to one side of the counter away from me. “Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches it is.”
My food refuge these days.
“You can still eat the food. Don’t let it go to waste,” I urge.
“I won’t. I’ll put it in the fridge and have it for lunch tomorrow. I would rather be on a united front with you.” He walks around the island, straight to the bread box, and pulls out a loaf. The peanut butter jar comes out next from the cupboard, and then he grabs the jelly from the fridge. He ducks his head around the corner. “Grape, right?”
“Yeah.” He’s always been incredibly sweet, but tonight it feels a little more endearing, especially as that sexy grin is fixed on his mouth.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t what we had in mind for dinner. The morning sickness has been replaced with peculiar smells. PB & J have been my go-to from day one of finding out I’m pregnant.”
He chuckles quietly in the back of his throat. “I know. It’s why I stocked up on jars of peanut butter at the superstore off the highway.”
I burst out a laugh. “What would possess you to come home with a box of twenty-five jars?”
He shrugs as he twirls bread bag open. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“We never have good ideas at the time,” I retort.
His brows lift and his lips quirk out. “Not entirely true. We had some great ideas at one point.”
I can’t help but look at him fondly. “You’re right.” We got married, for one, until that imploded. I let the thought leave and choose to focus on the now. “Maybe sleeping together was a great idea. Now we’re going to have an amazing kid, that I’m sure of.”
“Yeah, yeah we are.” The warm sentiment in his voice is a fuzzy blanket to my emotions.
I grab a strand of hair and wrap it around my finger while Carter finishes making two sandwiches then offers me the plate. “We also don’t have great ideas, and that’s why we are sitting here unsure how to act around each other,” I admit.
He pauses and juts his jaw out to appraise me. He’s waiting for me to finish a sentence because his demeanor is intrigued but too confident.
Squeezing my eyes closed tightly, I gather courage, but it’s the only way we can break this tension. “I wish everything happened differently. I’m not sure what I envision for it all to have been, but this isn’t where we should be now. I mean, waiting for some bubble to pop around us.”
Carter doesn’t say anything, and for a few long seconds, I believe it’s because he is angry at me. I can say what I said, but it doesn’t change what happened. We’re still broken and in this very spot.
“Rosie, the best thing we can do right now is give one another a little forgiveness. It’s the only way. Otherwise, we have no chance.”
My eyes must brighten, and my chest rises due to piqued interest. “Chance?”
“Us. Parenting. Us again.”
“Okay, but I also don’t think we should try and be together because of a baby.”
He reaches for my hand across the table. “He or she will always be a symbol of us, and for the next few months because your belly is growing with our baby. Doesn’t mean we have to use the baby as an excuse to slowly get to know one another again and see where things go.”
I stand up and escape his touch, walking straight to the glass doors to outside, and I stare across the yard. “I don’t understand how we would even want to see where things go. Shouldn’t we be so angry at one another that there is no chance?”
Carter growls and rakes his hair with his hands. “Woman, you are really testing me, aren’t you?” He hurries in my direction. “We have to bury all of that shit, that’s how we do this. I have no clue what is going on in your little head, but I let you go because if you love somebody, you set them free, and if they return then it’s… I don’t know what the hell they say. But you’re here.”
His edged tone takes me off guard because it’s filled with a tenacity that could knock me off my axis. “We can’t just start on a blank page.” Now I’m meeting him halfway in frustration.
“Fine. Then either say what the fuck you were thinking when you were away or so help me, I will fuck the thoughts out of you,” he snarls.
My mouth parts but words are stuck in my throat because he is a man who isn’t afraid to be bold around me. It’s just, his choice of words… well, they put images in my head that won’t help our situation. I would love to see him try. “You already know that I was thinking of you. I’m just… scared, okay?”
He grabs my arm. “Of what?”
“You’re supposed to hate me, and you don’t. I left because maybe I needed to be the best version of myself because that's what you deserve. You are the prince that women dream about, but you didn't deserve the way I left.” It spills out of my mouth because my underlying thoughts finally want to surface.
He frames my face with the palms of his hands. “Then you shouldn’t be scared.”
“Yes, I should. You’ll resent me,” I whisper.
“No. I won’t.” He sounds almost defiant.
“ Yes , you will.”
He closes our distance, stealing my air, and I’m a little lightheaded, but it isn’t from the baby. “Rosie, I’m telling you right now. Let go of everything, because trying again is worth the thought. And we’re going to do this. We’ll do it so damn well that when this baby gets here, it will be as though his or her parents were never apart.”
I’m shocked. I didn’t see our night going this way. We are diving straight into it. So many questions. I push aside the guilt that I still feel, the remorse and shame that I let go so easily, and the anger I had for him that doesn’t compare. We gave up so easily.
Now, we’re in this moment.
“Carter,” I whisper, and I wrap my fingers around his wrists. “I hear you. I do. I’m just…” I push out a breath and debate what to say. However, I have nothing.
“Shh. We don’t need to discuss this anymore tonight. I’ve made my point, and that’s what I wanted to do.”
I always have impeccable timing when to take a serious conversation and turn it upside down. I snort a laugh because I can’t help but point out, “You were going to dine me and persuade me, huh?”
In a snap, he eases and his face wilts into a small proud grin. “Right after I asked you to add all of the trolls to the shelf in the living room, yes.”
He makes me giggle, and that feels nice. “I’ll be happy to arrange that.”
Our strong smiles grow smaller. “Rosie. You have some power over me. You never left my fucking mind, and it was torment, so I’ll be damned if I don’t want to grab a chance to have what I’ve been wanting. I shouldn’t beg to try, but I will.” The sincerity in everything he is doing tonight weakens me.
“You don’t need to beg,” I promise with a rasp. “Maybe I’m just more protective of you than you are of yourself when it comes to me.” He shakes his head gingerly because he must disagree.
We say nothing and just keep our eyes locked.
Until his thumb taps my lips twice, and I want to take his thumb into my mouth, but his eyes squint and his vision narrows over my shoulder. “Ah shit, Jet got into the yard.”
I quickly follow his line of sight to the dog wagging his tail in the middle of the yard, with his tail up as dirt gets kicked into the air from his shoveling paws. I can’t help but laugh in hysterics. This evening really is going in all directions.
Carter lets me go and opens the sliding door to shoo the dog back home. I walk to the kitchen to grab the secret jar of treats and return to Carter. “Here. You know these will only make him return since he knows he has you wrapped around his little paw.”
He yanks the jar from my hand and grumbles a sound before throwing a treat long-distance into a neighbor’s yard. “Well, now the Wilkinsons can deal with him. I’ll send Oliver a text.”
Carter does just that, and I sit at the counter to nibble on my sandwich. “This is the world’s best sandwich. You give it extra magic.”
His brows furrow. “Was that supposed to be a cheesy line?”
I drop the sandwich and laugh with a full mouth. “No. Seriously, you have the right ratio of peanut butter to jelly, and it’s whole wheat bread.”
He clucks his tongue and proudly smirks. “I have skills.” Carter takes a big bite of his sandwich while he leans over the counter. “You’ve mentioned a few times all the places you’ve seen while you were away. Did it fill your quota? Was it what you hoped?”
“No,” I answer bluntly and surprise myself how quickly that came out. It was spent missing him, and I carried my heavy choices in my backpack. He stands at attention and seems perplexed by my response. “Look, you said we can kind of have a blank slate, so let’s do that. We can remember the good parts and that’s that.”
Thankfully, he doesn’t press. “Okay, the good parts. There were many.”
“I agree.”
“You’ve always been a little eccentric and unpredictable but in a good way most of the time.”
I give him a pointed look. “Someone had to not be grumpy. Besides, you’re… Underneath it all, you have a free spirit, too. It’s just that it only seems to come out when you’re with someone.”
He doesn’t reply, and that’s fine. We both grasp that someone was me and should always be me.
“I’m going to put this food away. Want anything?”
I shake my head. “Nah. You do kitchen duty, and I will let the trolls get settled in their new home right next to the white-musk candle.”
He chuckles and begins to move plates. “I’m slightly scared for your birth plan.”
“Me too. I haven’t thought about it too much, but we’re going natural.”
“You do you.”
“You might not be saying that when I’m ripping your arm off from pain.”
He only smiles to himself, and we both focus on our own tasks. Twenty minutes later, dishes are cleared, and the living room shelf appears a little less bare. Still, something is missing from this evening, and I’m afraid to admit what it is.
For the next hour we talk about the latest in Everhope and my family. A bit about some of the countries that I visited and some of the stories from his job that I missed. I swoon when he said that as mayor, he will ensure there is another playground in town, with a wading pool for little kids.
Basically, the nerves that I had at the start of the night are no more. This is exactly what we both needed to take a step forward.
It’s when we are upstairs after turning off the downstairs lights for the night that I realize we aren’t taking just a step forward, we might be taking two.
But I don’t say anything. We nod to one another good night and go our separate ways. Except, after I brush my teeth and throw on an old t-shirt, I realize that sleeping alone causes that soaring level of loneliness, and I hear thunder in the distance. A storm is coming. They always make me feel uneasy. We had a lot of tornadoes growing up.
I sigh and stare at the bed. Clicking my tongue a few times, I debate.
Then give up.
Pivoting, I slowly walk to the door of Carter’s room. He left it open.
And he’s lying in bed with his upper body against the headboard. Maybe he was waiting.
Still, I knock on the door frame.
“Still hate storms, huh.” His voice scrapes.
Our eyes spear into one another while I twist the end of my shirt around my fingers.
“Is that why…”
“I’m not sleeping and waiting for you? Yeah.”
My protector.
That’s the way I’ve always seen him. “Do you think… maybe… can I?—?”
The faintest line of victory draws on his lips.
He pats the mattress next to him. “Sleep here for the night? Because you don’t want to be alone. Come on.”
I smile and join him on the bed. My body imprints into the mattress, molding into the sheets instantly, as though the bed were ready for me.
But it’s his arm looping around me without asking and pulling me close until I rest my head against his chest that really is the perfect fit.