Chapter 22
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My bride-to-be.
Zakery
“Adoption!” I blurt, a moment after Maelin and I have cozied up with one another’s pages atop her bed. She’s resting perfectly against my shoulder, and I’ve tucked her in with a soft throw blanket I found in a linen closet. It’s not pink, and that is a travesty, but it at least matches all the black she wanted in her studio.
Shifting, Maelin glances up at my face. “What about adoption?”
“I forgot adoption was a thing. Disregard my clinical answers to the first two questions.” Which are no and none . “I can see myself growing comfortable with the idea of adoption— if I can teach myself how to be a good father.” Did not have the best role model, me.
Or, actually, maybe I do have the best role model ever.
If Maelin wants to adopt, I’ll just have to lean heavily on how Viktor raised us with kindness, patience, and more love in his pinky than both our parents had in their bodies combined. Hopefully he doesn’t mind writing a How to Dad book for me. It’ll probably take him roughly thirty-seven minutes.
Chuckling, I wrap my arm around Maelin and rub her back. I love her answers to the male and female roles in a relationship.
Her role? Pretty princess.
Mine? Pretty prince.
Then, in parenthesis: I’m sorry. I don’t actually know what this means. I can sew, but I’m not exactly trad wife material. I think if we’re both contributing in some form, that’s enough? We can find the roles that need to be filled as they come.
She giggles.
I toy with a lock of her hair, winding it around my finger. “What’s funny, princess?”
“You wrote: Please, have mercy. I will do my very best to appease all visitations you deem necessary, but while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak , in relation to visiting my parents . ”
What can I say? Authority figures frighten me.
Is she already on the page with the parent questions? How fast does she read?
Glancing at her, I learn that she’s skipping pages and has turned to the Fight Plan. I suppose she’s assessing her points of highest interest first. I appreciate that she’s going directly to her make or breaks. The longer she reads without telling me we’re over, the more hope I have that maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to keep her.
I set the pages down on my lap to sift through to the Fight Plan, too, then I skim the most pertinent information.
When threatened, she fawns. I fight.
That’s a recipe for disaster. I’m already great at hurting people when I don’t mean to, but our natural inclinations seem as though they might lend to my manipulating her.
“In the heat of the moment,” she murmurs, “I’m very bad at talking things through.”
“I can see that,” I say. It’s a potentially detrimental matter. I can’t settle down if a conflict hangs. I want to handle it immediately, and my tone reflects frustration readily when I’m upset—even before I realize I’m angry at all. In contrast, she needs to calm down, assess her fears, and speak rationally—from a place of understanding, not appeal. “How do we find a compromise here?”
She tucks herself closer to me, and when I glance down, the blush on her cheeks paired with her smile makes my breath catch. “I think…I might be able to get better about controlling my fear response if I learn that you aren’t corrosive in your anger.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you need to talk out issues and your tone is harsh or upset, so long as you aren’t threatening me, I might be able to rationalize and learn that I can talk to you when you’re angry without having to appease you before something terrible happens.”
“I very much do not see where threatening you comes close to reaching a solution for any argument. My goal is never hostility. I want a solution. Unless, notably, you’re being an idiot, like Viktor seemed to be, the other night…but…perhaps that’s something I need to work on, because with more information, he wasn’t being an idiot at all. Hm.” I let her hair slip from my fingers. “It’s plain to see that I struggle with arrogance; although, the struggle is not always entirely apparent to me in the moment. Given that I pride myself on possessing an intellect that prioritizes reason over emotion and I do not see that same priority always reflected around me, it’s very easy for me to assume moral high ground when I have no right to it. I will work on making an explicit effort to never assume that idiocy plays a contributing factor in any of our conflicts.”
Her legs curl up, and she’s very near on top of me now.
Odd.
All things considered, I’m pretty sure I just told her that I need to put effort into not assuming she’s being stupid. That’s…kind of something I did not expect to be worthy of deeper cuddles.
It’s below bare minimum.
She should be punching me in the face right now.
If at the Creator’s Ball I do not find a way to swiftly and discreetly knee Harry in the groin, I will be very, very upset.
Returning to where I was before skipping ahead to our Fight Plan, I scan information concerning how Maelin expects that we’ll handle finances and stop short. “I’m not comfortable with you feeling like you have to earn your own income.”
“I’m not comfortable with taking advantage of you because you’re rich. If I want something, I’ll save up for it myself. No more several thousand dollar gifts.”
“What if I provide you with an allowance?”
“Is that allowance going to be anything remotely close to what Viktor’s is for you each week?”
…
Maybe.
She takes my silence as an answer and lets her lip pout. “I don’t want to grow complacent by having more than enough all the time. It’s good to work for things. If there’s anything really important that I can’t afford, I can let you know.” Her face tilts, eyes meeting mine. “Speaking of how Viktor manages the money, will that need to change? It’s…interesting…how he handles what you and your brothers make, but what if you want independence someday?”
I check the questions about where she wants to live and find she’s more than willing to stay here, at least assuming that she wouldn’t cause problems for my family. Silly girl. This place stretches like a palace. There are at least a dozen kitchens and twice as many suites set up like full homes. We’d have plenty of room for her to never bother a soul living in this area unless she so desires. “Viktor handles most everything that is annoying. I have access to the accounts that contain my income. He draws from them in order to maintain upkeep and funnels an amount into my spending account each week because I am significantly more likely to spend half a million dollars on something frivolous than he is likely to spend five on a necessity. He handles investments, taxes, and Sunset for all of us, so we can chill. It’s actually kind of mean of me when I give him a hard time for it. I do not want his job. I do not even want my portion of his job. He is doing all of us a favor.”
“So he doesn’t really control what you’re allowed to do or buy?”
“Respect for him and the guidelines he’s set up for our own good controls us more than literal restraints. I asked him about hiring you and Morana because the request affected our home and was a cost that could exceed my weekly allowance. Had I neglected the impact of bringing two strangers into our home without mentioning it, I still could have afforded to pay you both from my main account. But it would not have been entirely considerate. Rest assured.” I kiss her forehead. “I can support us quite well independently. It would take some learning to manage at the capacity that Viktor has achieved, but it is not impossible, and I am not unwilling if it makes you uncomfortable to think that someone else is in charge of our livelihood.”
“You trust your brother?” she asks.
“Completely.”
“Then it’s fine. Why fix something that isn’t broken, right?”
I agree. And I’m glad. I did not want to learn what a high-yield savings account was, or why Viktor sometimes gets muttery at the beginning of the month when he learns that his APY percentage has dropped.
My job in this family sphere is to doodle . I was not born to worry about interest rates.
Or maybe I was born for that, but Viktor saved me. Who knows?
Either way, sometimes when I’m thinking about it, I’m almost positive I know what gratitude feels like.
Maelin sighs, happily, after a few more minutes, so I peek at where she is.
The last question. It was early this morning when I fumbled my way through these questions, so I don’t remember half of them. But my answer to is there anything else you’d like me to know appears to read: I’d like you to know that I’m grateful for you. Thank you for giving me and my oddities a chance. I promise to do my best, that I—a mere mortal—might prove myself worthy of your immaterial time.
Arranging the papers together, she sets them behind her then wraps one arm around my chest, settling in.
Exhaustion hits me as her eyes close. So much for coffee. Setting my pages atop hers once I’ve finished going through them, I sink down against the pillow, wrap her up, and soak in her cotton-clean warmth. She smells like those fresh, mild candles that remind me of detergent…
I…like this. A lot.
“Mm…Zakery?”
My heart thumps. “Yes?”
“Can you take off your jacket? The buttons are uncomfortable.”
I absolutely can do that. Not a problem at all.
Shifting, I undo the buttons then hook the high collar on the bedpost behind me. As I settle back in, her fist bunches in the fabric of my tank top, and she murmurs, “Thank you.”
My ink-painted arms close in around her pale flesh… Black and white. “Don’t mention it,” I murmur into her hair. Each of my breaths press my stomach against her knuckles as her heat saturates.
We are compatible.
None of her answers were so worrisome that I can’t accept them, and she’s not mentioned any of mine, either.
In every way I could think to analyze, we are compatible .
So, as long as the logistics hold and I’m not too much to handle off paper, this…this beautiful goddess of a woman…is very likely to be my bride.
I might not be the best at identifying my emotions, but I am almost positive the idea of that elicits an elation unlike anything I have ever experienced before.