Chapter 6
I’m sure the unspoken guidelines for telling a man that you’re pregnant with his baby include not doing it literally at the altar as the priest is giving a welcome speech, but the rules—spoken and unspoken—have never really applied to me and Jameson.
He does focus pretty hard on the ceremony, though. I can’t tell if that’s because he’s extremely upset or because he’s decided not to be upset. The kidnapping was upsetting, but…
What about the pregnancy? Is he holding back because of that?
Probably not, right? Because he came to get me and he already knew. Nobody else could’ve told him. He must’ve found the test.
So that’s out in the open.
We get married.
I put all the conviction I can muster behind my vows. It’s the same conviction that made me demand to come back to the cathedral instead of going to the hospital. I feel just the same way about loving Jameson. Nobody’s going to stop me. Nobody’s going to change me. This is just the truth of me, and I’m going to show the world.
Most importantly, I’m going to show Jameson. I want every word I say to mean I love you. There’s something in his eyes that makes me think he’s having trouble believing it.
A warning? Like the Vesuvius thing?
It’s not a warning that he’d leave me, because he makes his vows with just as much conviction. I can hear how terrified he was in every phrase he repeats after the priest. After the last line, when he’s slipped my wedding band onto my finger and settled it against my engagement ring, Jameson raises my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles like an old-timey gentleman. It’s the kind of thing that could come off like a joke from a person like Jameson, but it seems deadly serious.
And then we’re married and being announced as Mr. and Mrs. Hill, and whoops—between getting Jameson out of jail a second time and nursing him back to health and planning the wedding, we never discussed whether I planned to take his name. I always assumed I’d keep my maiden name forever, since a wedding wasn’t in the cards, but in light of how awful a person my grandfather has turned out to be, I don’t mind the idea of taking Jameson’s name.
Not at all.
People cheer so loud as we leave the nave that it’s impossible to talk to each other. We’re very briefly tugged into a paperwork session to sign the marriage license. I do not hesitate when it comes to filling out the box with my new surname.
Down with Lilith Cecelia Hayes.
Long live Lilith Cecelia Hill.
“Your middle name is Cecelia,” Jameson says from his spot at my side.
“Surprise!” I finish signing and hand him the pen. “I’m betting my mom didn’t know it means blind.”
“Or hidden,” he answers, scrawling his name on the license in bold strokes. He passes the pen to his brother when he’s finished, and his eyes meet mine. “It’s lucky I found you.”
Maybe I was hidden. Maybe I was hiding all those years.
Jameson makes some excuse to his brothers, and then he’s leading me down one hallway, then another, and then we’re in a smaller room that smells like old books and candle wax with the door shut tight behind us.
I leap, or Jameson pulls, and then my back is against the spines of books and Jameson’s mouth is on mine and there is no possible way my lipstick survives this. Elise and Charlotte are going to have to fix me up again if I’m going to be seen at the reception.
I don’t care.
My lungs feel too big for my chest and all of me is bright and thudding with emotions that demand to be let out.
Jameson must feel the same way, because he’s not careful with my wedding dress. He’s only careful with me. His hands grasp at my thighs and my ass and the small of my back, but the pressure there is light. Only as much as he needs to keep me balanced across his hips between his body and the books.
Oh, God, I’m?—
I’m so relieved.
I knew he would come. I knew Jameson wasn’t going to let me get kidnapped. But there was a minute when I thought he might not get there in time.
It was a close call. A closer call than I wanted to admit.
I kiss all my residual fear and the stress of being kidnapped into him, and Jameson licks it out of me like he knows what I’m doing.
It doesn’t take very long for all of those cold feelings to turn into heat. Jameson’s warm between my legs, and strong, and my husband.
He’s mine.
I grab for his hair. His neck. His jacket. I know I can’t mess him up too badly—he has to be at the reception, too, and there’s going to be—there’s going?—
Photos. There are going to be photos. Taken. Of us.
It’s really hard to care about anything but Jameson.
“We’re married,” I say into the kiss the next time I can get a full breath. I’m the one who insisted on coming back to the cathedral, but I sound astonished.
“Fuck,” he answers. “I know.”
Jameson’s hands are under the skirts of my dress. He pulls back far enough to see his dark, full eyelashes, the flickering green of his eyes, the pink turning to red in his cheeks while his hands work at the structural layers beneath the dress.
Jameson curses again. He’s discovered my panties. “What did Sunshine do to this dress?”
“She cut it,” I answer, somehow more breathless than before. “Cut pieces off the—the skirt.”
“Why? Did something happen?”
“It got dirty.”
Jameson rolls his hips into me impatiently, then refocuses on my panties.
“She had this—this squad of old ladies, too, and they?—”
A frustrated growl. “How the hell do I get this off?”
“Just rip it. They swooped in with sewing kits. Like those miniature sewing kits you keep in your purse and they—they?—”
He bends his head, and his mouth is against the side of my neck. I can’t say anything when he’s kissing and sucking like that. Not softly. Not hard, either. Like he has to feel the pulse under my skin in order to survive.
“Fuck, Lily,” he whispers, and drags his teeth lightly, lightly over that curve. “Fuck.”
“I know.”
“I thought?—”
“I know.”
That old fear pours back into me, but it’s gone again before it can stick. I let my hips meet Jameson’s. I can feel his fly through the fabric of my panties and how hard he is underneath.
“I could come like this.” I work my hips again to show him how. “I could, but I don’t want to. I want?—”
One sharp jerk of his hands, and my panties are in pieces.
It feels so good to have additional contact on my bare pussy that I let out a sound that’s entirely inappropriate for anywhere in sight of the cathedral grounds. Jameson uses one hand to angle my face so he can kiss me again, and then his grip is gone. I’m balanced mostly on his hips while his hands move between my legs. His belt clinks. His zipper pulls. He shoves at his clothes, seeming exactly as desperate as I feel, and then the bare parts of me are against the hard length of him. It’s such soft skin over such an incredible amount of heat.
His eyes meet mine, and we’re braced against one another. My back makes small slipping sounds against the spines of the books. I think, half-drowned in Jameson, that this is the story of my life. Me, with my back against a wall of books and studying and classical music with nowhere to go but forward. Nowhere to go but toward a life that was full of uncertainty and danger and wild joy.
Because that’s there, too. I’m shaken and scared and I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or when I’m nine months pregnant with Jameson’s baby.
And I’m so happy to be here. I never thought for an instant that I could feel like this outside The Membership, when I wasn’t dancing.
Jameson stares into my eyes while he positions himself against my entrance and pushes in with a sigh that turns into a groan.
I’m ready, and I’m not ready, and the size of him sinking into me strikes the perfect balance between the two states. I’m buzzing with how much I want it to feel like the first time. How much I want him to feel like he’s taking up space inside me.
Oh, God, he’s taking up more space than this inside me. My stomach does a frantic swoop. His baby—our baby—is inside me at this very moment. It’s so, so tiny, but it’s there.
He’s there. I clench around him, the pleasure of it radiating up through my torso, and he makes a bitten-off sound and pushes closer, rocking his hips.
“Ah,” he says, shifting his hands so I’m more secure against the bookshelves. “You look like you could fly. They cut wings into your dress.”
“I feel—” Like there’s not enough air, but only because I want to breathe in so much of him. “I feel like I could fly.”
One of Jameson’s hands tightens on my ass, and then he’s fucking me into the bookshelves. A book falls and lands on its side with a slap. All I can hear is my own breathing and Jameson saying Lily, Lily, Lily and I feel incredibly alive and un-murdered and free.
I never?—
I didn’t?—
I didn’t realize how free I would feel, finally married to Jameson. A ring on my finger and signatures on paper don’t mean as much as the things we’ve done together, but they mean something to the world. Our rings say we chose each other. The signatures say you can’t keep us apart, no matter how much you hate this.
They say permanent.
Jameson picks up speed, his hand gliding between us to find my clit. It’s a starburst of pleasure in a long roller-coaster of a day, and it blocks out everything but the sensation. I come once. Twice? The waves seem to last a long time, and I’m happy to ride it out with him.
Then Jameson slows the pace, his green eyes burning into mine. The emotion in his face is like a storm. Like the aftermath of a lightning strike. I thought of that before, in that room—I thought of him like lightning, touching down with a crack and a burst of blinding light.
“Are you—” My arms are around his shoulders. He’s taking each thrust as its own unique project, letting out a little breath with every one. It feels so good. “Angry?”
Jameson’s brow creases. “Angel. What?”
Now is not the time to be having this discussion, but if there’s one thing that defines Jameson and I as a couple, it’s how often we collectively break the rules.
“It’s big news.” He’s knocking the breath out of me a little, too. “And I know you thought it—it wasn’t fair. To have kids.”
There’s a hitch in his hips, and then his face is in my neck again. I hold on tight to his shoulders and let him fuck me until he goes over the edge with a muffled grunt that I feel in every inch of me that exists. Jameson thrusts his way through it with deep strokes that hit me in all the spots I need to have another orgasm all over him.
He comes down slowly, his breath hot on my neck, and finally shakes his head like he’s waking up from a dream.
“I’m sorry.” Jameson picks his head up and looks me in the eye. The green swims with shadows. “I’m so sorry, Lily. I want it so much. The baby.” He swallows hard. “With you. Of course I’m not angry. I’m so happy.”
He doesn’t look happy.
“Then there’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“There is.”
“Jameson.” I push his hair back from his face, doing my best to fix it with my fingers. “If you’re happy—if we’re both happy, and we are—then you don’t have to be sorry.”
“But,” he says, his eyes welling. “The baby could be like me.”
We can’t disappear indefinitelywithout people freaking out, so once Jameson catches his breath, he puts me back on my feet and gets his clothes back in order. He helps me fix my lipstick. I help him fix his tie. I think we both do a decent job, even with the post-sex shakiness.
At the door, Jameson takes my hand.
“It would be a good thing.”
He looks down at me, the question in his eyes.
“If the baby was like you.”
“I don’t…” He tries to smile and can’t. “I don’t think it would.”
“I know it would. And I’m the one who’s pregnant, so my opinion counts more.”
Jameson does smile at that.
“You have to promise me something, though.”
“Anything,” he says.
“You have to have a good time at the reception. We both do. If we don’t, then my grandfather wins.”
“I’m not letting some asshole named Beaufort win. Or some asshole named Malcolm.”
“I take it those names are out if the baby is a boy?”
“Those names are out,” Jameson says. “I’m putting my foot down.”
The reception isa blur of champagne and big smiles and photos upon photos. Nate insists on dancing with me in place of my absent father and terrible grandfather. He looks a lot like Mason and Gabriel and Jameson, actually—dark hair and green eyes, although his aren’t such a green-green like Jameson’s. They have a stormy, silvery gray around the outside of his irises. But it’s heartwarming, honestly, how well he fits in with his chosen family. Gabriel has clearly rubbed off on him, because Nate doesn’t dance like an awkward teen. He dances like a proud brother-in-law. I catch Lydia, who’s like a younger Elise, watching Nate from the side of the dance floor, her cheeks pink and her dark eyes shining. Their middle sister, Catherine, who has gorgeous auburn hair that I’m a little jealous of because it’s more sophisticated than mine, leans down to whisper something in Lydia’s ear, and she giggles.
Charlotte dances with Jameson in place of his mom. It’s lovely, and half the guests are wiping their eyes by the end. I catch Jameson blinking away tears, too.
We all dance until I think I might actually pass out on the dance floor from being so tired.
Is that because I’m pregnant? Or just because I got kidnapped and got married, all on the same day?
Eventually, I’m going to have an adult experience in my new life that isn’t affected by a kidnapping.
Jameson has a great time. Aside from Gabriel, he’s the brightest thing about the reception, shining until Mason ushers us off the dance floor and insists we make our exit.
That’s a blur of sparklers and people whistling and warm night air. August stands at the end of the line of people, taking the final photos of the night. He’s completely composed in his all-black photographer outfit, as if a kidnapping isn’t even close to being the craziest thing that he’s ever witnessed.
As Jameson is helping me into the car, I look over his shoulder. All our guests look tired and happy. The only people who look different from five seconds ago are August and Julien.
Julien stands to the side, slightly behind August, pinching the bridge of his nose with his head down. August has one hand on Julien’s shoulder and signs something with his free hand, low, where Julien must be able to see it.
It’s another few beats before Julien shakes his head and straightens, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathes.
Maybe August is the only one who’s fine with the kidnapping.
Not fine fine, just not shaken by it.
Then my view is blocked by Mason, who leans into the car with an apologetic expression.
“We’re all going back to my place. Sorry if you had other plans.”
“Who needs plans when you can have a family reunion?”
He laughs, then gets out of the way so Jameson can climb in.
At Mason’s penthouse, everyone is exhausted and slow-blinking. Charlotte rocks a sleeping baby Robin in her arms as she trails toward the bedroom. Mason follows her, scrolling on his phone.
“I think they left an extra team outside. Paranoid motherfuckers.”
“They’re not paranoid,” Gabriel sings from the opposite end of the room, where he’s standing with Elise, who rests her head on his shoulder, and Nate and Lydia, who lean unsteadily against each other. “We’re going to the guest apartment.”
“Pancakes,” Mason says. “Morning. Tomorrow morning.”
“Go to bed, old man,” calls Nate.
Mason waves him off with a fond, exasperated smile on his face.
We’re here because nobody wants us out of their sight, but I don’t want them out of my sight, either. My husband’s family. My family.
Our first stop is at Snowball’s cage in the kitchen. Jameson sticks his hand in and lets Snowball hop into his palm, then strokes his tiny head while he pecks at Jameson’s ring.
“Yeah. It’s new,” Jameson says. “Do you like it?”
Snowball tweets for what seems like a long time.
“Oh, please.” Jameson shakes his head. “I did ask for your input. You said this was fine before.”
More tweeting.
“Snowball,” Jameson sighs. “The wedding was a shitshow. I’m honestly glad you weren’t there. What if they’d gone after you?”
“I’m not glad.” I curl my hand over Snowball’s wings. “I should’ve carried you down the aisle in my bouquet.”
Jameson pouts at me, his eyes filled with betrayal. “Wow.”
“He feels left out,” I whisper.
“He feels tired,” Jameson whispers back. “It’s too late for a bird.”
He puts Snowball back into his cage, checks his seeds and water, and turns down the lights in the kitchen.
I’m asleep on my feet when Jameson helps me out of my dress and into the shower. He pulls the pins out of my hair and washes all the hairspray away and then he drags a chair into the bathroom and dries it, too.
I let him dress me in one of his shirts and tuck me into bed.
He stretches out next to me.
“I’ll take you on a honeymoon as soon as it’s safe,” he says.
“Being with you is a honeymoon, kind of,” I answer.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
A huge yawn wipes out any other thoughts I might’ve had.
I fall asleep fast. When I resurface to stretch and roll over, it feels like it’s been a long time. I open my eyes out of habit as I push away from the pillow and start to turn.
Jameson’s sitting up against the headboard. There’s a little tablet in his hand with a very faint glow—an e-reader, I think. The gold band on his finger glints in that light.
His eyes are open.
I don’t think he’s slept at all.