Chapter 50 #2
He didn’t joke or interrupt, and the longer he simply watched me, the harder it became to keep talking.
Still, I made myself tell him. Not every detail.
He didn’t need the entire history of Billy, foster homes, CPS, or all the strange turns that eventually made Frank my brother and Claudia my sister-in-law.
I gave him the pieces that mattered. Pregnant at fifteen, alone by the time Charlie was born, and painfully aware that loving my baby wasn’t enough to give him the life he deserved.
I told Jasper how I had chosen Claudia because I had watched her long enough to know what kind of woman she was, how I had made sure she found Charlie and stayed close until I knew he was safe, and how the life that came afterward eventually gave me the privilege of remaining in my son’s world as his aunt.
The entire time, I watched Jasper instead of losing myself to the memories.
Every small change in his face became something I wanted to interpret.
His jaw tightened when I mentioned how young I had been, and I immediately wondered if that was judgment.
His eyes changed when I explained why I chose Claudia, and I couldn’t decide whether I was seeing understanding or pity.
The worst part was that he never pulled away.
His hands remained on me, steady and warm, and somehow that made me more frightened because I kept waiting for the moment when they wouldn’t.
By the time I finished, my throat hurt from trying to keep my voice steady.
I made sure he understood the one thing that mattered most to me.
Charlie was Frank and Claudia’s son. They were his parents, exactly as I had always wanted them to be, and nothing about telling Jasper the truth meant I wanted that to change.
My fear had never been about Charlie or the decision I made for him. It was about Jasper looking back over the last year and realizing that every photograph I sent, every story I told, and every time I called Charlie my nephew, had carried a truth I hadn’t trusted myself to give him yet.
“Charlie is theirs,” I said quickly. “I need you to understand that. I don’t want him back.
I have never wanted to change his life. Frank and Claudia are his mom and dad.
I get to love him. I get to be his aunt and spoil him and watch him grow up knowing he is safe and wanted.
That was what I wanted for him from the beginning. ”
I had stopped watching Jasper’s whole face by then. I was watching pieces. His eyes. The set of his mouth. Whether his hands remained on me.
They did.
“I should have told you sooner. Every time I sent you a picture of him, I thought about it. Every time you asked what Charlie was doing or we talked about someday having children, I knew there was something you didn’t know.
” My voice dropped because this was the part Devlyn couldn’t promise would be okay.
“You don’t lie to me, Jasper. Even when you avoid telling me something, you work so hard not to actually lie.
And I kept letting you believe Charlie was my nephew. ”
“He is your nephew.”
The words surprised me enough that I stopped.
Jasper’s brows pulled together. “Frank’s your brother. Claudia’s his wife. They’re his parents. That makes Charlie your nephew.”
“Yes, but...”
“And you gave birth to him.”
I nodded.
He was quiet for a moment, but this silence didn’t feel like the one I feared for months. Jasper wasn’t looking at me differently in the way I had imagined. He looked like he was trying to understand why I had been terrified to tell him at all.
“Why were you afraid to tell me?”
The question broke something loose inside me. “Because I didn’t know what you would see.”
His expression tightened.
“I know why I did it,” I continued. “I know I made the right choice for Charlie. I don’t regret choosing Claudia.
But you weren’t there. You only have my version, and people hear fifteen-year-old mother and abandoned baby and decide they know what kind of person that makes me.
” My eyes burned despite my determination not to cry again.
“And you talk about someday having children like it’s this beautiful thing waiting in the future, while I’ve already been pregnant.
I’ve already had a baby. I was afraid you’d wonder why I never told you, or think I lied to you, or that you’d look at me and see some stupid girl who—”
“Stop.”
His hands came up and closed around my face.
I stared at him through the blur in my eyes.
“Do not ever call that girl stupid in front of me again.” Jasper’s voice had gone rough, and for the first time since I started talking, I understood some of what I was seeing in his face.
“You were fifteen fuckin’ years old, sleepin’ on streets, pregnant and alone.
And somehow you still had enough sense to watch a woman for days until you knew she was good enough for your baby. ”
My tears spilled over.
Jasper wiped them away with his thumbs.
“You didn’t toss that boy away. You fuckin’ picked his mama.” His forehead settled against mine, his voice dropping as his hands held me gently between them. “Then you stood there and made sure she took him someplace safe before you walked away.”
I closed my eyes.
“Nothin’ you just told me changes a goddamn thing about how I feel about you.”
My breath caught.
“If anythin’, Ma Belle, you just gave me another fuckin’ reason to love you.”
My eyes opened.
Everything else he had said disappeared beneath those last three words. “You love me?”
Jasper stared at me as if I’d just asked the dumbest question he had ever heard.
Then the corner of his mouth lifted. “Baby, I’ve loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
I could only look at him.
A year of texts, calls, jokes, surprise visits, flowers, threats disguised as teasing, and patience that had driven me half insane suddenly rearranged itself around the words.
Since the moment I laid eyes on you.
Devlyn’s voice came back to me.
The La Croix curse.
I let out a breath that trembled into something almost like a laugh. “Devlyn told me.”
Suspicion immediately narrowed Jasper’s eyes. “Told you what?”
“About the curse.”
His entire expression changed. “Oh.”
That one word held enough guilt to make me laugh for real. “You could have mentioned it.”
“I could’ve.”
“You let me spend almost a year thinking you were just incredibly persistent.”
“I am incredibly persistent.”
“And apparently cursed.”
“Blessed,” he corrected. “Depends who you ask.” He shrugged.
I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop smiling. “She told me La Croix men know.”
“We do.”
“And you knew when you met me?”
His eyes held mine without hesitation. “The second I saw you.”
There was something terrifying about being loved with that much certainty. And something equally terrifying about realizing I didn’t want him to love me any other way.
Jasper brushed one last tear from beneath my eye, then glanced toward the clock beside the bed. Whatever he saw made him grimace.
“What?”
“My mama.”
I laughed. “What about her?”
“We’re runnin’ out of time before she gets here, and if I don’t have an answer when she walks through that door, I may not survive long enough to ask you again.”
The absurdity of the morning finally caught up with me.
Yesterday I had gone to work. Last night a man attacked me.
Jasper appeared out of nowhere, killed whatever distance I had been pretending existed between us, hauled me across several states, brought me to New Orleans, and now stood in front of me asking me to marry him before his mother arrived.
It was insane.
Maybe I was insane too.
Because when I looked at Jasper, I didn’t feel rushed. I didn’t feel trapped. I didn’t feel like last night had stolen the choice from me.
I thought about yesterday morning instead.
About every morning before it.
About the house that didn’t exist yet. The children we had joked about. The shirt I still hadn’t gotten to steal. The way his voice sounded when he called me Ma Belle and the way he’d waited for me through every uncertainty I placed between us.
I had been falling in love with him slowly enough to mistake it for friendship until there was no safe place left to land.
Now there was.
Him.
I slid my hands up his chest and around his neck.
“I love you too, Jasper.”
His eyes closed for half a second, and the happiness that crossed his face when they opened made my heart squeeze.
I smiled through the last of my tears.
“And yes. I’ll marry you.”