21. “Ray of Light” #2
Javi, being Javi, noticed.
“What?” he asked.
“This is just information. It’s yours to do with as you wish. And again, I won’t judge. Also, it must be said, I didn’t know them very well. But from what I knew, they were nice girls.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, looking to his long legs. “That’s what I got on them too.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“I don’t think I can do it,” he told his legs.
Oh, my Javi.
I knew what he was saying.
“They’ll probably put pressure on me to let him in,” he said.
“Probably,” I agreed.
He looked at me. “And that’s not gonna happen. It just isn’t. They won’t get why, because they didn’t live my life. You can hear it. You can empathize with it. But unless you lived it, you will never get it.”
I fought tears while I nodded.
“So I don’t need that shit,” Javi continued. “And they don’t either.”
“No,” I said huskily.
Hearing my tone, he bent toward me again, this time getting closer.
“Better I save us all the hassle,” he said. “They never had me, I never had them, we’re not missing anything.”
I could disagree.
But I didn’t.
“Another part of it, mi pequena , is my life will always be something I lived, and they didn’t. They lived something really fuckin’ different. And the gulf between what they had and what I didn’t is too massive to navigate.”
At that, I gulped, because I lived what they lived.
“This isn’t about you, baby. You aren’t my sister,”—his lips twitched—“thank fuck.”
“Thank eff,” I agreed.
He bent even closer and gave me a quick kiss before muttering against my lips, “My good girl.”
Whatever.
He pulled back a couple of inches. “So, to end, you do not have to confront that guy. I’m good.”
I still wanted to tell Austin Atherton to lay off.
But for now, I nodded.
“Seriously, Harlow, let it go,” he ordered.
Shoot!
“Okay, Javi,” I caved (maybe).
He also read the maybe, I knew when he stated, “The decision is made, and you met him, he saw you. He’s retreated for now, but no man alive would look at you and not know where I’m at with you.
Especially after, no hesitation, you got between us and sent his ass packing.
You go barreling in, stating my case, trying to get him to back off, it’s just gonna solidify what he already knows.
I got something serious with a good woman.
You think he’s not gonna wanna be a part of that?
Get to know you? His son’s woman. The mother of his future grandkids. ”
I gulped a lot harder that time.
Which meant I had to force out, “The mother of his future grandkids?”
His brows drew down ominously. “Are we not on the same page?”
He wanted me to have his children!
I definitely wanted a lot more time with just me and Javi (a lot more), but it had to be said, I wanted to bear his children.
We were totally on the same page.
Still.
“We haven’t talked kids, Javi.”
“How many you want?”
“No more than three.”
“Agreed,” he grunted. “So we just talked kids.”
I burst out laughing.
Javi wrapped an arm around my hips and pulled me close as I did, so he was all I could see when I stopped.
“You show up,” he said gently, “takin’ your man’s back…again…it’s gonna light an even bigger fire under him. More of his penance. He knows I got through it to a good life, a good woman, building a family, and he had no part in that and will continue to have no part in it.”
This was what he needed. This was what he decided. And he didn’t want me involved.
So I wasn’t going to get involved.
I dropped my phone to the bed so I could stroke his cheek. “Okay, Javi.”
“I’m telling you this because that’s my decision about my father, my family. I don’t have any doubts about it. I can’t tell the future. What I can say now is, it would shock the shit out of me some future me made a different decision.”
“Right,” I said when he stopped talking.
“And I’m not losing sleep over it,” he went on.
“Okay.”
“So if you don’t call your dad, or you decide you’re done with them, that the way they treated you is something you can’t get over, something you don’t want to put the energy into living with, you’re within your rights to scrape them off and be with the people you feel safe with.”
Ah.
Now I was with him on his arc.
“I’m not as far along as you are in figuring out where I’m at, honey,” I told him.
“And that’s okay too. For once in your life with that family of yours, this is gonna be about you, on your timeline, what you want, and it’s gonna go down how you want it.”
I was so totally having this man’s babies.
He let me go and sat back, before he declared, “So I’m gonna find your dad, have a word, and tell him to back the fuck off.”
I stared.
Then I hummed, “Ummm…”
He sipped and said casually, “No debate, babe. You’re callin’ the shots with this. And I’m making sure he knows you are.”
“Can I call the shots and ask you not to go confront my dad?” I requested.
“No,” he denied.
“Javi!” I snapped.
Suddenly, his coffee was down, my coffee was down, and I was astride his hips, my chest pressed to his, and his face was in mine.
Oh boy.
“I get you,” he growled. “I’m not letting you do what I’m gonna do.
But my decision about my father is made.
There’s nothing he can do about it. Yours isn’t.
You need space. You need time to think. And you’re gonna get it without getting into some text shit or taking some phone call and having them wiggle into your head, fucking it up. ”
“Jav—”
He cut me off. “So it’s gotta be me who shares they wait. If they can’t, that helps you make your decision. But until you’re ready to do whatever you’re gonna do, they are gonna lay the fuck off. I’m starting with your dad. He can tell the other two.”
“I could just block him until I’m ready to talk to him.”
“He know where you live?”
“I’m not living there at the moment.”
“He know where you work?”
Bluh.
I said nothing.
“Yeah,” Javi grunted. “Your fruit is in my fridge. Your yoga mat is in my other bedroom. Your ass is in my bed. I’m your guy. And I’m not only gonna do this, I gotta do this.”
This was definitely Alpha Man Territory (with capital letters), and since I as yet had not had my training, I had to tread cautiously.
“I can take care of myself, sweetheart,” I said carefully.
“I know. And you been doin’ that with them for thirty years,” he returned. “But you’re not alone now.”
“You’re not either,” I pointed out.
“I know,” he replied.
“So…you take care of me, what quid pro quo do I get with that?”
He stared at me.
Hard.
“And don’t you mention slutty cheerleaders,” I warned.
“Babe,” he whispered, and his tone made me go on high alert.
“What?” I whispered back.
“This is why my sisters will never get it, but it’s something”—he gave me a powerful squeeze—“you’ve gotta get.”
“What?” I said a lot more tremulously this time.
He didn’t hesitate to rock my world.
“I wake up to sunshine every day. We could live in fucking Russia, and if I woke up beside you, I’d wake up to sunshine.
Don’t get pissed, but it’s the truth. You can’t say fuck, but you suck my cock like it’s your favorite thing to do and your mouth can get dirty when I’m inside you.
You wave at me when you walk away from me to go to work.
You bounce around my kitchen when you make your smoothies in the morning.
You got nighties with you, but you wear my tees to bed every night.
You look at me like I can command a flood and bring the rain.
And from the time I was six to the time I was twenty-two, I didn’t have a home.
I also didn’t have the luxury of my sole focus being my survival.
I’m six and I’m lookin’ after me and my ma, so all that time, I had to focus on both of us making it through. ”
His arms got tighter, and his voice got rougher. The first was good, because all he was saying was threatening to break me apart, and he was holding me together.
“And I got your perfume, which smells like flowers and sunshine too, on my sheets and a fancy blanket on my couch.”
His new blanket was nice, but it wasn’t fancy.
Even so, he’d definitely think it was.
“You give quid pro quo by breathing,” he finished.
Oh my God.
Oh my God .
Oh my God, God, God .
I was sooooooooooo having Javi’s babies.
My voice was a mess because I was struggling against crying when I said, “I’ll do my best to keep doing that for a really long time.”
“Obliged,” he muttered, his hold on me loosening, but he didn’t let go.
“And I won’t go see your dad,” I confirmed what I’d said earlier.
“Good,” he replied.
“I think if you really tried, you could command a flood and bring the rain,” I whispered, then watched as he closed his eyes very slowly, and that pain I saw the other night when I’d called him an endearment settled on his features.
But I was wrong.
It wasn’t pain.
Or maybe it was, but it was pain that felt really, really good.
I lightly ran my fingernails over his morning stubble, and he opened his eyes. “I really screwed up not giving you the clue I was into you a whole lot earlier, didn’t I?”
That got me his arms squeezing me again. “No regrets.”
“Okay,” I wheezed.
He loosened his hold. “You got anything else you wanna say about me goin’ to see your dad?”
God.
He was just… life .
He was giving me a shot to further state my case.
But I had no case.
If he had to do it, if he, being alpha, or just being Javi and having lived his whole life looking after a woman in it making this something he was driven to do, Dad was probably going to flip when he had a big man in his face about his daughter.
But Javi had to do it.
So I wasn’t going to say another word.
I shook my head.
“You need your smoothie?” he asked.
I nodded my head.
He cupped it and brought it to his for a quick kiss.
When he let me move back, he said, “Okay, babe, let’s face the day.”
Another part of my (our) new ritual, once I got back into bed after Javi went to get our coffees, as usual, I didn’t get myself out of it.
Javi got us both out.
Javi had also taken a shine to my smoothies.
And that morning, there might have been a bouncier bounce to my step when I made them.
But I didn’t think anyone would blame me.