Chapter 11
Emma
I sleep like crap and wake up to a message that puts me in the kind of foul mood that I haven’t felt for a very, very long time.
I don’t like being cranky. It’s not natural. It’s not who I am.
But it’s necessary today.
“What do you mean, you’re postponing your honeymoon?” I hiss at Theo. I’m in the kitchen prepping industrial-strength coffee at an ungodly early hour, knowing Bash will be up within minutes because he’s always awake early the mornings after he’s up too late.
Today will be brutal if I’m not prepared.
Worth it—the reception was perfect and fun and everything it should’ve been, no matter how much I couldn’t even contemplate what food would do to my knotted stomach—but still brutal.
Hence the coffee.
With a side of the absolute wrong news.
“We’re postponing our honeymoon,” my brother repeats. “Sheriff found a car parked at the Twin Ridge parking lot. You’re likely to get a visitor.”
“I already sent him away.”
“ Why the fuck didn’t you call me ?”
“Because I can handle my own problems .”
“ Can and should and have to are all different things,” Laney calls in the background.
These two. I know they mean well. I love that they love me enough to change their plans for me. But I can handle my life, and I don’t like them coddling me when it’s not necessary. “You have exactly six weeks before your doctor won’t let you travel anymore. Go on your honeymoon .”
“Too expensive to rebook now,” Theo says.
I’m gripping my phone so tightly that I might break it.
Despite all of his attempts to spend and give away the cash that he made in the few years that he was the world’s biggest online adult entertainment star—before giving it all up for Laney, at his insistence, which was my favorite news that I came home to after Fiji—he’s accidentally made a few investments and tackled some projects that amused him which have tripled what he made as an online porn star. My brother is rich as sin.
Maybe not Rutherford rich, but still loaded.
Talk about things I never thought I’d hear myself say when we were growing up as the poor kids in Snaggletooth Creek.
And Laney’s about to take the reins as CEO of her parents’ online photo gift business, which is also a multi-million-dollar company.
They can afford to rebook their honeymoon. “I realize I have no business telling either of you how to spend your money, but it’s too expensive is the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard from either one of you. Ever. Times twenty. Billion. Times twenty billion.”
“Em, I hate to be the wet blanket—” Laney starts, but Theo cuts her off.
“If that asshole starts asking for paternity tests and visitation while we’re gone?—”
“And we’ve gone so many amazing places already,” Laney continues. “Delaying our honeymoon and possibly taking the baby with us so we can be here now just in case makes us happy.”
“And we can afford babysitters when we want private mommy-daddy time whenever we take our honeymoon,” Theo adds.
“ I told you not to say that to her .”
He’s wearing that I love to get in trouble with my girlfriend grin. I don’t have to see him to recognize the vibe coming through the phone.
Except now, it’s officially the I love getting in trouble with my wife grin.
I love them.
But I don’t like them this morning.
I guzzle my coffee—doctored with so much cream and sugar that it’s not hot anymore, naturally—and look out at my chicken coop, where I need to go gather a few eggs, then choke.
Jonas is asleep on my backyard swing out in the back part of my yard.
And mama instinct tells me Bash is awake a split second before I hear his little voice drift down the stairs, singing a Waverly Sweet song that I suspect he learned from Zen.
No “Baby Shark” or “Twinkle Twinkle” for my kid.
He’s all pop songs.
And I adore it.
“Gotta go,” I rasp. “Bash just woke up.”
“We’ll swing by with breakfast,” Theo says.
“ You just got married . Have breakfast just the two of you and go on your honeymoon .”
“No.”
“You think Sabrina and Grey and Zen will leave me hanging if he shows back up?” I ask, hoping Jonas is actually asleep out there and not faking it. My window is open.
He can hear me.
But I don’t know if he knows who my friends are.
Grey’s a scientific genius who invented self-sealing cereal bags. Licensing the patent pays him enough that he’ll likely be a billionaire before long.
Never mind the research he’s working on now that’ll probably be even bigger once he wraps it up and goes public with it.
If I can’t afford the best family law attorney, then no matter how much I hate having people take care of me, I’ll ask my friends for help.
Purely for Bash’s sake.
And then I’ll owe them for the rest of my life.
I can’t battle the Rutherford family’s lawyers solo.
Which sucks .
All I want to do is live my simple life with my son. With our chickens and our little family-of-two-size house and good friends in our close-knit community.
When Jonas didn’t reply to my emails about my pregnancy and Bash’s birth—which was the only way I knew to try to get in touch with him—I thought we were safe.
That we could live a private, simple life.
“Knowing you have other people to help and being some of those people who help are two different things,” Theo says. “We’re delaying.”
That’s his I’m a stubborn ass and I’m digging my heels in voice.
He tried to break up with Laney using that voice when my wedding fell apart, but he barely made it a week before he was eating his words and groveling.
Or so the story goes.
Sort of missed witnessing it myself, and it took a while after I got home from Fiji before my friends and I found normal again.
But we found it.
Because that’s what friends do. We all shared blame for hurting each other, and we’re all stronger for having worked through it.
“We’re absolutely delaying,” Laney echoes.
Dammit .
That’s her stubborn voice.
She’s far less likely to break.
“Do what you think you have to do,” I grumble. “But I still object.”
“Noted,” Laney says.
“We’ll be over with breakfast in an hour,” Theo adds.
“How’s your hand?” I ask him. He insisted last night it wasn’t broken, but it was definitely swollen.
“Fine. Definitely fine enough to bring you breakfast.”
I roll my eyes. “I love you both, but I don’t like you right now.”
“We can live with that.”
“Em?” Laney says. “We didn’t know it was Jonas until a few weeks ago. And we didn’t know know. We strongly suspected but didn’t know . And that was the week Bash had strep. You had a lot on your plate that was more important.”
“I told them to quit jumping to conclusions and to let you have your secret,” Theo says. “My fault no one told you we suspected anything.”
I growl.
Laney growls.
“Quit being the damn martyr,” I tell my brother.
“Sabrina had every intention?—”
“Of asking me if I wanted to know if she had accidentally found out something that she knew I wanted kept a secret,” I finish for her.
She told me so last night after the reception, which would’ve felt very normal if I hadn’t spent the entire time wondering if Jonas would sweet-talk his way into the speakeasy.
“You two are okay?” Laney asks.
“We’re very okay. I told her I would’ve said she was wrong no matter who she guessed until the moment he showed up in town. I just?—”
“Want Bash to have a normal childhood and you couldn’t do that if anyone knew who his father was?”
“ Yes .”
“We’ll make sure he has a normal Monroe childhood,” Theo says.
That makes me laugh out loud. Bash has enough of the male Monroe genes in him that I know the next forever part of my life will be filled with heart-stopping moments and probably bailing him out of jail a time or two as well.
“Thank you.”
“Is it fair to ask for details now that he’s here?” Laney asks.
“I’ll give you details. Eventually. Promise.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. But I think it’s about time.”
“We can put out word that I hate him because he wants to make a movie about my life,” Theo says.
I almost drop my phone. “Are you serious right now?”
Laney makes a strangled noise. “We actually think it might be more believable than him being Bash’s father…”
I cannot process this right now. “I need to go. Bash is awake.”
“Love you, Em,” they say together.
“Love you both too, even if I’m still mad you’re skipping your honeymoon.”
We hang up, and I look at my pet.
Not quite the dogs and cats I had in mind, but I think this is better.
“Breakfast for you,” I tell Yolko Ono, who’s in her favorite box in the kitchen. She’s a white Silkie, which means she’s tall and slender and has fluffy white feathers covering her eyes so you’re never sure if she’s looking at you or not.
She was born with only one leg but an attitude like she has four and can actually fly.
I love her to pieces.
So does Bash.
She clucks once and dives into yesterday’s leftover fruit salad that I set beside her. I’ll let her outside to eat with the rest of the chickens later too.
Bash is singing louder to himself.
Is his window open?
I don’t think I left it cracked to let in the night air, but I can’t remember now.
If it’s open, his voice hasn’t woken Jonas. Unless he’s really good at pretending he’s asleep.
Which he might be.
But if I were acting like I was asleep, I wouldn’t choose that position.
My lifetime-ago solo honeymoon fling has his head tilted funny on one armrest of the porch swing that’s dangling from my pergola and that I only got put back up yesterday after having it cleaned and re-stained.
His dark hair falls across his forehead and his legs stick out over the other armrest. His hands are tucked under his armpits like he’s trying to keep them warm.
I can probably get upstairs, grab Bash, and get out of the garage and head into town before he’s awake or before he realizes he needs to quit acting like he’s asleep.
Or, I can face the fact that Jonas won’t leave until I talk to him.
I could call the sheriff, but see again, billionaire family who will sue me for custody and make my life miserable .