Chapter 17
Jonas
When Emma said family cookout , I expected to see her dad and her brother and her brother’s new wife.
Maybe her friend Sabrina and Sabrina’s boyfriend too.
I didn’t expect a patio full of people staring at me like I walked out here with my underwear on my head and my butt cheeks hanging out.
Theo’s at the grill. Even if I’d only known Emma’s brother was that tatted guy who once had a popular GrippaPeen channel , or as the guy who tried to end me for causing a scene after his wedding, I’d recognize him.
He and Emma have the same eyes and mouth, though his hair is light brown and wavy instead of blond and tucked into a neat ponytail, and they have different noses and chins.
He looks me square on, silently threatens to disembowel me in very creative ways, nods once, and goes back to putting burgers on to cook.
I’m guessing the guy with the salt-and-pepper hair next to him is Emma’s dad. Lots of family resemblance there too.
Two dogs, one a chocolate lab about the size of Begonia’s Shiloh Shepherd, the other a significantly larger St. Bernard, sniff in my direction. Grey Cartwright rises from an Adirondack chair on the edge of the patio and heads my way the same time the older man does.
Grey, who towers over everyone else on the patio, with dark hair, a short beard, and the attention of both dogs, reaches me first and extends a hand. “Jonas. Nice to meet you. Formally. I’ll try to not rack you in the balls again today. Probably. You meet Mike Monroe yet?”
I turn and shake hands with Emma’s dad. “Not yet. It’s a pleasure, sir.”
“We’ll see,” he replies.
Emma tumbles out of the back door of the small cabin, and I have to remind myself to breathe.
Nerves.
All nerves.
She’s the person I have to impress if I want to have a part in my— our son’s life.
She’s also the accidental friend that I didn’t even know I needed when I passed out drunk on her porch in Fiji, thinking it was my own.
Today, she’s in a long multicolored sundress with bare feet. She has minimal makeup on. Just enough to make her big brown eyes pop and her lips turn that soft, sparkly pink.
Her cheeks aren’t as sharp as they were in Fiji, though her ears are still a little too big for her head, which is absolutely adorable.
She stumbles, and I realize she’s not tumbling out alone.
Two women—easily identifiable as her best friends, Delaney and Sabrina—follow too quickly on her heels.
Both women are pregnant. Both are also forces of nature in their own ways, according to the report Hayes’s security detail insisted I read before coming out here today.
“The cats wanted to come out,” Emma says. The nerves in her voice make me want to hug her, but I know I lost that privilege when I left Fiji without a goodbye.
“We had to corral Fred and Panini, and then Widget tried to prove he could fly,” Laney adds.
Sabrina doesn’t say anything.
Hayes’s security team told me not to say anything in front of her.
They also told me to read the full report on everyone in Emma’s life, and I’m glad I did, since there are still at least four other people here.
Aside from Bash.
Who is not back out from his diaper change.
“Anyway, welcome.” Emma’s twisting her fingers in her dress and talking fast. Definitely nervous. “Are you thirsty? Zen brought Snaggletooth Creek-brewed kombucha. I didn’t think I’d ever like kombucha, but theirs is the best.”
“I drank it all,” one of the Sullivan triplets lingering at the edge of the patio says. His shirt suggests he’s Lucky, but the haircut says he’s Decker. “Sorry, Em.”
“You did not,” his brother says. Haircut says Lucky. Shirt style, though, implies Jack.
I think I’m being tested. Or else the report was wrong.
Most likely, I’m being tested.
I’d be amused if my heart wasn’t about to pound out of my chest.
Seeing Bash through the screen door on his way to having an honorary uncle change his diaper has me realizing what’s at stake here.
I have to fit in to this family that Emma’s built for herself if I want to have any role in my son’s life.
If I want to have any role in her life.
“We have water and beer and fruit juice too.” Emma’s wiping her hands on her sun dress now, swaying back and forth.
She’s flustered.
And I know I’m not the only one who’s noticing.
This shouldn’t be so hard.
We were friends.
But I have a lot of work to do if I want to be friends again. “I’m good for now. Thank you.”
The back door doesn’t open.
Bash doesn’t come running out to meet me.
Not that I expect him to. Want him to, but don’t expect him to.
“Whenever you change your mind, the cooler’s full.” She points to a red cooler next to the back door, smacking Sabrina in the chest in the process.
Delaney Kingston—no, that would be Delaney Monroe now, according to Begonia, who says Delaney told her herself that she took Theo’s last name—steps forward like she’s covering Sabrina’s oof and Emma’s horrified look at herself.
“Hi. I’m Laney. Welcome.” She steers me away from where the two other women are whispering sorry s and I’m okay s, and points at various people and things instead.
“Theo and I are in disagreement over how happy we are to have you here, but I think we’ll weather this argument just fine.
Hopefully you do too. Bathrooms are inside, though feel free to use the trees as long as you’re out of sight.
I understand that might’ve been one of your orders.
But if you do go inside, please don’t let the cats out.
Also, they know how to open the bathroom door, and they don’t really have any boundaries about where they like to go or what they think is a toy. ”
Sabrina coughs.
Emma sighs.
“This is Sabrina,” Laney adds, gesturing from a safe distance to the gossip of the group. She’s the shortest of the bunch, with red curly hair and bright green eyes and skin white enough that I don’t know if she never goes outside or if she has excellent sunscreen.
Laney points to the largest of the men in the group next, then ticks off the people one by one.
“I know you, ah, met Grey at my wedding, but this is the rest of him. Mike Monroe, Theo and Emma’s dad.
Zen—they’re one of our favorite people, and I think they’ve pulled more overnight shifts with Em and the baby than the rest of us.
Not to mention the craving patrol services when she was pregnant.
And then we have the triplets. This is Jack and?—”
She stares at the first of the two triplets out here, a comical look crossing her face.
Both of the triplets stare back straight-faced.
“Lucky,” Zen, who’s nearly as tall as me, slender, with short blond hair and an eyebrow ring, finishes for her. “Jack and Lucky.”
“Jack and Lucky,” I repeat. “Nice to meet you. All of you.”
Emma’s lips go flat as she slides them a look.
I’m definitely being tested.
And Emma looks like she’s currently wishing I’d declined this invitation. It’s like the first day I met her in Fiji. She’s nervous. Uncomfortable.
Makes me want to hug her again, but she’s already hugging herself, and everyone here has more of a right to comfort her than I do.
I should’ve made an effort to stay in touch.
This is on me.
“You grill?” Theo asks me.
One test on top of the other. Exactly what I deserve. “No, but I’ve always wanted to learn.”
“You’ve never grilled?” Lucky says. The real Lucky, if the haircut is to be believed.
“That surprises you?” Zen replies.
I don’t hear Lucky’s answer.
The back door has opened, and a tiny human with light brown hair, brown eyes, a solid chunk of a body, and legs that apparently have one speed— fast —dashes out onto the patio. “Mama! Mama titty!”
Emma squats and catches him as he throws himself at her.
My heart tries to throw itself at both of them while my body has an instinctive need to leap to her side and make sure he doesn’t bowl her over.
But she absorbs the impact like she does this a million times a day.
Which she probably does.
While I haven’t been here.
“Oh, did you pet the kitty?” she asks, a real smile curving her pink lips for the first time since I knocked on the front door.
“It dick me, mama!”
“It licked you?”
“Uh-huh. Unka Deo! Titty dick me!”
“Did you lick the kitty back?” Theo asks.
“Yep!” Bash sticks his tongue out and mimics licking.
Emma shoots Theo a look.
Theo grins and goes back to putting hamburgers on the grill.
And I look back at a little boy who’s staring at me with my own eyes.
The word hi dies in my throat, right under that rock of surprise and joy and fear and adoration and discomfort that’s making it hard to swallow.
Again.
“Mama, who dat?” he says.
“That’s Mama’s friend, Jonas,” Emma replies, still down on his level, one hand tucked around his belly while he leans against her.
This is who she was meant to be.
Not the lost, hurt bride I found in Fiji.
Not the warrior princess I found in her backyard, who appeared again when she tracked me down to lay out the terms under which I could meet my son.
She’s meant to be happy. With a big family. Siblings—biological and found—and kids and joy in the little things.
She glows here.
A ghost of a smile still hovers on her lips, but her eyes—those eyes are on full alert.
And they shouldn’t have to be.
I open my mouth.
Try to say hi again.
Fail.
Miserably .
Is that the first thing I want to say to my son? Hi ?
Not that I’ll be telling him he’s my son today. Emma’s instructions were clear, and I’d prefer to find a way into their lives that doesn’t involve the lawyers.
No matter how much that’ll give my own mother indigestion and a heart attack and probably an aneurysm too.
Bash pulls away from Emma. “I go pway side!” He takes off for a swing set between the edge of the patio and the forest behind the house, and Zen and Lucky—I think that’s Lucky—close ranks to follow him.
The back door slams again. “Oh. You’re here. Hi. I’m?—”
“Decker,” the real Decker answers for him. I read that report right, didn’t I?
“Decker,” the real Jack echoes.
“Would you three knock it off?” Emma whispers.
“No,” two of them reply together.
A large spatula slaps my chest.
“Time to learn, Hollywood,” Theo says.
It is.
But not how to grill.
I need to learn how to be a father.