Chapter 39
Jonas
“We don’t have to do this today,” I tell Emma as she finishes checking the supplies in Bash’s diaper bag. “Today’s been good. Great. Fantastic . Making her wait won’t make it worse. Might even make it better. Show her who has the power.”
“It’s like you didn’t meet my family at an ambush cookout and let them take you camping where I hear you suffered some intestinal distress you never told me about,” she replies.
“Just suffering what I deserved to prove I’m here for real. No running away. Not like last time. Also, no one wants to hear about what your brother’s stash of camp food can do to a person.”
“Mama, what am-buf ?” Bash asks. He’s racing cars over the bright red-patterned rug in the middle of the living room.
“Ambush? It’s…a surprise. But not always a good surprise.”
“Wike Unca Deo?”
“Yes. Uncle Theo is a constant ambush.” She slings the large black bag over her shoulder and holds out a hand to him. “Want to go have dinner and make new friends?”
“No.”
“Begonia and Marshmallow will be there.”
“Aun Beebee be dare?”
“Nope, Aunt Sabrina won’t be there tonight.”
“Aun Waney?”
“No, sweetie. Just you, me, Jonas, Begonia, Hayes, Marshmallow, and a new friend.”
“Zen-Zen?”
“No Zen-Zen either. But we’ll still have fun.”
“We might have different definitions of fun ,” I murmur to Emma.
Real talk though—I’m turned on as hell at how she’s tackling this.
And at the way she’s pursing her lips in amusement.
On a normal day, I’d smile right back.
Seeing Emma confident? Ready to tackle whatever my family throws at her? Knowing my mother will likely be looking for an opportunity to take a clip of Bash’s hair for a DNA sample, and knowing Emma knows it too?
I like it.
But not as much as I would if we were tackling something less precarious.
Like rock-climbing without harnesses.
“Dodo Ono?” Bash asks.
Emma shakes her head. “Yolko Ono is staying home tonight. What’s going on here? Why don’t you want to see Marshmallow and Begonia?”
He grins at her.
And while he looks just like me ninety-nine percent of the time, that grin is one hundred percent channeling his Uncle Theo.
If my family had been more like Ryan Reynolds’s family and less like, well, the Razzle Dazzle family, I could’ve had some fun with Theo back in the day too.
Never really regretted not being more adventurous his way, but I’m starting to wonder what parts of life I’ve missed.
Emma’s smiling but shaking her head at him. “C’mon, Bashy-boo. Mama’s hungry. And if Mama doesn’t eat?—”
“Mama woar !” Bash finished. “Wike a wion .”
“Exactly,” Emma agrees. “Mama gets so hangry she turns into a lion.”
“Mon, Dona.” Bash abandons the cars on the rug and runs to me, grabbing my hand. “No mama wion. Mama go eat. Mon .”
“Can’t have Mama turning into a lion,” I agree.
His chubby little fingers wrap around my thumb while he tugs on my hand, insisting I c’mon , and I silently vow—again—to do everything in my power to protect this little boy with my life.
He pulls me to the garage door, where Hayes’s security detail has parked their van and are ready with Bash’s car seat installed and waiting.
Emma didn’t question why we couldn’t drive ourselves.
Instead, she met my eyes and silently telegraphed okay, I get it, this is your life, so this is what we’ll do .
But she still insists on making sure it’s installed correctly before we load up.
If I’m being honest—I want to see Emma turn into a lion.
Specifically, when she meets my mother.
I like brave Emma.
I like Emma in all forms, but brave Emma?
Brave Emma is on a whole new level.
The van’s seats have been turned in the back so she and Bash face me when I sit in the rear of the vehicle. Every time we take a curve, Bash throws his hands in the air and giggles. “Pass-da, Mama!”
“Mama’s not driving, silly boy. And we should not go faster.”
“Woe-wa coda!” he shrieks.
Emma smiles at him, a full-on, full-fun, amused smile. And then she fake gasps and puts a hand to her heart. “It’s an out of control roller coaster! Oh, no!”
He cackles and pumps his arms higher. “Dona! Woe-wa coda!”
I throw my hands in the air too. “Help! Help! Someone stop this roller coaster!”
Robert, the security agent in the driver’s seat gives me a look.
“I’m playing ,” I stage whisper.
He shifts his gaze back to the road, and suddenly the car lurches.
The tires screech.
We swerve on the windy road.
Bash screeches in utter glee, but I don’t.
Not when I can see what’s coming.
I register a deer.
No, not a deer. A cow. A brown cow with a llama neck charging from the hillside to the left.
Someone says elk —maybe me?—a split second before there’s a crunch and a jolt and another swerve that takes us too close to the edge of the road.
My seat belt snaps hard, holding me in place as I try to lunge for Emma and Bash.
Bash is squealing and pumping his arms.
Emma holds an arm in front of him like she can keep him safe with the power of a single mom arm. Her eyes are wide.
She knows.
Danger.
Danger .
The van teeters to a stop with a steep, forested hillside inches away, waiting to swallow us whole.
Robert says a word that I know Theo and several other relatives probably say in front of Bash regularly.
The car rocks for one more long moment, and then Robert is somehow unbuckling his seat belt, whipping out his phone, and opening his door at the same time. He climbs out muttering words that are definitely a toned-down version of what I’d expect.
“What was that?” Emma gasps.
“Deer.” I unbuckle too and slide forward, unsure who to check first, knowing I need to get both of them out on the road side of the van as opposed to the hillside. “You okay?”
Bash cackles. “Woe-wa coda stop! Go ’gain!”
Emma unbuckles and twists. “That’s an elk , Jonas.”
“Other side of the car. Don’t lean that way.”
She glances to her left, then lunges at Bash, unbuckling him faster than that elk was running at our car.
“Half my life,” she mutters to herself while she creeps in front of Bash and pulls him down.
I inch toward the door on the road side. “Em?”
“I’ve been driving half my life and I’ve never hit an elk. Which you don’t say out loud if you don’t want to jinx it.”
“Robert did it for you. C’mon. Out.”
I pause to listen for approaching cars around the bend, and when I hear none, I take Bash from her, then grab her hand and pull her out from the driver’s side. We all hustle to the back of the van.
“Woe-wa coda?” Bash asks.
“He wasn’t going that fast,” I say to Emma.
“I know. It’s a game we play. Theo taught him. We could be going four miles an hour and Bash will play roller coaster.” She glances at the van, then down the hillside, and then back at me.
And I slowly realize I’m holding Bash, and that the absolute miracle of him will never get old. No matter what he calls me.
My little boy stares at me. And then he pokes me in the cheek. “You got da suffy. Wike Unca Gay.”
“He’s scruffy like Uncle Grey today, hm?” Emma says.
“Get back in the car,” Robert orders from the front.
“Not when it’s about to fall off a cliff,” I reply.
Emma clears her throat, amusement dancing back into her eyes.
Tilts her head at the car.
And the cliff.
Robert leans around the van to glare at me. “Backup is on the way. Get back in the car .”
There’s a solid foot between the van and the edge of the road.
“Should be a guard rail,” I mutter.
“This isn’t the curve people fall off of around here,” Emma says lightly. She leans around the van and looks at Robert. “How’s the elk?”
He points down the hill. “Gone. Apologies, ma’am. I’ll submit my resignation to Mr. Rutherford as soon as we arrive at the house.”
“While this isn’t the curve people fall off of,” she says, sending me an impish grin, “it is the curve that has the most animal accidents per year. Even locals regularly hit wildlife here.”
“It was charging us. Not the other way around,” I agree.
“We’re all fine,” Emma adds. “It happens.”
Robert stares both of us down. “Not on my watch. Please get back in the vehicle while we wait for backup.”
Emma nods and gives me the we need to humor him look as another engine hums around the corner. She flings an arm in front of me, stopping me from heading to enter the van from the road side until the car passes.
But the car doesn’t pass.
It slows.
Then slows more.
And more.
Until it comes to a stop right next to her.
The passenger window rolls down. “Emma? What the fuck? Are you okay?”
Chandler.
Fucking Chandler .
“Just fine,” she replies mildly. “You shouldn’t stop in the middle of the road. Especially not here. Thanks for checking on us.”
He looks at me. Then at the van. Then at Robert. Back to me. “I figured out who you are.”
Emma’s entire body goes stiffer than the drink I’ll unfortunately be declining when we get to Hayes’s house. “We’re fine ,” she says again. “Thank you for stopping. Please go before someone rear-ends you.”
The engine of Chandler’s car shifts noises like it’s been put in park. “This douchebag isn’t kidnapping you, is he?”
Robert, who’s halfway to the car, stops and blows out a breath.
Must’ve heard that one.
Emma waves her phone at Chandler. “Free to call anyone I like. I’m fine. Once again, please go.”
“Emma hates the spotlight,” Chandler says to me. “You know what the spotlight would do to her, don’t you?”
Fuck me.
That’s a threat.
I tighten my grip on Bash, who’s leaning into me like he, too, is picking up on the bad vibes.
“The sheriff’s on her way,” she replies evenly. “Please go.”
Robert steps between me and the car. “There a problem?” he says.
“Robert, this is Chandler. My ex-fiancé. He doesn’t live on this road. Chandler, this is Robert. My—let’s call him one of my special friends who have ways of finding out things that even Sabrina won’t know.”
Chandler must be angling in the car to look at me again, because Robert shifts, then shifts again.
“Are you giving me some kind of warning with that?” Chandler says to Emma.
“Do I need to?”
My ears tingle. My body tenses.
Another car is coming around the bend.
Robert hears it too. He’s immediately leaping into action, flying to the back of Chandler’s car to wave his arms, alerting the other driver to slow down.
I grab Emma by her shirt and yank her to me, pausing only long enough to make sure I’m not about to hurl all of us over the cliff before I drag her and Bash out of what I expect will be the crash zone if that car doesn’t stop.
There’s a squeal of brakes, and then silence.
“Move on,” Robert orders.
Bash looks at me and bursts into tears.
Emma wraps her arms around both of us and buries her face in my neck.
She’s shaking.
She put on a brave front, and now she’s shaking.
“I’m quitting,” I whisper, my voice far hoarser than I thought it would be. “In another two years, no one will even remember who I was. And until then—until then, I’ve got you. Okay? I’ve got you. I’ve got both of you.”
She squeezes tighter. “I believe you.”
Does she?
Or is this unearned optimism?
“We don’t have to go,” I murmur. “I’ll call my mother. Tell her we’ll do this tomorrow.”
“Begonia needs to get home before those babies pop out here, and I know she’s only here for the two of us,” she replies. “We’re going. We’re doing this. Today. So she can go back to her normal life too. A little car accident and threats from my ex won’t keep me down. I’m not that person anymore.”
“If you change your mind?—”
“You’ll be the first person to know.”
I kiss her forehead.
It’s not enough. I don’t know if loving her—if loving both her and Bash will ever be enough .
Not when I know love can’t keep a person safe.