Chapter 44
Emma
For what feels like the millionth time in the past week, Jonas is once again studying me closely and saying, “Are you sure about this?”
And for the millionth time since I asked him to take Bash and me out of Snaggletooth Creek for just a week or two, while the reporters get the hint and move on, I nod. “Press the button.”
Bash is napping, and even if he wasn’t, Keisha and Giovanna and Millie and Jonas’s chef and security team and probably a few other random people who could actually secretly live in this palatial mansion in New Hampshire without detection because it’s that big would entertain him.
Yolko Ono is comfortably situated in a room of her own, watching Panda Bananda because we accidentally discovered she’s a fan.
The rest of the chickens are still back home in Snaggletooth Creek, under constant care and supervision from the triplets, who have also added security cameras and booby traps , as they call them, to the outside of the coop.
Just in case.
Keisha and Millie and Giovanna and Jonas’s chef and security team are all leaving us alone in the business wing of the house, probably assuming we’ll use the time to get naked and have more grown-up fun.
But instead, I’m sliding into his lap in his home office, which is so very Jonas with the colorful, whimsical artwork on the walls, the clean glass desktop, the massive computer monitor, and the family pictures on the sideboard.
The fact that he has a home office isn’t totally Jonas to me. He’s motion and what’s next? and let’s go climb a tree so much more than he’s I need to go sit at my desk and do business work . That probably explains why it’s so clean.
Not a lot of use.
Which he fully confessed to on a laugh when I asked why he bothered with a room he spends three minutes a year in.
The house came with it. Hayes has used it more than I have, and he’s only come to visit twice .
And there’s zero chance that he’s getting me out of my clothes until he does as I’ve asked.
“You’re completely sure?” he presses. “Once it’s out, there’s no take-backs.”
I’ve spent the past hour with my PR coach, and I’d be lying if I said this didn’t give me a smidge of anxiety.
But it’s time.
“The press wants our story,” I tell him.
“If I’ve learned anything from your PR people so far, it’s that controlling the story gives you power.
And my story— our story—the story we recorded yesterday—is the truth.
There’s power in the truth too. I want to do this while we can still scoop all of those news outlets who are trying to talk everyone else out of what they know. ”
“Okay,” he says slowly, those gorgeous brown eyes still so studious and watchful. “Let’s do this.”
I grab him by the cheeks. “Are you okay with this?”
That earns me a smile. “I’m okay with anything you’re okay with.”
“I’m not a delicate flower, Jonas.”
“Yes, you are. But you’re a tough delicate flower.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It’s you . You’re a thing.”
“ You’re a thing,” I tease back as he slips his arms around me and pulls me tight, sticking his nose in my neck and inhaling in a way that makes my nipples hum in anticipation.
“You’re my favorite thing.”
I laugh. “Be that as it may, hit the button. Please.”
“You’re absolutely, completely, one hundred percent, zero doubts sure?” he asks.
“Yes. Why? Are you not sure? Is this a bad idea? Is there something you’re not telling me? Did you say too much yesterday? Are there parts you want to edit out for you?”
He leans back in the chair, tucking my head into the crook of his neck.
“I’m absolutely positively completely sure about everything with you.
Except for hitting this button without triple-quadruple checking with you first. I can handle bad press for me.
But I couldn’t forgive myself if I had any doubt at all—if you have any doubts at all—that being the lead story of every gossip page around half the globe would cause you too much stress. ”
We’ve been over this six times since we finished recording our interview for his podcast yesterday.
Laney and Sabrina and Zen and Grey and Theo and the triplets listened to an early copy last night.
They’re all asking the same question.
Are you sure ?
But they’re saying the other thing Jonas has said too, and the same thing that my PR coach told me just fifteen minutes ago.
If this is the absolute truth and you won’t care if Bash hears it in another ten or twelve years, do it . Be in control and do it .
“Do you know what I finally realized about the wedding and Hawaii and Fiji and me?” I say as I stroke his arm.
“What’s that?”
“I was the island then. I was alone. I was mad at my friends and scared they were more mad at me. I was mad at Theo and afraid I was a burden instead of the kind of family I wanted to be for him. I was mad at myself. I was mad at the world. I put up all of those barriers and I didn’t want to let anyone in.
I wouldn’t have let anyone in if it weren’t for you. ”
“I guess sometimes getting drunk and passing out on the wrong porch ends okay-ish,” he murmurs with a light grin.
“Please don’t ever say that in front of Bash.
He’ll take it as life advice.” I kiss his jaw.
“But my point is—I’m not alone anymore. Whatever anyone else says about me—it doesn’t matter.
You matter. Bash matters. My family matters.
My friends matter. What the world thinks of me and you and us—it doesn’t matter.
I still want my version of the truth to be out there, but what happens after you hit that button—so long as you’re still here and I’m still here and Bash is safe and my friends and family are still my friends and family—that’s what I care about most. Not what strangers on the internet think of me. ”
“Okay,” he says softly. “You’re ready. Push the button.”
“Wait, me ?”
He scoots us closer to the desk. “Unless after all of that, you’ve changed your mind?”
I shake my head. “No mind-changing. I mean it. But I don’t want to hit the wrong button and erase everything or?—”
“You won’t hit the wrong button.” He jiggles the mouse, making his monitor blink on.
I don’t recognize the app he has pulled up, but when he hovers the pointer over a giant yellow button that says publish , I get the gist of it. “That one?” I whisper.
“That’s the one.”
“The big yellow one right here?” I shift to take control of the mouse.
He puts his hand over mine, holding me steady. “Yep. That button controls your podcast destiny.”
I snicker.
Can’t help it.
He smiles at me, warm patience and easy acceptance.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m doing it.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Right now.”
“Okay.”
“I’m pressing the button.”
“I can see that.”
“Are you sure this is the right podcast? The right files? It’s going to all of the right places?”
“Checked and double- and triple-checked myself. Here. Look. Episode one-thirty. The Guest Who Changed My Life. ”
“That’s what it was called when you sent it to my friends and family last night.”
“It is.”
“And it’s this button?”
He chuckles. “If you don’t want to?—”
I click it.
And then I close my eyes.
And I open them again.
“Wrong button,” Jonas says.
I gasp. “ Oh my god, no . What did I do? Did I delete it? Was it— Jonas Rutherford, that was not funny .”
He’s laughing his little tushy off.
Right there, while I’m still sitting in his lap.
I poke him in the stomach. “ Rude .”
“I think I just scored points with your brother.”
I lean back into him, watching a progress bar at the bottom of the screen that lights up occasionally with updates about where the podcast has been submitted to. Makes sense as I’m watching the wheels turn.
“I suppose that was only fair,” I murmur while I lightly run my fingers down his arm. “It’s like payback for that time I convinced my chicken to be your alarm clock.”
He laughs at that too, but he also sneaks a hand under my shirt and inches it higher and higher. “Do you know what we should do?”
“Feed the chicken?” I breathe against his neck.
His fingers reach my breast and tease it lightly over my bra. “I was thinking more like scrubbing the kitchen.”
“I hear there’s a diaper pail that might need to go out somewhere in this maze of a house.” I finish my sentence by biting his neck lightly.
He sucks in a quick breath, and a moment later, my bra is unhooked. “You give the best dirty talk,” he murmurs while he rolls one of my nipples between his finger and thumb.
Electricity jolts from my breast to my vagina. I shift in the chair so I can straddle him, feeling his erection already hard and thick between my thighs. “If you like that, wait until you hear me talk about spreadsheets.”
My favorite thing about Jonas?
Every time he turns me on, he makes me smile too. I’m not a burden. I’m not a big dork. I’m not crazy.
I’m just loved .
And happy .
I’m arching into his hand as he teases my nipple, his other hand hooked around the back of my head, fingers threaded through my hair while he pulls me close for a soft kiss. “I can listen to you talk about anything.”
“Even when I talk about how much I want to strip you out of your shirt and lick you from your shoulders down to your thick, hard, delicious?—”
“Oh my god, you did it! ” Keisha squeals behind us. “You put it out for the world to hear!”
I squeak and jerk in the seat, making it spin. Jonas reaches for the desk to steady us, his other hand leaving my breast to wrap around me and hold me tight.
“Exhibit A in reasons why your wife told you to give them an hour before doing this —you’re interrupting something, Keisha,” Millie says dryly. “Excuse us. We’ll go. Carry on doing—ew.”
“Everyone okay in here?” Giovanna says. “No hyperventilating? And Emma, I am asking about Jonas. I know you’re stronger than the men always believe.”
“I think they look okay,” Keisha says. “J, you okay? Em, how about you?”
“We’re good,” Jonas tells them while I bury my face in his neck and stifle a laugh.
Telling my favorite movie star and my baby’s daddy that I want to go down on him then being interrupted by his mother and his pop star cousin was never on my life bingo card.
But when I let myself think about it that way, this is even funnier.
“Mama? I sit Dada’s wap too?” Bash says, much, much closer than the rest of our guests. “We wead books?”
I feel Jonas’s heart give a hard thump beneath me, and I squeeze him tight and kiss his neck one last time before carefully untangling myself in the chair. “Later?” I whisper to Jonas.
“Later,” he agrees. “Worth the interruption.”
“I pway puter!” Bash shrieks as Jonas lifts him up too.
“Who wants a computer when you can have a Marshmallow?” Begonia asks.
And we’ve lost Bash again.
“Are you still pregnant?” I ask her.
“I’m making it to thirty-seven weeks, thank you very much,” she replies with a grin.
“I bet Francoise you’d go at thirty-six weeks and two days,” Keisha says.
“I think she’ll make it to thirty-nine,” Giovanna replies.
“Put your money where your mouth is, Aunt G.”
“Francoise already has it.”
“Congrats on going public, you two.” Begonia gives us a finger wave and a grin while she takes Bash’s hand and lets him pull her back down the hall. “Enjoy celebrating. Keisha, Hayes brought Francoise with us. She’s in the kitchen complaining about the coffee selection.”
“Coffee?” Keisha drifts back down the hall with Begonia too, Millie on her heels.
Giovanna leaves last, pulling the door shut behind her.
Jonas and I both stare at it like we’re waiting for it to re-open and everyone to come filing back in, laughing at the idea that they’d give us any privacy right now.
“That was possibly more chaos than pizza party night at my house back home,” I finally say.
“I miss home,” he replies.
I blink at him. “This…is…your main home.”
“ Was ,” he corrects. “Until I found you again. Now—now, my heart is here”—he touches mine—“and I can’t wait for the dust to settle so we can go back where you and Bash belong.”
“You know it’s impossible for me to keep my hands off of you when you say things like that,” I whisper while I slide my hands up under his shirt.
“I mean it, Emma,” he whispers back. “I love living in your world. I want to be part of your world. And I can’t wait to explore more of it.”
“I think,” I say, shuffling in the seat to position myself best to press a kiss to the skin over his heart, “you’ll find it’s even better than the movies.”
“You know what else is even better than movies?”
“What?”
“You.”