Chapter Twenty
“I don’t exactly know what your feelings would be on all of this.
” I swallow nervously, like he’s standing right in front of me.
“My guess is you would have tried to kill me the first time my mom caught us.” I blanche.
“Sorry if that was in poor taste.” I pull my jacket tighter around me as the wind starts to pick up.
“I wish you were here. I wish Halle wasn’t deprived of the chance for her father to walk her down the aisle.
” I drop to one knee, rubbing my hand over my stepfather’s headstone.
“You know, at one point she thought she wanted me to do it when it was time, but then she thought it would be too hard on me to give her to anyone else.” I pause, because the weight of that thought hits me hard.
In another world, another life, maybe Halle and I don’t make it work, and she’d be with someone else, and I’d be forced to watch.
Or maybe it wouldn’t bother me because I wouldn’t be in love with her.
I shake my head at the ludicrous thought because in every lifetime, I’m in love with Halle St. John.
“I think she’s right,” I continue. “I don’t think I could have given her away to anyone because no one would have been good enough.
Hell, I’m not even good enough. But I plan to spend the rest of my life trying to be.
I’m going to spend the rest of it loving her and protecting her the way I have my whole life.
I know you can’t give me your blessing or permission, but I hope I have it.
I hope you know how much I love your daughter.
I swear I’ll be the best husband to her.
” I slap my hand down a few times and clear my throat as a memory hits me hard and fast.
Halle: 4 years old
Sebastian: 5 years old
An ear-splitting scream stops me in my tracks, and when I turn around, I see Halle on the ground and her bicycle lying next to her.
I’m off my bike a second later and run toward her and drop to my knees next to her.
She’s not crying yet, but I know it’s coming, and I do my best to calm her down.
“Okay, okay… please don’t cry. Don’t cry.
It’s going to be okay,” I say, looking down at my stepsister’s skinned knees.
We were riding our bikes, and I probably should have slowed down since she was trying to keep up with me when she fell over.
I turned around just in time to see her fall off her bike and hit the ground.
Her lip trembles, and I can see the tears in her eyes, but she continuously blinks them away. Her nostrils flare, and it looks like she’s breathing hard. “I’m so sorry. Let’s get you back to the house so we can get a Band-Aid.”
“A… Hello… Kitty… one?” she stammers out.
“Yes.” I nod, although I don’t think my mom has those, and she’s not home for me to ask her.
“Do you have them?” She nods and wipes her eyes.
I help her up, and I can see her wince, and then the tears she was trying to stop from falling start sliding down her cheeks.
“You’re being really brave. I know it hurts,” I tell her. “Can you walk?”
“I”—she sniffles—“think so.” We are only down the street from our house, but I don’t know if she can walk.
“Let me help,” I tell her as I let her put her hand around me because I don’t think I can pick her up.
I walk with her next to me, letting her put most of her weight on me, and after a few minutes, we are back at our house. “Dad!” I call out as soon as we walk in the door. He comes walking out of his office, which is just off the entryway.
“Oh, Princess, what happened!?” He rushes toward us and drops down in front of her.
“I…fell… and it… HURTS!!!”
He turns to me, and I wince. “We were riding our bikes, and she fell off… and… I’m sorry!” I don’t want to get in trouble, but I really want Halle to be okay. I don’t want her to be mad at me either.
“It’s okay, these things happen.” He lifts Halle off the ground, and part of me wishes I could have done the same so she didn’t have to walk. Maybe next year when I’m six.
I follow them up the stairs, but I’m not sure if she wants me there, so I hang out in the hallway until I hear a scream, then, “WILD!”
“I told you it would burn, sweetheart. It’s antiseptic. We don’t want it to get infected!” her dad tells her, and when I walk into the bathroom, I see her seated on the edge of the sink, her eyes squeezed shut. “Wild, where are you!” she squeals.
“I-I’m right here,” I tell her, and I hate how upset she sounds.
She opens her eyes and puts out her hand for me to hold. I take it, giving it a tiny squeeze, and when I look up at her, she’s giving me a teary-eyed smile before turning back to her dad. “Wild said I was brave.”
“You certainly were. My brave big girl,” he tells her, and I nod in agreement as he puts two Band-Aids on each knee. “But maybe no bikes for the rest of the day.” He pulls her off the sink and sets her gently on her feet.
“You did a good job,” he tells me as he ruffles my hair. “I can tell she trusts you. You’re a good big brother, Sebastian.”
“The best!” Halle says, then hugs me tight. I smile because I think this is the first time anyone has ever said I was the best at anything.
I open the door to the hotel room to see Halle sitting on the bed with her laptop in front of her. She gives me a questioning look before I climb onto the bed and rest my head in her lap. “Did you go see your mom?”
“No,” I say. Things with my mom were still a work in progress.
We did plan to see her while we were home, but it was going to be brief, just long enough to announce our engagement.
I could tell she was trying, but she was still struggling with her feelings about it all.
“I went to see your dad. I felt like he should hear the big news from me.”
“I see.” Her hands stroke my hair, and I reach up to grab her left one before putting it in front of my face to see the engagement ring I’d given her last weekend.
It’s only been a week, and I’m already anxious about putting the second one there, indicating we were officially married.
“I think he would have taken it better than Sara did.”
I snort before turning onto my back to look up at her. “After which time she caught us having sex?”
She rolls her eyes and taps my nose with her finger. “I meant now, obviously. No, I don’t think my dad would have loved that when we were teenagers.” She sighs and leans back against the headboard. “Twenty-one years tomorrow. How is it possible that we’re that old?”
“No idea.” I chuckle darkly, thinking about how we are only in our mid-twenties yet have this tragic and formative experience from twenty-one years ago.
I can tell something’s on her mind and has been for the last few days.
I figured it was about the upcoming anniversary, but now I’m wondering if there’s more to it.
“You okay, baby? You’ve been… quiet the past few days?
Is it just about being here? Or seeing my mom?
If you really don’t want to, I can go by myself. ”
“No. Well… I guess kind of, and the thought of seeing Mike too,” she says, referring to my mom’s now husband. While he talked Dylan into dropping those charges last year, he still seems to have his opinions on Halle and me and tends to stay away whenever we’re in town.
Fair, I guess.
I hated how disjointed my family felt, but all that mattered to me was Saint and the family I was trying to build with her.
On a more positive note, my board voted unanimously to keep me as CEO, noting that, while our relationship was unconventional, it came across as a beautiful love story rather than a scene from Pornhub.
I’m paraphrasing.
Not only do most people from my office support our relationship—I say most because I do know that a few people side-eye me, but they keep their opinions to themselves—but they adore Halle and love that she lives in Seattle now.
They can always count on her to put me in a better mood after I’ve met her for “lunch.”
I sit up and move her to sit in my lap now.
“She has been trying, and she wants to see us. But if you don’t want to go, I understand.
I’ll be quick, and then we can have the rest of the day tomorrow to do whatever you want.
” Even though on October eighth, there’s usually only one thing we’ve been known to do for the past twenty years.
But now that we are together and are doing that sometimes twice a day, I wonder if we’ll come up with a new way to spend tomorrow.
“No… I do… I just…” She bites her bottom lip. “I remember you saying that you wanted her to make a decision on how she felt about us before we… had a baby…” She grabs my hand and laces our fingers together before she looks up at me.
Realization dawns on me, and my eyes immediately fly to her stomach like I’m expecting her to be showing already. “Are you…? Are we…?”
She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and nods as tears flood her eyes. “I took a test while you were gone. Five, actually,” she whispers. “I’ve had an inkling all week, but I just kept thinking my period was going to show up.”
“Oh my God.” I put my hands on her face. “How are you feeling? Are you happy? I know we talked about waiting and…” I let out a breath. “Holy shit.”
“Yes, I’m so happy! We’re going to have a baby!
I’ve thought about what this moment would be like so many times, and in every scenario, you’re the man I’m talking to, even before I lost my virginity.
” She giggles. “I have everything I could ever want,” she whispers.
“And I’m feeling okay. A little nausea, but it’s manageable, for now. ”
I pull her into my arms and hold her tightly like I have no plans to ever let her go. “Wow, if you thought I was protective of you now. You with a baby?” I press a kiss to her neck. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t have security in place by the time we get home.”
“Security? Oh my God,” she groans. “Sebastian, the only time I ever feel unsafe is around people related to us or people we know,” she replies with an eye roll.
I’m only half listening to her complaint as I’m already thinking about how to make our new house even safer.
“We can talk about it, but it’s going to take a lot of convincing not to increase our safety measures,” I explain as I place my hand under her stomach.
“Especially now that it’s more than just us.
But we can talk about that later. Can you tell me what you want to do about tomorrow?
Does this mean you don’t want to go? We don’t have to tell my mom. ”
“I’m not saying no, but if she starts being… judgmental, I’d like to leave.”
“Of course.”
“And maybe…” She shrugs. “We could tell her? It seems like the only time she’s really changed her tune has been at the mention of grandchildren. Who knows, maybe it will be what she needs to finally accept us.”
“We don’t have to. I told her she needed to support us before we had a baby. So if you’re not ready to tell her, we don’t have to.”