Chapter Seventeen
Jonas.
I get a little giddy watching Raven and Mav’s dots on my phone get closer and closer to New York after my practice with the team.
Once I’m in the locker room, they’re home.
I’m so excited to get home to her that I forget what Coach is saying to me about next week’s game.
I try to pay attention 'cause I know it’s serious or whatever but I’m ready to get home to my girl.
Unfortunately the NFL is like, big leagues or something and they pay me a lot of money so I have to stay.
I catch the words Arizona and our flight time.
I head to the den and notice all these flower petals on the ground and candles in a pathway leading up the stairs.
I grin and follow them. I’m on the fourth floor of our row mansion when I see the petals lead to the door to be able to get outside to our roof where we have a nice little setup.
I follow the path and see Raven, Damon and Maverick standing by the corner of the roof away from our little set-up where we have dinner sometimes, in front of a huge thing with a blanket over it.
Raven skips to me and jumps into my arms, kissing me deeply.
“Baby, I missed you so much.” I inhale her jasmine and berries scent, loving the way the hint of cinnamon clings to her. Sweet and spicy. Delicious. My girl. My wife.
“I m-missed you!” She gives me another quick peck and squirms in my arms so I let her down, but she doesn’t go anywhere. However, she pulls out a black sleep mask from her jacket pocket and tells me to put it on.
So I do. I grab her around the waist so she can lead me to stand by the guys. I hear a small whoosh noise and then, “Okay. Y-you can t-take it off n-now.”
“Holy shit.” My jaw drops and my heart stumps, then I grin so fucking huge and grab my wife, kissing her so hard I think I bruised both our lips. “George!” Set around him, is a bench, some plants, and more twinkling lights. There’s also a new heater so I can sit out here when it’s cold. “How?”
“I st-stole him.” Raven gushes proudly.
“You did not steal him, you acquired him.” Maverick growls.
“Both!” Raven grins so wide it has to hurt.
I look between them curiously. “Wait, what?”
Maverick sighs and rubs his hand across his forehead.
“She had me dress up like a fucking ninja, sneak across the RMU campus, the whole time she’s humming Mission Impossible.
We climb the belltower, chip away at the mortar, get him off the base, only to be found by campus police who said they were already on their way to get him for her. ” He grits out.
I tip my head back and laugh so loud I swear it echoes in our neighborhood. I point at Maverick. “You… you… She… She got you.”
Maverick’s jaw clenches as Damon starts chuckling.
“D-do you like it?” Raven asks, wrapping her arms around my torso.
I beam down at her. “Baby, I fucking love it. Thank you for stealing him for me.” I kiss her nose and tug her to me, letting my hand rest on the flare of her hip where it belongs.
“For the last time she- oh, fuck it. I thought I was going to fucking jail for vandalizing property. We fucking stole him for you. So don’t ever say I don’t… you know…” he makes a weird gesturing motion with his hands.
I grin big at Maverick, waggling my brows. “Looovvvee me?”
He exhales sharply out of his mouth and then sniffs, putting his hands on his hips. “Yeah.”
“You know Maverick, it’s totally cool and not gay at all to voice your affections for other men in your life. Some would even say it’s… emotionally healthy.”
He rolls his eyes. “This has nothing to do with your sexuality.”
“So then come on… give me a hug…” I open my arms real wide.
Mav clears his throat. “That’s really not necessary.”
“C’monnnnnn.”
He glares at me through his peepers but then takes the few steps it takes to get to me and gives… a really good hug.
“That’s it man.” I squeeze him a little tighter and whisper. “Now, if I get a boner, it’s totally fine. It’s how I communicate love,” I joke.
“Christ, alright.” He laughs, pushing away from me.
“Hey no, wait. I just realized that out of the four of us, Damon and Raven are the only ones who’ve kissed all of us.”
Maverick is especially unimpressed. “I love you Jonas, but it would feel weird to kiss a man I see as my little brother.”
I smile broadly. “Little brother? Fair. I’ll take it.”
“Is that right?” Damon asks, stepping up to Maverick. “And what do you see me as?” They stare at each other for a few breaths, the tension between them rising.
Whoa. It just got ten degrees hotter.
“A good friend, somewhat of a brother, who fucks my wife with me.” Mav replies casually. “And does a fine job of it.”
Damon grins and they shake hands.
Oh. Okay. Obviously that’s not going to happen.
Raven tips on her toes, and kisses under my jaw, right on the tattoo of her name on my throat I got while we were in Rome with Sabrina and Parker. “Pizza?”
“You didn’t have any in Kingston?”
She shakes her head. Not without you.
“I’m down for pizza. C’mon. I can hang out with George later. I gotta catch him up on everything.”
Damon eyes me a bit, but sometimes, there’s just stuff you gotta tell your gargoyle that you can’t tell your therapist-slash-husband, you know?
Once we’re sitting around the table eating, Raven tells me that when she contacted RMU for George, they told her yes.
But they also said that George was actually the second George they had because George Sr. actually fell on top of a student in 1928 and crushed him to death.
That’s why George Jr. only weighed three-hundred pounds.
He was made of resin and some other stuff.
But it required a lot of maintenance so they were going to get rid of him.
She only paid half a mil for him. Mav chokes on his pizza when she tells us that.
The money thing still gets to him sometimes, I think. Even though he’s making it pretty good at Columbia. Plus, he’s been working on his novel for a few months now and I know that’s gonna be a bestseller.
We end the night with a scary movie and then all go to bed. In the same bed.
Two Nights Later
I wake up in the middle of the night and reach for my wife, but she’s not there. Once I clear my eyes, I sit up to see that she’s standing by the window, gazing out onto the street. Under the sheets, I silently sit up, bring my knees up and drape my arms around them, just watching her.
She has my hoodie on, arms folded over her chest, the moonlight pouring in through the blinds makes her look so… spectral. She brings her thumb to her bottom lip and rubs it.
I can feel her thoughts racing from here as she sways a bit.
Raven sighs silently, tilting her head to the side working things out for herself.
As much as I want to, I don’t interrupt.
I simply watch my wife- learning her just a little bit more.
It takes a few minutes, but she sighs again, this time with a little hum, telling me she has an answer.
“Baby?”
She turns to face me and climbs back in bed carefully so as not to wake Damon up.
“What’s going on?”
She reaches over, grabs her phone from the nightstand to show me something.
It’s an alert from the security system Aleksi installed at the Monroe mansion.
It takes me a second to realize what I’m looking at- Sofia is walking around the place confidently and goes up to her old bedroom.
There’s no staff there. Raven made sure to give them all severance packages when she let them all go.
It’s been sitting vacant since the deed has been switched to her name.
I peer over at my baby pressed to my side where she belongs.
She drops her phone on the bed and her hands fly up. She’s been there for a while.
“What do you mean?”
I was sent an alarm a week ago. I thought it was a fluke. But she’s gotten bold. I think she thinks I won’t come for her because she’s my mother. She rubs at her temple then slides her hand to the back of her head, wincing.
I quirk my brow. A few months ago, Raven told me she hears what she calls her Death Lullaby in her head when someone on her list is nearby.
Kind of freaky but somehow that makes her hotter to me?
Like she’s my gothy little witchy psychic.
I wonder if she’d use me for a freaky sex ritual.
Do those exist? Is there a crystal for that?
I’ll have to Google that later if I remember.
Anyway, I equate her Death Lullaby to my tummy aches when I can just feel that something bad is about to happen.
Maybe we’re both psychic. Maybe I can perform a freaky sex ritual on her.
I can feel myself start grinning and make myself frown.
Focus. I gotta focus. Fuck, she’s so pretty.
Nope. Talking about Sofia. My dick can wait. “So… is it time?”
My wife nods solemnly, pretty eyes wide.
“You want to go just us, huh?”
Well, I can’t go alone, she signs with a frown.
“No baby, you can’t. Alright. Let me call the GM and tell him I have a family emergency and let him know I’ll be gone for a day. We can drive out there. Do you have a plan?”
She shrugs her shoulders but I have a feeling she does. And if she doesn’t… I do.
Because nobody hurts my wife and gets away with it.
Quietly, we both get out of bed and go to her room to start packing what we’ll need.
I tell Damon and Mav where we’re going, letting them know Aleksi agreed to coming with us and it really won’t take us that long, just a day, and we’ll be back before sunrise.
It takes us five hours to get to the mansion from Brooklyn in Aleksi’s unmarked SUV. I don’t really know the guy but he’s pretty fucking cool. Once we’re in Raven’s old neighborhood, we park curbside for a while and wait for the sun to go down, watching Sofia via the camera feed.
Now that we’re shrouded in darkness, Aleksi works his tech magic and turns off the alarms from the outside, so we don’t make any noise or alert Sofia that we’re here. He waits for us in the SUV as we slip inside.
Raven and I find Sofia in the kitchen stuffing her face, clearly having gained a good amount of weight in such a short period of time.
And when I say stuffing her face, I mean Sofia’s practically deep throating an entire slice of cake while crying.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone eat cake with such…
vigor. The chocolate frosting is everywhere.
I cover my mouth with my hand as Raven stifles her giggle.
I grab her and we slink back into the darkness, back into the shadows to hide until the time is right, which actually doesn’t take too long.
Sofia takes the entire chocolate cake, cradling it and goes upstairs, sobbing.
God, it’s fucking sad. But it makes me happy.
About an hour later, the wails of personal woe have quieted down and nothing but the sounds of a Spanish soap opera come from the room.
Raven’s asked me not to interfere, just be there as back-up in case Sofia tries to get away.
My baby put on her all-black contact lenses and she’s been a little paler than usual lately which just adds to her looking like my sexy vampire.
I’m trying really hard not to get hard watching her move about her old bedroom.
She puts her hair up in a tight bun on the back of her head, but that sexy silver stripe comes forward and curls back, so at least it’s out of her face.
It’s pretty empty here. Once Raven acquired the deed she had Galvina put on a huge estate sale.
Raven split the money between the gardeners, Galvina, the maids and the house manager as an extra farewell tip.
The last time she spoke to Galvina, she retired back to Puerto Rico with her family.
So yeah, needless to say without any of the staff here, the mansion is creepy, dusty, and messy from where Sofia hasn’t cleaned up after herself.
The only things that are still here are the beds and a few pieces of furniture that didn’t sell.
I asked Raven what she plans on doing with the mansion, but she still doesn't know either. I hope she burns it down. But whatever she decides to do with it, I know it’ll be great.
My wife slinks around a bit, grabbing a rope and putting it over one shoulder so it crosses around her torso but she’s still flitting about like a little butterfly ninja and I suddenly know what she’s looking for.
“Oh, c’mere baby. I got you.” I pull out her lucky balaclava from my jacket pocket and she smiles at me so wide, the little dimple on the left side of her chin pops.
She comes to me and I put it over her head, kiss her, then pull it over her plush lips. “I love you. You’re so pretty.”
She hums in delight then tips on her toes to kiss me with it on.
I’m really, really trying not to get a quickie in.
Plus, she hasn’t been feeling good lately so I’ve been waiting on her to give me the okay.
She tested positive for flu but some of her symptoms have stayed and I just know she has to be pregnant.
I even told Damon but he said it would be too soon to tell. “Ready baby?”
She nods once, opens the door, and slinks down the hallway.
I follow ten seconds behind my raging boner.
I hold back my laugh at my silly girl when she does a summersault then gets up and walks like a crab.
God, I love her. I know she’s doing it for my benefit, because when she gets to the door of Sofia’s room, she straightens up, and that switch flips.