Chapter 44 – Grant
FORTY-FOUR
GRANT
He didn’t like to think too much about the present. The future was actually easier for him.
Two Weeks Later
“How do you feel about Florida?” I asked Flowers.
We were laid out in my bed. I’d just fucked her into next Tuesday and she was still blissed out by multiple orgasms.
“Mmmhh?” she mumbled, her face buried in the pillow by my shoulder.
Yeah, I smiled. Blissed out. Deep into her second trimester, she’d learned she was a total horn dog. Like, could not get enough of my dick. Taking it, sucking, jerking it.
Flowers wanted my dick and food, in that order.
Which was good. I’d been right about the sex. It was connecting us. Bringing us closer. Locking us in together.
Because with sex came all the other intimate parts of sharing a bedroom. We brushed our teeth together. Showered together. I pissed in front of her and she shut the door firmly in my face when I suggested I didn’t care if she peed in front of me.
Turns out Flowers was a shy pee-er. Who knew?
“Florida,” I said again, and she turned her head to the side to blink at me.
“To visit?”
I shrugged. “Or move. Close to my parents. My sister. Family.”
“You want that for the baby?”
“I want that for you.”
She groaned and dug her face into the pillow.
“What?” I asked.
“You can’t say stuff like that,” she said, lifting her face off the pillow. “It makes my insides all mushy.”
“And here, all this time I thought it was my sexy body that made your insides mushy.”
“Different kind of mushy,” she mumbled.
She sat up and reached for my sweatshirt which had landed on the edge of the bed when we’d gotten busy earlier. Tugging it over her head, Flowers didn’t like to sleep naked, she pulled her hair back and gave me the attention needed for a conversation like this.
“Your business is here in Houston.”
“My business can be anywhere. I just rent office space here.”
She gestured with her arms. “You have this humongo house.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Right. Forgot. Money is nothing. Are you sure you want to do this?”
I wasn’t, which is why I was running it by her. “You like my parents,” I pointed out.
“They’re great people,” she said.
“And they clearly love you,” I pointed out.
“Hello?” she said, pointing at her rounded belly. “I’ve got the Second Coming on the way. Of course, they love me. Besides, they have this idea I can heal your cold dead heart.”
“Not a chance,” I said.
“I know that. You know that. But they don’t think so. They’re rooting for me.”
Truth be told, I was rooting for her too.
“You have no one. It’s just my parents, Rebecca and me, but it’s some family. The baby should have at least all the family I can provide. It makes sense to move closer to them. They’re the spoil them rotten kind of grandparents. I can already tell.”
She sighed and I could practically see the wheels spinning in her mind.
“Say it,” I pushed her.
Now, I was sitting up and leaning back against the pillows. Anxious about what was going to come out of her mouth. Whatever it was, I knew it would be honest because she didn’t see the point in being any other way with me.
This was my lover.
I wanted to make her my wife.
“It would have made sense for you to be closer to home after Allison died, too,” she said softly. “But you didn’t go. You stayed because she’s buried here, I think. You didn’t want to leave her. Does this mean you’re ready to leave her now?”
I whipped the covers back and shot out of bed. I didn’t want to have this conversation bare-assed, so I found my boxer briefs and put them on.
“E.G., talk to me,” she said, folding her legs up in a twist in front of her.
“My name is Grant,” I snapped over my shoulder. “Everyone refers to me as Grant, my family, friends. Don’t you think it’s time you started using my actual name?”
“No.” she said. “You’re E.G. to me. And I like that. That piece of you is mine.”
Agitated, I rubbed my chest. I didn’t like the idea of a piece of me belonging to her. I’d already belonged to someone once. Taking that part of me back and giving it to another woman just felt like another betrayal of Allison.
Hadn’t I already done enough to my dead wife?
Fucked another woman. Knocked her up. Now I was actually thinking of leaving the state where we had once lived together.
“Never mind,” I said. “We’re not leaving Houston. Forget I said anything.”
I marched into the walk-in closet and found a pair of sweats on a shelf. I put them on and realized that I was looking at clothes on hangers that weren’t mine.
I’d told Flowers I wanted us to share a room. I’d told her, she wasn’t going back to her bedroom ever again. It only made sense she would move her clothes to this closet.
Why was I having trouble breathing?
Tossing on a hoodie to pair with my sweats, I walked at a ridiculously fast clip to the bedroom door.
“Where are you going?” she called out.
She was out of bed too now. Standing beside the bed in my sweatshirt, her hand unconsciously smoothing over the soccer ball that was her belly.
That was my baby.
“I need some air,” I said, not looking at her.
“Okay.”
I paused by the door, my back to her, my hand on the door handle.
“This must get so old for you,” I said. “The constant pulling and pushing.”
It’s not like I didn’t know I was an ass. Constantly blowing hot and cold. Making her give me everything while the sight of a few hangers in my closet drove me to a near panic attack.
“I’m tough. I can take it,” she said, with her typical Flowers bravado.
“I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be here. And E.G., if you want to move to Florida, I’ll do that, too.”
Of course she would.
“But one of these days, you are going to have to choose. I think it’s the only way, really. It’s either going to be me or her. And just a reminder, I’m alive.”
She wasn’t wrong. Ultimately, I would have to make that choice.
But not tonight.