Chapter 23
Kellen
My head throbs after a long day at the office, so even though I know I should walk over to the cabinet and swallow some Tylenol, I don’t and instead pinch the bridge of my nose in some lame effort to stem this headache.
I’m not usually so lazy, but lately, my job has been beating the hell out of me.
For some reason, the idea of how much harder my life would be if Salem and I had a kid, or even worse, kids runs through my mind. I blame my brothers for that. It’s obviously their fault. They keep having them, and I keep seeing them all happy, so my brain equates children with joy.
I know all too well that’s not a math problem that works out that way.
Not that I have any issues with my nieces and nephews.
They’re great kids. It’s just that one of the things I love most about being an uncle is when we’re done spending time together, I go home to a quiet penthouse with Salem while my brothers remain in their houses full of toys, noise, and dirty diapers.
“Hey, did you hear what I said?”
Salem’s question tears me from my thoughts, and I look up at her to see an expression of irritation. She thinks I wasn’t listening to her. That’s not entirely untrue, but it’s not the typical guy not listening to his girlfriend scenario.
So I blame my brothers.
“Sorry, I was thinking about Marius and Matthias with their kids earlier. They brought them to work today.”
That comes out way lamer than I intended to sound. For Salem’s part, she seems confused. I get it. I’m not usually the guy to think about kids.
“Are they okay?” she asks like the good person she is. Like me, she doesn’t care about kids either, but she does do a nice job of pretending when it comes to my nieces and nephews.
“Yeah, yeah. My brothers just like to bring them around at work because so many people ask about them.”
Of course, that invariably leads to people asking me when I plan to have some to increase the size of the King brood.
I always hate those questions. I’ve learned that tact has to be a primary part of my job at King Industries, so my answer is the same every time I’m asked.
I smile and give a noncommittal shrug everyone interprets as my being cagey.
I’m not. I simply have come to understand that as one of the King brothers, I’m expected to have children. Nobody seems to bother Ronan about this, though, which never fails to baffle me. Why isn’t he supposed to reproduce?
Maybe I’ll ask my other brothers the next time we’re all around and someone brings up when I’ll have some kids.
Salem grimaces at the mention of children at work, and I can’t deny it’s not something I want to happen as often as it does. Since I’m not the CEO, I don’t get to make that decision, though.
She walks back to the table where we just finished dinner and grabs the takeout box her salmon dinner came in to throw it in the garbage.
“I was saying that I have a couple new clients starting tomorrow. Typical public relations mess. Cheating husband, beautiful yet scorned wife, one kid, who I think is around two. I’ve done this routine dozens of times. ”
Curious about this new project, I ask, “Anyone I know?”
With a wicked grin, she answers, “Chase Parker and his wife Cheyenne.”
I recognize Parker’s name immediately. “The guy from that action movie we went to see a few months ago? I think I saw a picture of his wife in a magazine at the doctor’s office last week. She’s pretty hot. Who the hell did he cheat on her with?”
That gets me an eyeroll. “It’s so typical that it’s cliché now,” Salem says. “The nanny.”
That must have been one smokin’ hot nanny because Cheyenne Parker is a gorgeous woman.
Since I always think of nannies as looking like Mary Poppins, even though I know that’s not what they’re like these days, I struggle to understand stepping out on a woman you married for the one who watches your kid.
“Why do men go for the nanny?” Salem asks with more than a hint of disgust I know is aimed at Chase Parker specifically and men in general.
I shrug, not sure she’s going to like my answer. “It’s easy?”
That’s the best answer I can come up with. The nanny in these stories is rarely more beautiful than the wife. They’re younger, so maybe that’s the right answer, but I think it has more to do with the fact that the nanny is around a lot.
Salem walks her takeout container over to the garbage can and tosses it in. “And people wonder why women don’t want to get married. Go figure.”
Her mention of what I call the M word for the first time in a while makes my ears perk up. While I may not be very interested in having children, I have been thinking that the two of us getting married wouldn’t be a bad thing. We’ve been together for years, so why would it be any different?
This is a case where my brothers could be useful. They’re always asking me if I plan on getting married anytime soon, so if I bring it up and she recoils like she always has before, I can say it’s because of them pestering me.
“Yeah, well my brothers were busting my chops about that very topic the other day,” I cautiously say, dipping just a toe into the dangerous waters of marriage plans.
When she doesn’t say anything, I quickly add, “You know them. They’re happily married, so they assume everyone around them should be too.”
She stares at me blankly, and then lets out a laugh. “You think they’d get the hint after all this time.”
“Yeah.”
I hold back the question on my mind for a few moments before adding, “But aren’t we going to eventually do it?”
For a long time, it feels like the world falls away, leaving just the two of us in our kitchen staring at one another, Salem standing over near the garbage can and me sitting at the table with the remnants of my chicken marsala meal in front of me.
Every so often, I bring up the topic of marriage, and usually it’s a brief discussion where the two of us agree maybe someday.
Tonight feels different, though. The way she’s looking at me, like the very topic is turning her stomach, makes me wonder if she’s not as interested as before in the two of us making what we have permanent.
Finally, she smiles. “Maybe someday,” she says, but I get the distinct impression she’s just using that to placate me.
“If that’s not something you want…”
I don’t finish the sentence because I don’t want to say the rest. I might not be the family man kind like my brothers, but I can’t continue to claim it’s okay if we never move on to more than what we are now.
Salem shifts her weight from her left foot to her right, like she’s uncomfortable with the entire conversation. “Kellen, I thought we weren’t into that.”
Oh, now I get it. She’s worried I’m talking about doing it now.
“I don’t mean anytime this year, but I think it might be something we want to start talking about. Weddings take a lot of planning.”
Her expression darkens, and she takes a step toward me, stopping to grab hold of the back of her chair where she just sat to share dinner with me like we do nearly every night. “Honey, I thought we were on the same page on this. I don’t want to get married.”
The words hit me like a sledgehammer to my chest. She’s never said anything like that before. It’s always been someday we can or maybe sometime. It’s never been a definitive she doesn’t want to get married at all.
“Like you mean now? Because I’m not thinking that.”
I watch for her to smile, a hint that she understands what I mean and feels something similar, but that never happens. Instead, her serious expression appears to harden as the seconds tick by after her announcement that she doesn’t want to marry me.
“Kellen, I don’t want to get married. I thought you understood that.”
My ego threatens to blow up our conversation, so I work to keep that under control as I say, “I thought we’d eventually do it. I mean, you always made me think it would happen someday. Are you saying that isn’t the case anymore?”
She hesitates for a few seconds before finally answering, “It’s not that I don’t love you. You know that, right?”
Still trying to keep cool, I shrug like this conversation isn’t beginning to feel like a knife through my heart and smile. “Sure. Yeah. I know you love me.”
“Good,” she says, finally giving me that smile I wanted. “Because I do love you. I love our life.”
She looks around our gorgeous kitchen with the chef’s range, stainless steel appliances, and quartz covered massive island every one of my brothers and their wives practically drool over whenever they come to see us.
And this isn’t even the most gorgeous room in the house.
Salem and I have an incredible home here, one I thought would someday be the place where Mr. and Mrs. Kellen King lived, not just Kellen and Salem.
“I love this place and everything about our lives right now. We’re both at a place in our careers where everything is firing on all cylinders. I don’t know why we’d want to change that.”
Confused, I begin to wonder if we’re having two different conversations. “I don’t know why marriage would change that.”
“I worry it would, and I’d hate it if this went away. I don’t want our lives to change.”
Before I can say that change is inevitable and necessary, something I’ve come to realize is important since I began working at King Industries, her phone vibrates on the counter. She hurries over to answer the call, holding up a single finger to let me know it will only be a second.
If it’s a work call, that’s a lie, and she knows it.
As the person on the other end of the call talks, she lowers her phone to her side and whispers, “It’s my sister. I’m going to take this in the other room.”
I don’t say a word, but it doesn’t matter because she disappears into the hallway on her way to her office, leaving me sitting alone at the table with my scraps from dinner.
Our conversation replays in my mind as I try to understand why she treats the idea of us getting married the same way I treat the idea of us having children.
They aren’t the same, though. Kids change everything from the number of bedrooms you need to the hours you can work and everything in between.
Marriage doesn’t change much at all if two people love one another. We wouldn’t need to find a new place to live or change our work schedules if we said I do. We’d go on with our lives the same way we always have.
The only difference is she’d be Salem King, my wife, and I’d be her husband.
Why doesn’t she want that?
A bigger question is what does this mean for the two of us? I don’t know why, but thinking that we’d eventually get married has always been enough for me to believe that it would happen. I didn’t need a specific date or a plan for when it might happen. I just thought it would.
Now I have to accept the very real fact that the person I always figured I’d end up marrying doesn’t want to marry me at all. I guess it’s something that she likely doesn’t want to marry anyone else either, but what does this mean for the future of us?
Will Kellen and Salem always be the couple who fell in love, moved in together, and then remained romantic roommates and nothing more?
If that’s how it’s going to be forever, I don’t think I like that. Does it matter if I don’t, though, if I want to have Salem in my life?