Chapter 7 Blake
BLAKE
“This is everything?” Jeff asked as he hauled in the last box. “You sure are a cheap woman.”
Parker slapped him on the back of the head as he walked past. “Don’t call my fiancée cheap.”
“It was a compliment!” Jeff argued. “I was surprised that she doesn’t have a million shoes. That’s a good thing. It means she won’t spend all your money.”
Grinning, I carried my suitcase down the hall to our bedroom. “I have my own money, Jeff!”
“Babe! What are you doing?” Parker shouted, racing after me.
He snatched the case out of my hands, shooting me a glare.
“I’m sorry, was I not supposed to bring the suitcase to our room?”
I nearly laughed when he studied the questioning look on my face, wondering what the right move was. This right here was the first step in our journey as new parents, and how he reacted would set us up going forward.
Very carefully, he set down the suitcase. “Uh…no. Not at all, I was just…thinking that…you might want to wait.”
“For what?”
His eyes nearly bugged out as he tried to come up with a good answer. “Furniture!”
“Ah, yes. And in the meantime, I’ll just walk through the house naked to get my clothes in the living room.”
He smiled sheepishly at me. “It’s not the worst idea.”
“I think I’ll just take this to our room. Or did you want to carry it for me?” I teased.
“Oh, no. You’ve got this. Completely. I mean, you’re perfectly capable of carrying a suitcase. Who said you weren’t?”
Rubbing the back of his head, he cleared his throat. “What’s that, Jeff?”
Then he hustled down the hall after his brother, who was snickering in the living room.
Chuckling to myself, I carried the suitcase the rest of the way, but when I got to the empty room, his words rang true. We did need furniture. We didn’t even have a bed to sleep in. There was literally nothing to dampen the echo of the empty house.
Even if we got sleeping bags for the night, there wouldn’t be a single thing to do once we were done unpacking. No TV to watch, no internet to scroll on our phones—not to mention the phone service was not that great here…we would just sit around staring at each other.
I was used to not having the comforts of my own home around. When I worked for the FBI, I was always staying in shitty motels and watching local channels, but this was so beyond that. We weren’t even close enough to town to just wander around.
“Babe?”
I spun around, the panic on my face showing.
“What is it?” Parker asked, his lips twitching in amusement.
“We have no furniture.”
“I’m aware.”
“I mean, not even a TV. We have no internet. We have literally nothing out here!”
“Yep, that tends to happen when you move into a new house.”
And he didn’t care at all. He was standing there smirking at me.
“Don’t you get it? We’ll be all alone here with nothing to do!”
“Well, I wouldn’t say nothing. I’m sure we could find something to occupy our time.”
Of course sex was on his brain. But what about after sex?
We couldn’t have non-stop sex for weeks on end.
Eventually, there would be silence. And in that silence came the uncomfortable realization that you might not have as much to discuss as you thought when things were intense and the stakes were high.
Could we survive that?
Our whole relationship had been a series of events that rolled from one to another, with the stakes becoming higher with each one. And then the waiting game for months on end, struggling to come to peace with what the outcome of our lives would be.
Enter the President of the United States, and everything seemed to be looking up.
But I hadn’t considered what life would be like out in Montana. How the silence would actually put pressure on us to become comfortable with each other on another level. The next few months would become a test all on their own.
Marching into the other room, I grabbed my purse and the keys, tossing them at Michael. “Come on. We’re going shopping right now.”
He dropped the box he was carrying, snatching the keys out of the air. “Now? As in right this minute?”
“As in I’m walking out the door, and if you don’t come with me, I’m going to get whatever I like and you’ll have no choice but to go with it.”
I saw the two brothers exchange a horrified look before chasing after me.
“Blake!” he called out to me, chasing me down. “What’s going on?”
I spun around just as he caught up to me, nearly crashing into him. “What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. We have no furniture, no TV, which means long nights of us staring at each other. Long, painful nights of nothing to do but talk. Do you know what that means?”
“Uh…”
“We get to know each other. Really get to know each other. The talk will get so boring that we’ll divulge things to each other that no one on earth should ever find out about the other.
I’ll start telling you about my routine for getting ready for my prom, or what it was like the first time I got my period.
And you’ll tell me about the largest shit you ever took, and how all your brothers had to take a look because no shit could ever be as huge as that! ” I rambled.
“And where do we go from there? When all that is in the open, all we have is silence and the unbelievable reality that we now know everything there is to know about each other. Our lives will be boring as hell, and why? Because we don’t have furniture.
There’s no TV to break the silence. There’s no radio, no internet to turn to for an outlet.
Do you really want to know about my first period? ”
He winced, his face growing slightly pale. “Not at all.”
“So, we’re going shopping.”
“Definitely.”
I spun back for the truck and marched to the driver’s side. I was in a mood, and no man was going to take away the right for me to drive right now. Yes, this was his truck. Yes, he knew his way around town, but I needed some control over my life, and this was how I was taking it.
Parker rushed into the passenger seat, and to my surprise, Jeff joined us, grinning like an idiot.
“What are you doing?”
“Are you kidding? I’m about to witness something that very few people ever get to see. It’s an inside look at a panic-stricken couple who just realized they might not have anything in common. It’s comic gold!”
“We have plenty in common,” Parker snapped. “Baby, you have to calm down. We’re good. I promise.”
“You say we’re good, but that’s just because you haven’t experienced what it’s like to be alone with nothing to talk about!”
“We’ve been alone dozens of times!” he argued.
“Yes, but that was different. There were things to distract us. We had a gym to escape to. We had a TV and other people around us.”
“There are other people here as well. And if you want a gym, I’ll build you a gym.”
“Ha! But not fast enough. Not before the boredom sets in and we both realize that we’re not right for each other,” I blurted out before I could think better of it.
The air stilled all around us at my admission. Only the sound of Jeff’s low whistle broke the silence.
“Wait…you don’t think we’re right for each other?”
Did I? Crap, I didn’t even know what I was saying. Everything had moved so fast when we were in Pennsylvania, and now I was pregnant and we were going to have a baby. I didn’t know how to deal with that.
“I—” Words ceased to exist as I felt the world closing in around me. I was freaking out big time, and it felt like there was no way to stop the runaway emotions taking over my body.
“I had no idea you felt that way,” he said softly.
“It’s not—I don’t know what I feel, okay?”
“But you don’t think we’ll make it,” Parker scoffed. “Why the hell did you even come out here with me if you didn’t think we stood a chance?”
“I didn’t say we don’t stand a chance—”
“You just said we’re both gonna realize we’re not right for each other.”
“Because I’m a babbling idiot!” I shouted. Tears sprang to my eyes as my emotions overwhelmed me. Suddenly, breathing seemed like a chore more than a natural reaction to being alive.
Parker was shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar in my ears. I was panicking. Big time. My hands were shaking and the tightening in my chest was growing to an astronomical level. I was never going to survive this.
The truck suddenly slowed, and it was only because I saw Parker shift into neutral that I realized he was trying to get me to pull over.
Was I losing it?
Absolutely.
I’d never been in a position like this before, and with everything coming at me a hundred miles an hour, it was very possible I would have a heart attack right now and die from being overwhelmed by events.
Which was something that never happened to me.
I was the queen of cool. I didn’t lose my shit over anything. I handled problems with ease and kicked ass. Except these problems weren’t something I could just karate chop my way out of.
I was facing an entirely new life in a small town where everyone knew my business.
I was pregnant.
I was supposed to be getting married.
I had a new house.
I had no furniture.
Was there anything else I could pile on top of the shit heap that was becoming my life? These should all be good things, but all I felt was utter and complete panic.
“Blake, you have to calm down and talk to me,” Parker said calmly.
It was only then that I realized I was stopped on the side of the road, and both of the brothers were staring at me.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
I laughed humorlessly. “What’s going on?
” I repeated. “I’ll tell you what’s going on.
Parker, we moved to Montana where I don’t know a single person.
We’re having a baby. I’m engaged and my family doesn’t even know.
Every person in this town knows by business!
We have a house, but nothing that goes in it! I’m pregnant!”
“You already said that one,” he grinned.
“Do you think this is funny?”
“If I say yes, are you gonna shove me through a window?”
My lips twitched in amusement, and I finally calmed just a little.
“Baby, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll knock things off the list one at a time. What’s the most important thing to you?”
It probably should have been telling my family I was pregnant, but for some reason, getting things in the house seemed to be the most important at the moment.
“The house. We need to have things.”
“Things, I can handle. So, we’ll go shopping.”
I cringed at the idea of picking out anything. “You should know that I have absolutely no sense of style.”
“Well, that’s where you’re in luck, because I have two sisters who absolutely love to decorate.”
“Really?” I asked hopefully.
“Really. So, we’ll knock that off the list first, and then we’ll move on to the next thing.”
I nodded, feeling slightly better. “And you can get us furniture by the end of the day?”
Jeff snorted, but Parker glared at him. “Maybe not everything, but we’ll do as much as we can.”
“Okay. Okay,” I repeated, trying to calm myself down. “It’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Everything will be…”
“Fine?” Parker asked, a smile easing across his handsome face.
“Right.”
“Baby…just one thing.” His face turned solemn as he studied me. “Do you really think we’re not gonna make it?”
I really didn’t know. Right now, I was just trying to focus on one thing at a time. With the way we got together, would we end up like one of those tragic couples who fell in love over danger and extreme circumstances? Or did we have what it took to weather the storm?
As I looked into his eyes, I just couldn’t lie to him. “I don’t know.”