Stepped
EIGHT
Autumn
Back at the apartment, I managed to get Stetson down for the night. Jake was at the table, the legal papers spread in front of him, lost in concentration when I came out of the bedroom.
“Please, Jake. You’ll drive yourself crazy looking at those.” I started hot water on the stove for some sleepy time tea. A night of tossing and turning lay ahead of me.
“Their whole case is that you’re alone, Autumn.”
“Yep. That I am.” I searched my cabinet for the tea box.
“So we take that out.”
“What?”
“Alone.” He entered the kitchen but only as far as leaning against the door frame. So much appeared behind his level face, that I gripped the edge of the counter. “I have an idea. Hear me out to the end before you say a word. Okay?”
I side-eyed him, brow furrowed. “Sure.”
“Marry me.”
That—was unexpected. I coughed. “Um, what?”
“Their petition says unwed. That you cannot be a fit mother trying to raise their grandson alone. So. You marry me, and it solves that problem. You and Stetson can move out to the ranch—Ash’s old cabin is available now, right at the edge of the pasture.
You’d have insurance, too, covered fully under my military benefits.
No more worrying if Stetson gets sick. His boosters, checkups, a fever at two in the morning, all covered.
” He let that sink in while it all swirled around me.
“I…” Was he for real?
“Look, I have savings, and I make a decent living to support us. Hell, you could quit working if you want. If you marry me, then their lawyers no longer have that leverage. And a woman with me, a ranch, and a whole town around her, supporting her, has a fighting chance against the Eatons.” His words sounded tidy and logical, but…
“The marriage wouldn’t be real,” I asserted.
He reached a hand up, cupping my cheek. “It’d be as real as we make it, Autumn.”
Oh God. I couldn’t breathe. Was the oxygen running low in this room? I stepped out from under his hand, back to the cabinet, searching for whatever, I couldn’t even recall now what.
“Jake, people don’t just marry for—for convenience.”
“Sure they do. All the time. Especially in the military. I knew a guy who married his best friend’s sister just to help her with medical costs for her son.”
Stetson cried out in his sleep.
“You’re not thinking straight.” I gave up the search and went to check on him, if nothing else than for distance and breathing room.
“Mama,” he sniffled, reaching for me. So much for bedtime. I drifted back out with him in my arms.
“Autumn, this makes sense, if you’d give the idea a chance,” Jake persisted.
“You’d be handcuffing yourself to my whole mess for a court case. And why? What do you get from it?”
“I get to help you.”
“Stop with the obligation to Trig, okay?” I shouted, maybe harsher than he deserved, covering the baby’s ears. “You’ve more than fulfilled your end of the bargain. There has to be another way.”
“Tell me then. I’m all ears.” He took three strides on his long legs and reached my side, staring with all intensity at me, which only made it that more difficult to think straight.
He proposed. Of sorts. God help me, that happily ever after family picture of us from the pumpkin patch flew through my head.
“Autumn. Let me stand with you and fight the fight. Our marriage can be all paper, or real, or anything you want in between. But I’d be honored if you took my last name and let me give you my name and a home.”
Name? Home? No. Paper. That’s all this was. A man proposed a convenient arrangement while my sweet son fought sleep in my arms. The son who already called him Dada. Another convenience.
I put him on the floor with his toys. He reached for the mini-pumpkin.
“How would this work? Like we’d suddenly get married out of the blue?
People would see right through us. We won’t be able to fool anyone.
And then if we tell them why, and ask them to lie, it’ll be a big mess.
” In a town like this, we’d be all anyone would talk about.
I hated for the spotlight to be on us, or Stetson.
Hadn’t Trig’s situation done that enough?
Which was probably how the Eatons found us, what with all the local media coverage from the trial.
“Really? Ask anyone in town. They’ve seen me come up here, and hung out with you.
The clerks at the grocery store have heard me chat about you and the baby when I checked out, buying us food each week.
Everyone will think we’ve been together and simply kept quiet about it for months.
Nobody in Forest Grove needs to know any difference. Nobody has to lie.”
“Except us,” I pointed out in the middle of my tiny apartment, feeling even smaller, wrung out as thoroughly as a rag.
I thought about Marlene Eaton's pew with her name on it, and the paltry sum in my coffee can, and the way Jake’s arm warmed against my back earlier like it belonged there.
Everything swirled in my head in an utterly hopeless stream.
“Is it really that much of a lie, Autumn? All these months we’ve spent around each other, and you don’t think about me as more than a friend?” His hand tried once again, slowly reaching for my cheek. “Because I do.”
He added his other hand, cupping my face. I didn’t back away this time, desperately searching for reassurances, and promises, and—hope.
“Autumn Michelle Triggs. Marry me,” he whispered. My pulse ran away. His breath brushed my lips, getting nearer by the second, close enough to watch the hazel of his eyes go dark around the edges.
My lids drifted closed, every rule I’d been drafting going up in smoke—
“Dada!” Stetson shrieked, suddenly grabbing our attention.
He stood on his own two feet, holding onto nothing. And then… one foot lifted, setting down in front of him. He wobbled for a second, but held steady. I sucked in my breath, hardly believing this.
The other foot lifted and—he toppled over in a giggling mess.
Jake reached him first, scooping him up, bringing him between us, the biggest smile splitting his face.
“Did you see that, Autumn? Our baby’s first step.”
“Our…? Oh, Stetson.” Tears flooded my eyes. We hugged him between us, caught up in the moment.
“Baby’s first step. Amazing.” Jake repeated, a glow to his face.
I could learn so much from my son. He hadn’t waited until walking was safe, or for a guarantee he wouldn’t fall. He pulled himself up, let go of everything, wobbled a step, and went down, laughing even. The way he squirmed in Jake's arms, he itched to try again.
"Okay, buddy, here you go. Walk to Mama. Here he comes.” Jake set him down, feet on the carpet, tiny hands holding his big thumbs. He let go and—down he went, falling backward, his head hitting on the floor.
This time, I caught him up, holding him, and rubbing the back of his head as he pouted. “It’s okay, sweetie. You’ll try again tomorrow, and the day after, until this walking thing works.”
Good advice for him. Meanwhile, I’d spent the past whole year holding onto the rail, afraid to move forward from my past.
I regarded Jake, offering me something that could mean the difference between winning and losing Stetson. But underneath the paper and the legal strategy, he was offering something else, too. Something that could be good between us.
Actually, it already was, if I’d stop being too scared to look straight at it. Could I let go of the past and reclaim my future, one step at a time… with Jake?
“Okay,” I whispered.
Jake's eyes snapped to mine. “Okay?”
“Yes.” My voice gained ground. “I’ll marry you.”
His arm came around me and pulled me in, Stetson giggling between us, squished in the middle of the first real embrace in the history of us.
Jake’s hand spread warm between my shoulder blades, his chin resting on my hair, my nose full of his cedar scent and the whole day we’d spent outside together. I breathed him in, and for a moment I stopped being able to tell the difference between relief and everything else.
“It’s going to be okay, little mama,” he said over my head. “We’re going to win.”
“But we need to talk about this. Come up with rules,” I warned, because I could feel exactly how much this could grow, and that scared me almost worse than Wyoming. I stepped back and made my spine do its job.
“Name them.”
“You asked me if I think of you as only a friend.” I held his hazel eyes that returned to kindness, no darkness to spare.
“I know you’re more, and you probably knew it before I did.
But the past hurt me—” I left the rest of that thought be.
“I’m not ready yet for whatever comes after saying we’re more than friends. Please, we need to take things slow.”
“But the sooner we get married, the better for the custody case.”
“I know. I agree. To the world we’ll be married. When it’s just us at home, we don’t rush things. We’ll take baby steps.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, although he could hardly hide the smolder in it that he thought I wouldn’t notice.
“I’ve got nothing but time, pumpkin. All the time in the world for you.”
“Pumpkin?” I arched an eyebrow. Only I liked the way he said it—punkin’.
“Yeah. Because today was pretty amazing being together.”
“Dada!” Stetson smacked Jake’s jaw with a tiny hand and giggled, sealing the deal for all of us.
We stood in my tiny kitchen, talking engagements, a wedding date, a justice of the peace, becoming a family on paper. My heart fluttered wildly, overwhelmed with emotions I refused to name. It was too soon to be anything else. It was just the first step.
Jake left not long after, with a hug and chaste kiss to my temple, with a list started on his phone of everything we needed to do, already planning this like the most important mission of his life, like the SEAL he’d always be.
I locked the door behind him and leaned against it, glancing around my little apartment. An hour before, the envelope on the table had wrecked me. Now, it had lost some of its power.
Stetson yawned over his mini-pumpkin, leaning his head on it at last, eyes drowsy. The best one in the bin, Jake had said. He didn’t quit searching until he found it.
That’s what he’d done with me, too. Found me. Maybe not the best one though. A little bruised, a little broken. But time could heal many things. Even me.
“Oh, my God. I’m getting married.” My hand flew to my heart, hardly believing it. I was going to need to get a whole lot better at telling it—because so far, I couldn’t even sell it to my own kitchen.