25. Amelia
Amelia
Tate takes the seat next to me, staring at my profile. “I see you,” she whispers.
I turn to her, eyebrows furrowed. “Have you been drinking?”
Her smirk is nothing but salacious. “You’re glowing,” she singsongs as her eyes roam around my face.
“Pregnancy vibes,” I tell her, turning my attention back toward the plate of food in front of me.
“Nope,” she pops the p. “You have that fresh-dicked aura about you, mama.”
Lulu snorts across the table from us. “Ain’t no lie.”
I glare at Lulu. “Zip it.”
Lulu giggles, waving her forkful of meatball at me. “She totally got dicked.”
“You’re keeping him, aren’t you?” Tate asks, her gaze still pinned on the side of my face. “I really like him.”
I turn toward her. “Do you want to keep him, then?”
“Did you get a puppy?” Iris asks, overhearing part of the conversation as she sits down next to Lulu.
“If the puppy’s named Reed, then yes,” Lulu tells her.
Iris clucks her tongue. “Reed is great.”
“I keep hearing that,” I mutter.
Tate bumps my shoulder. “Tell us what’s going on with you two. He’s here, so obviously something.”
“Grandma invited him,” I reply, moving my pasta around my plate. I took way more food than I can eat, but my stomach was growling so loud, I thought everyone could hear it.
“Look at me and tell me you aren’t sleeping with him,” Tate challenges.
“We’re sleeping together,” I admit, because it’s pointless not to.
“Does he stay at your place or his?” Tate asks.
“Depends,” I answer honestly.
“Are you going to stay married?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
We haven’t talked about the divorce paperwork since he moved here.
In all honesty, it’s been nice having him around.
He makes me happy, even though he’s with me all day, every day.
I thought I’d get sick of him quick once he started working at the bakery, but I haven’t.
Being an only child, I am a pro at doing things on my own, but having him around has been more than nice.
I feel whole for the first time in my life.
“Hey, Reed,” Lulu says, staring above me.
“Hey, Lulu,” he replies as he sets a cupcake down next to me, his muscular arm brushing against me. “I brought you something, sugar.”
Iris lets out a dreamy sigh, which is ridiculous because Brax waits on the woman hand and foot.
All of them are enthralled by the handsome cowboy, me included. I never stood a chance at denying my feelings for him. I was drawn to him in Vegas and that was only a weekend, but I’d known if he moved here, I wouldn’t be able to escape the pull of him.
Reed grabs a chair from the next table, spinning it around before sitting with his front pressed against the wooden back. “What are we talking about?”
“You,” Tate replies without a moment’s hesitation.
“Jesus.” I groan. “Can you at least lie a little?” I ask her.
“Why bother?” she says to me before sliding her gaze back to Reed. “What’s going on with you two?”
Reed smiles at her. “What did Amelia say?”
This is the perfect time for me to get busy eating. I have said enough and don’t want to add to the conversation. As my teachers used to say, it is time for listening ears.
“Not much besides you’re giving her dick,” Tate says.
I nearly choke on a meatball as soon as the words are out of her mouth.
“You okay, sugar?” Reed asks, patting my back like I’m a baby who needs to be burped.
“Good,” I grind out as the food finally makes its way down my throat. “I’m fine.”
“So…” Tate says, tapping her fingernail on the table. “What’s the plan with you two?”
“Maybe they want privacy,” Iris adds, earning herself a glare from Tate before she slinks down in her seat. “Or not.”
“Are you asking if I’m staying?” Reed asks Tate.
Tate shakes her head, her dark hair swaying with the movement. “No. I know you’re staying. You rented the place next to hers after all. I want to know if you’re staying married or getting a divorce.”
Reed tilts his head, looking right at me. The room is suddenly hotter and everything in me wants to bolt upright and run out the door, but I can’t. “The divorce paperwork is in the shredder.”
“What?” I ask him. “I thought they were working on it.”
Reed shakes his head. “Didn’t see a need.”
“You didn’t see a need?”
Another headshake. “Nope.”
“Why?”
“Sugar, if I’m in your bed and you’re carrying my baby, you better believe we’re staying married.”
“So, no dick, then. Got it.”
“Ooh,” is Tate’s only reply.
Reed grabs my chair, slides it to the side, and pulls me up to him so we’re face-to-face. “Do you want to stay my wife?”
I don’t reply. It’s as if my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. Say yes, my brain says, but my mouth doesn’t or can’t open.
“Because I want to stay your husband. I love being in your bed. I love your bratty attitude. I love watching your body change as you carry our child, creating its life inside you. I love waking up next to you and making your decaf bullshit fancy-ass city-girl coffee every morning. I love walking to work with you and seeing you interact with the customers. I love when you get all growly when you’re hungry, which is all the time now, and how you’ll stomp around until you find something to eat when you literally work in a place filled with food. ”
“Well…I…” I start, but he keeps on talking, ignoring whatever I’m about to say.
“I love watching you sleep with one hand on your stomach like you know someone is in there and you’re protecting them, even though there’s no threat.
I love that every night, you want me to rub your feet, and it turns into the very thing that got us into this situation to begin with.
I love that you curl your body around me every night and I run my fingers up and down your back until you fall asleep and snore. ”
“I don’t snore,” I tell him with my voice filled with sass, but my insides are melting.
He’s saying so many pretty things. Things no one has ever said to me before. Everyone else who came before him found so many faults with me, but Reed thinks they’re endearing. Damn. It’s so hard not to be deeply in love with this man. What started out as attraction quickly turned into so much more.
He made that happen, though. If he had stayed in South Dakota, I could’ve walked away. I would’ve always wondered what if, but that’s all he would’ve been…a great memory. But he forced himself into my life, our life, and now… Now I can’t imagine him not being part of my world.
“Sugar, you could chip the paint off the walls with the sounds you make.”
“Liar,” I whisper, staring into his dreamy eyes. I can see my future in them—our future—and I love everything I see.
Can you fall in love with someone so quickly? My dad said he did with my mom, and they’re still going strong after over twenty-five years.
“I want my wife,” he says, driving that final nail into the coffin. “I want this life. I want this family. I want this baby. I want this marriage. I want everything that comes with you, Amelia Gallo, because I’m truly, madly, and deeply in love with you.”
I stare into his eyes and feel every ounce of hesitation I allowed to burrow inside me vanish in a single heartbeat.
I can’t deny it anymore. I am in love with my husband.
Normal people fall in love and then get married, but not me.
Vegas did that, and I’ve never been more grateful for a drunken hookup.
“Damn,” Tate mutters from behind me. “That was romantic as hell. If you don’t stay married to the man, I’m going to steal him.”
“You have a husband,” Wylder says, coming out of nowhere.
“I don’t want a divorce,” Reed says, staring me straight in the eyes.
His gaze never left mine during his entire speech in front of my cousins.
“If you want one, I’ll give it to you, sugar.
But I won’t be happy about it because I love you more than I ever thought I could love another person.
So, Tate, to answer your question, we’re staying married if Amelia wants me, because I fucking want her and I love her. ”
“I love you too,” I say before Tate can open her big mouth and ruin the moment.
“I want you. I need you.” The last sentence is hard for me to say, but somehow I get the words out.
I’ve never told anyone who isn’t in my family that I love them before.
Not a single boyfriend ever heard those words from my lips.
If there’s such a thing as fate or soul mates, it seems like Reed was meant to be in my life, and we were in Vegas at the same moment, at the same hotel, for a reason. The universe conspired against us to force us together to bring a new life into the world.
Reed reaches up and cups my face in my hand. “Do you want to be my wife?”
Every time he says wife, my entire body vibrates with excitement. I tried to ignore that sensation, but I can’t deny it any longer.
When he saved me from that man at the bakery and barked that I was his wife, I nearly melted into a puddle of goo on the tile floor. My knees grew weak, and I had to hold on to something to keep myself upright.
To the outside observer, they probably thought I was in a panic from the verbal assault, but it was because I was overcome with emotion from hearing Reed call me his.
“I do,” I say, uttering the same words I heard myself saying on the video from our wedding night.
“Hot damn,” Reed says, and before I can even let out a small laugh, he leans forward, taking my mouth with his.
I ignore the hoots and hollers from my cousins as they celebrate the moment around us. I’m too lost in the feel of my husband’s lips against mine, all the emotion we’ve been bottling up and not saying, flowing between us.
When Reed pulls back, bringing his gaze to mine, he says, “You’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I breathe, loving the sound of those words almost as much as him calling me his wife.
“Fuckin’ finally,” Tate says as we gather our wits and come out of our bubble. “All is right with the world.”
“It’s so sweet,” Lulu sniffles. “I love romance.”
“You’re a sap,” Tate tells her. “This calls for a toast and an announcement.”
“No,” I tell her as I turn around, but she’s already out of her seat and halfway across the bar. “Shit.”
“Are you okay?” Reed asks.
I look at my husband and smile. “I am.” And for the first time in a long time, I really mean it. I’m more than okay. I’m great. Perfect even, which I never thought I’d feel again.
“I just heard the good news,” my grandmother says, coming up next to us. She wraps her arms around us both. “Nothing has made me this happy in a long time.”
Moments like these are special. Not just because we said we love each other and are going to stay together, but because I’m surrounded by my entire family.
It won’t always be like this. Time changes everything, and someday, we’ll all be gone.
One by one, the members of my family will disappear, causing a ripple in the delicately woven fabric of the Gallos.
I try not to think about it, especially when times are great, but there’s always a sliver of dread that lurks deep in my mind.
I push it away, though, trying to live in the happiness of this instant.
“Thanks, Gram,” Reed says, like he’s been calling her that forever.
“You made an old woman very, very happy,” she replies.
“It’s your granddaughter. She finally caved,” he replies like they’ve talked more than I realized.
Grandma cups Reed’s cheek. “I told you she would. I know my baby girl’s heart.”
They have been talking. But I don’t have a clue when.
“Have you two been conspiring against me?” I ask, glancing between them.
“We’d never,” Gram says, but she winks at me.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” I mutter, shaking my head.
“Don’t be mad, baby. This man is wild about you.”
“Crazy’s more like it,” Tate mumbles, but is quickly shushed by our grandmother, though it doesn’t seem to faze her. “I got the champagne.”
“Pregnant,” I remind her, pointing to my stomach.
“I got the bubbly grape juice too,” she says with the biggest smile, like somehow I’m supposed to be happy about that.
“Oh joy,” I mutter under my breath.
“One more grandchild,” Gram says as Tate starts to pour the champagne I can’t enjoy.
“One more for what?” Brax asks as he comes up behind his wife, Iris.
“One more grandchild to marry off, and then…” Gram’s voice trails off.
Brax’s eyebrows pull inward. “You better not be talking about dying, Gram.”
“It’ll happen to all of us at some point, but I don’t want to go until I know all my grandbabies are happy.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, hating the very idea of her not being around. “Don’t say that.”
Gram pats my shoulder with one hand while taking the glass of champagne from Tate with the other. “It’s reality, baby. Life is a lot of up, but it ends in a huge pile of shit,” she says like we’re talking about the weather or shopping and not death.
“Way to bring down the mood,” Lulu tells her. “We’re supposed to be celebrating.”
“Right. Sorry,” she mumbles and lifts her glass.
I take my stupid glass of grape juice and lift it in the air, trying to push away any thoughts of my grandmother not being here anymore. Each of my cousins does the same, but the mood at the table has definitely shifted.
“To my grandbaby Amelia and my newest grandchild, Reed. May they have a life filled with joy and love, never knowing the bite of grief or misery,” Gram says, tipping her glass toward Reed and me.
“What’s the key to a happy marriage, Gram?” Lulu asks her.
“Medication,” Gram says before downing her champagne and not going into a further explanation or saying she’s joking.
We laugh, but sometimes I think she’s honest when she says that. I couldn’t put up with my grandfather, especially all his bullshit from the past that I always hear about.
When I turn my gaze back toward Reed, he’s staring at me. “You’ve made me happy,” he says, clinking his glass with mine. “The happiest I’ve ever been, wife.”
“I’m happy too, husband.” The word sounds so foreign on my tongue and somehow right at the same time.
Even though I’ve always been surrounded by my family, I still felt very much alone at times. It’s only natural since I was an only child. But that is over now because I have Reed, and soon, I’ll have the baby too. I no longer am a me, but a we.