Chapter Sixteen #2
"She's not your sister, Marcus. She's your best friend's very attractive wife, and you're always around each other."
"I'm also always around Jenn. And Jade. Hell, half my friends are women. What exactly are you accusing me of?"
"Why do you need to surround yourself with women? Why aren't I enough for you?"
Her voice cracks, and that stops me.
"Why are you still waiting for her when I'm right here? When we have a perfect understanding, a perfect agreement, and we could just be happy together?"
Neither of us says anything.
Well.
Fuck.
Rian heard it too. And I can't pretend I didn't.
Why aren't I enough for you?
That's not part of the deal.
Neither is happy together.
"Just forget it. Forget what I said. I'm sorry." She rushes back across the room and pulls me into a hug I can't make my arms return, and then she's kissing my neck in frantic, scattered presses, her fingers running down my chest toward the waistband of my shorts. "Forget I said anything. Please."
I catch her hand before it gets any farther and gently pull it away.
"Let's discuss it another time. Maybe just head home tonight, yeah? I'll call you next week."
"Marcus. I'm sorry."
I meet her gaze. "Yeah. Me too."
I watch her go with defeat written across her shoulders, and when the door closes behind her I sink onto the couch and pick up Rose's card from the coffee table, reaching for her words the way I always do when I need her.
My thumb catches beneath the fold.
I stop.
What the fuck am I doing?
Rian isn't entirely wrong. I haven't heard from Rose since this card landed in my hands in February.
Not a text. Not another postcard. Not a scrap of secondhand news through Jade or Bennet or anyone else.
I get up every morning at 4:55 and do yoga with a woman who may not even be doing it with me anymore, because she said she would once in a birthday card months ago.
Maybe I am a fool for waiting.
Rose told me not to. She couldn't have been clearer about that part. Live your life. I took the I'm coming home and my love and built myself a loophole big enough to live in because I wasn't ready to hear the rest.
But coming home doesn't mean coming home to me.
Fuck.
That one hurts.
I look toward the door Rian just walked through.
She's here. She's been here. Rian makes a good partner.
She's beautiful, brilliant, driven, funny when she forgets to be terrifying.
I like being around her. I trust her in business.
The sex is fucking fantastic. She clearly wants more from me than the arrangement we started with, and instead of admitting I knew that was happening, I've spent weeks pretending not to notice because pretending meant I didn't have to make a decision.
Maybe happiness isn't always the thing you hold out for. Maybe sometimes it's the thing standing in your living room asking why she isn't enough.
I could make her happy.
And maybe I could be happy with her.
Not Rose-happy.
Fuck. That's not fair.
I can't start this by comparing the woman standing in front of me to the woman who isn't here.
I set the card facedown on the table and I'm out the door before I can think better of it, taking the stairs because the elevator is too fucking slow for a decision I'm not entirely convinced I won't talk myself out of before I reach the lobby.
Rian is just stepping toward an idling Uber when I shove through the doors.
"Rian!"
She turns.
I don't give myself time to reconsider. I cross the sidewalk, take her face in my hands and kiss her.
Her breath catches against my mouth.
I haven't kissed her like this since that night on her hotel balcony. I've been intimate with her in every other way we've allowed ourselves to be, but never this. Kissing her always felt different. Too close. Like giving away something I'd already given to somebody else.
My intimacy was for Rose.
My Rose.
Except she isn't my Rose anymore. I hate how much that hurts even while I'm kissing another woman.
Rian melts into me, her hands sliding into my hair as she kisses me back, and we're making a scene on a public sidewalk while her driver very politely develops an intense interest in his phone.
I let it happen.
More than that, I make it happen.
Because if I'm doing this, I'm not giving Rian scraps anymore.
I pull back just enough to look at her.
"I'm sorry," I whisper against her lips. "I'll call you tomorrow and we'll talk. Properly. Okay?"
I kiss her once more, softer this time. She nods, and the smile that spreads across her face is the first one I've ever seen reach all the way to her eyes.
Jesus, she's beautiful.
I wish seeing that smile did more to me than it does.
Maybe it will eventually.
That's the gamble I'm making now.
"Get your fine ass in the car and text me when you're home."
She laughs and slides into the back seat, and I stand on the sidewalk watching the taillights until they disappear around the corner.
Tomorrow I'll call her.
We'll talk.
And I'm going to try.
Really fucking try.
***
"Oh my god," Blaire whispers.
Then, as if her brain finally catches up to her heart, she screams it. "Oh, my GOD!"
The doctor laughs, clearly a veteran of this exact moment, and I sit there in the world's most uncomfortable guest chair feeling an immense, crushing guilt that it's me here instead of Bennet.
We just found out his wife is pregnant.
Not just pregnant. Very fucking pregnant.
"Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh, my god." It's all she's said for five straight minutes, a broken record of joy, and my hand has gone completely numb because she's squeezing the ever-loving shit out of it. I've done deals with less grip strength across the table.
"Six months?" she finally asks, debuting an entirely new set of words.
"Six months, and a healthy six months," the doctor confirms. "Baby's been hiding behind an anterior placenta, which is why you felt so little movement. It happens more than you'd think. Would you like to know the sex?"
"I'll step out." I move to stand, and Blaire yanks me right back down into the chair with the strength of a woman who bench-presses grown-ass men.
"You're here for moral support. Morally support me, damn it." She levels me with a glare, then turns a beatific smile on the doctor like she wasn't just threatening me with her eyes. "Yes. Please."
Angry fucking goblin.
"You're having a little girl," the doctor says, smiling.
Blaire's free hand flies over her mouth and the tears start fresh. I squeeze the hand that's still holding mine and perform my moral support duties while she cries and laughs and asks the doctor to repeat it twice, because little girl is information that improves with repetition.
And underneath how fucking happy I am for her, that emptiness starts nagging at me again.
It's been showing up more lately. I've been keeping it busy with work and wedding planning and anything else that comes with a deadline, but sitting here with Blaire crying over a baby girl she didn't even know existed until twenty minutes ago, it's harder to ignore.
I'm riding Bennet's coattails through my whole fucking life.
His business that I'm partnered in. His wife who somehow became my best friend. His friends who became my friends. His sister, the woman I've spent most of my adult life loving and wasn't meant to keep.
Take Bennet Sullivan out of the equation and what the hell is actually mine?
He's never once made me feel that way. I know that.
This is entirely a me problem, and probably one my therapist could turn into several billable hours if I were dumb enough to mention it.
But with Dad in prison and no family of my own left standing, I've started realizing that nearly everyone I love came into my life through somebody else.
I don't have a forever person.
Nobody whose hand I'll be holding in a room like this someday while a doctor points at a screen and tells us we're having a little girl. Nobody I go home to who is mine because we chose each other and built something that didn't exist before us.
And fuck, I want that.
I want it badly enough that admitting it makes me uncomfortable.
"Are you okay, Jack-Jack?" Blaire asks gently.
I blink and realize we're walking through the parking garage.
What the fuck?
I have absolutely no memory of leaving the doctor's office. Or the elevator. I spent the entire trip down having an existential crisis while my legs handled transportation.
"Yeah. I'm good." I look over at her, and at least the next part is completely true. "I'm so fucking happy for you."
"I can't even believe it." She's glowing, both hands pressed over her stomach now like she's protecting the secret from escaping before she gets to tell Bennet herself.
"I'm inviting everyone over tonight for dinner and making the announcement.
I can't wait to tell him when he gets home. I'm going to cook and everything."
"You feeling up to that? Need anything?"
"I actually feel really good today. And I'll grab Jenn if I don't. You've babysat me enough this week."
I pull her into a side hug as we reach my car. "It's a gruesome job, but somebody's gotta do it."
Then I immediately head around to the driver's side before she can swing at me.
Her tiny fists are like stones.