Jackson
It’s a short walk to the pizza place, less than ten minutes, and I’ve been holding Rose’s hand the entire way.
I feel like a shy teenager.
Which is fucking ridiculous.
I’ve explored every inch of this woman’s body. I know what makes her breath catch and what makes her laugh when I’m trying to be serious. I know where she’s ticklish, where she’s sensitive, where to put my mouth if I want her to forget whatever smart-ass thing she was about to say to me.
And somehow, walking down the sidewalk with our fingers threaded together has me feeling like the schoolboy who finally worked up the nerve to hold his crush’s hand.
I keep looking down at them.
Rose catches me on the third or fourth time. "Why do you keep staring at our hands?"
"I'm not."
"You literally are."
"I'm admiring your manicure."
She looks at her bare nails. "I don't have a manicure."
"Then I have no idea what you're talking about."
She laughs and bumps her shoulder into mine, but she squeezes my hand tighter.
Yeah.
That's why I keep looking.
It shouldn't feel this significant. Maybe it wouldn't with anyone else. But with Rose, it's another ordinary thing I spent years convincing myself I'd never get to have. Walking to pizza. Holding hands. Arguing about whether I was staring at said hands. Stupid shit.
I fucking love the stupid shit.
We've moved fast these past few weeks. Extremely fast, probably, by any reasonable relationship standard.
But there has never been anything reasonable about the amount of time Rose and I wasted pretending this wasn't exactly where we were headed.
We did the slow part already. Took us ten fucking years.
I think we've earned the right to skip a few steps.
After the night at her club, there was no easing into anything.
No careful progression from dating to spending the night to leaving a toothbrush at the other person's place.
We blew straight past all of it. There are hair ties fucking everywhere, and I'm beginning to suspect they reproduce when no one is looking. I found one in my shoe yesterday.
Explain that.
And I fucking love it.
Every tiny piece of evidence that we live together. That we’re comfortable enough to leave our shit around the place. That when I wake up tomorrow, there will probably be another hair tie somewhere it has no business being or one of my random socks stuffed in the couch cushion.
We've barely left each other's sides unless work forces us to.
Though, Rose has decided she isn't going back to law.
Not right now, anyway. When she told me, she looked almost guilty about it, which pissed me off a little.
Not at her. At the fact that this woman spent so many years being useful to everybody else that she thinks she needs a closing argument for wanting to take some time and figure out what makes her happy.
She says she wants to live for a while.
Just live.
So that's what she's doing.
She's already volunteered herself as an extra set of hands for both Bennet and Jenn once the babies come, which is fucking hilarious considering I've watched Rose stare at baby equipment like she's trying to determine which end contains the explosives.
Last week, Blaire handed her a breast pump and Rose held it at arm's length.
"What the fuck does this attach to?"
Blaire told her.
Rose handed it back immediately.
So we're making progress. But she's excited about the babies. Genuinely excited. She talks about them with this softness in her voice that I try not to think too hard about because my brain immediately starts doing dangerous shit involving Rose, babies and forever.
We have been officially together for a few weeks.
Calm the fuck down, dude.
And then there's the cello.
Jesus Christ, the cello.
I had no idea she played. Ten years of knowing this woman and somehow she never once mentioned that she could sit down with an instrument and completely fuck me up emotionally.
The first time she played for me, she almost didn't. She kept brushing it off, saying she was rusty, that she hadn't played seriously since college, that it wasn't a big deal.
Then she put the bow to the strings.
I cried.
Actual fucking tears.
Didn't even bother pretending I had something in my eye. There was no point. She saw me within thirty seconds and got that little smile on her face.
"Are you crying?"
"No."
"Jackson."
"Shut up and keep playing."
So she did.
And fuck.
Watching her play might be one of the sexiest things I've ever seen, which feels mildly inappropriate considering I was also having a deeply emotional experience at the time, but both things can be true.
Her eyes closed. Her whole body moved with it.
She wasn't thinking about me or work or James or anybody else. She was just playing.
I'd never seen her like that.
Then she finished, looked up at me and asked what I thought.
I showed her.
Enthusiastically.
In our bedroom.
You get the point.
I don't know what she'll do next. Maybe she'll go back to law eventually.
Maybe she won't. Maybe she'll teach. Maybe she'll play cello.
Maybe she'll spend six months spoiling babies that don't belong to us and terrorizing their parents with unsolicited advice she learned on Google fifteen minutes earlier.
I don't care.
For the first time since I've known her, Rose isn't choosing her life based on who needs her. She gets to figure out what she wants. And whatever that turns out to be, I'll be right there holding her hand and pretending I'm not staring at it.
And selfishly, there's another part of this that I don't bother pretending isn't important.
She's mine.
I can just say that now. Out loud, if I want to. I don't have to shove it down or remind myself she's Bennet's sister or somebody else's girlfriend or my best friend or whatever other reason we came up with over the years for why wanting her was a terrible fucking idea.
She chose me.
I chose her.
And now I'm walking down the sidewalk swinging our joined hands between us like an idiot because this is all it takes to make me happy these days.
“What’s that smirk for?” she asks as we round the corner.
I glance over at her. “Nothing.”
Her eyes narrow immediately.
She knows me too well.
“Jackson.”
My smirk gets worse. “Just thinking about stuff.” I bring her knuckles to my lips and kiss them.
“What stuff?”
“Private stuff.”
“About me?”
“Maybe.”
“That means yes.”
“I invoke my right to remain silent.”
“You don't have that right with me.”
“Pretty sure that's unconstitutional.”
"Move your feet, people. I'm carrying a whole baby and moving faster than you. Choppity fucking chop."
Blaire is several feet ahead of us, glaring back while Bennet holds the restaurant door open. James chuckles into the front of his hoodie, wisely keeping his face pointed toward the ground so nothing he does can accidentally redirect her attention.
Smart kid.
Bennet gives me an apologetic shrug.
He knows. We all know. His wife has become a menace.
She's been giving Jenn a run for her money lately. Gone is the soft-spoken, lovable Care Bear Blaire we all knew and loved. Somewhere between finding out she's pregnant and discovering Bennet will let pregnant Blaire get away with damn near anything, the woman evolved.
Now she's an evil Teletubby right alongside Jenn.
Stabby Wabby and Dipsy Doom.
I haven't decided which is which yet, mostly because I enjoy being alive and assigning those names within hearing distance would be an excellent way to stop.
We're almost through the door when I hear a familiar voice behind me.
“Marcus?”
I stop and look back.
Stacy is walking toward us, hand in hand with a man I've never seen before.
Well, shit.
For half a second, I'm surprised. I haven't seen her since I walked out of her place, and fuck, that was more than a year ago now.
The last time we were in the same room, we were both in very different places in our lives.
But then she smiles, and whatever awkwardness I might've expected just isn't there.
I'm happy to see her. Genuinely happy to see her.
“Stacy. Hey.”
Her face breaks into a smile as she releases the man's hand and meets me halfway. I don't let go of Rose. I don't even think about it. I just shift enough to give Stacy a quick one-armed hug.
“It’s good to see you.”
“You too.”
When I pull back, my fingers tighten around Rose's automatically.
“This is my fiancée, Rose.” I glance down at her. Mine. Fuck yeah. “Rose, this is an old friend of mine, Stacy.”
Stacy's eyebrows lift slightly as she looks at Rose. Then at our hands and back at me with a huge smile.
What was that?
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” she says to Rose.
Finally?
Rose doesn't seem to catch it. Or she does and is better behaved than I am.
“You too.”
“This is my fiancé, Quinn.” Stacy reaches back for him, and he steps closer. “He's the man who helped me out of that dark period I told you about.”
She gestures toward me.
I did?
I keep my face neutral because clearly there was a conversation about me at some point, and I would very much like access to the meeting minutes.
“Ah,” Quinn says. His whole face changes.
Well, that's concerning.
He extends his hand toward me. “Then I have you to thank for bringing this beautiful woman into my life.”
Okay. Definitely more significance.
I shake his hand while my brain starts flipping backward through several months of memories, trying to locate the period in which I was unknowingly doing life-changing work without being informed.
“I'm not sure how much credit I can take there.”
“A lot,” Stacy says quietly.
I look at her. She's smiling, but there's more behind it now. Gratitude, maybe. Affection. Whatever it is, I'm beginning to suspect this conversation is about to teach me something about my own life.
When I look down at Rose, I'm expecting... something.
Unease, maybe. Confusion. A question in her eyes. Even the slightest tightening around her mouth.