Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sadie
“ I f you say ‘that’s what she said’ one more time, I’m going to shove that screwdriver violently up your - ”
“OK, one, don’t threaten me with a good time,” Leo says with a twinkle in his eye, gesturing with the aforementioned tool, “and two, you can’t seriously expect me not to say it when you say ‘insert pole C into slot D’, because it’s such an open goal.”
In spite of myself, I laugh. “I’m the size of a house. Don’t make me sit on you.”
“Woman, I love it when you sit on me.”
I scoff. “If I sit on your face at this size, I’ll suffocate you.”
“And I can’t think of a better way to go.” He winks at me and then turns back to the IKEA drawers we’re building together. In fairness, he’s doing all the work - I’m too big to get down and dirty with the boards and nails - but I’m handing him tools and reading out the instructions as needed, in between finishing off my wall mural of the view of the sun setting over the sea, as seen from Lucinda and Angus’s bench on the cliffs. I just have the base left to do now. It does mean we have to put up with the smell of paint while we work, but the window’s open and it's not too bad.
Leo’s already finished his, a woodland scene with all of the gang represented as wild animals. Dean and Eli are both silver and black wolves fierce and loving. Liaden is a wise looking and beautiful owl, and Emily is a sweet little rabbit eating berries from a bush. Leo is a lion, because of course he is, and I’m a fox. Each one looks startlingly realistic, but the eyes on each animal are huge and sweet and cartoonish. It works, and it’s an image full of love for our child to enjoy. Leo’s already making up bedtime stories off the cuff to go with them.
Things have calmed down a lot over the past couple of weeks since Peter’s stupid-as-fuck failed robbery went down. My bruises are almost faded, the stitches in my side are out, and the remaining wound is healing nicely, and shouldn’t cause any problems with delivery. Even if I have a C-section. And mercifully, and most importantly, the baby doesn’t seem to have suffered any adverse effects from the fall at all. The midwife has been keeping an eye on us, and Leo has paid for extra scans just to set our minds at rest. Thump, thump, thump goes the little heartbeat every time, right speed and everything, like nothing ever happened.
One thing’s for real damn sure: he or she will have krav maga lessons as soon as they’re old enough.
In spite of everything I now know, I still feel stunned that Peter did what he did. The man I knew was, let’s be honest, a haughty twat who thought he was better than he was, and gave himself the most ridiculous airs and graces. But it sounds like his determination to get to the upper echelons, coupled with a new online gambling habit, caused him to spend more money than he had or could reasonably get. I guess he was trying to impress the Vice-Chancellor as his prospective son-in-law, and in the process, his tastes got expensive, and then risky. I can only speculate, as I’m never going to be able to ask him what the fuck happened. Mostly because I don’t want to breathe the same air as that fuckwit.
His crazy plan really did open a can of worms all over his life. The police went into everything he’d done with a fine tooth comb, and they uncovered that he’d started using cloned cards obtained through some of Jayden’s friends, and taken out loans in my name and a few others. By trying to rob Wishbone, he went nuclear and everything imploded, and several other arrests along the fraud food chain have been made as well. And Peter should probably look over his shoulder for the foreseeable, because I can’t imagine that went down too well in the criminal world.
Liaden, bless her heart, took video footage on her phone of a white faced, shaking Peter being led away from campus in handcuffs by the police. Christ, that was a satisfying clip to watch. On repeat. Frequently.
Detective Antoniou told me, off the record, that Peter ugly-cried like a coward while being questioned. He begged. He tried to turn on the charm. He became snooty. He bargained his arse off. But for the first time, he couldn’t get out of the consequences of his actions. Antoniou estimates that, although it’s his first offence, the seriousness of his crime means he’ll be looking at around five to seven years in prison, depending on the judge.
Leo has tried, visibly, to restrain himself from going all caveman on me, because he knows the fastest way to piss me off is to suffocate me, but I know he watches my every move. I know he double checks every door and window each night before bedtime. I know he’s sleeping less, still seething about the harm that could have come to me and our kid. Perhaps when I was still pre-baby Sadie, I might have chafed against it and told him to calm his tits, but not this time. For all I kicked Jayden Ross’s stupid butt and took care of business, the whole thing has left me feeling uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable I am at the moment. It was difficult to defend myself, and I was not the only one at risk. It was sheer luck that I didn’t fall at a different angle, and then the baby could have…
So I can’t say I don’t feel immensely reassured and comforted by how hypervigilant he’s being. I’ve found myself curling up closer to him on the sofa when we watch TV, wishing he was sitting with me while I do my appointments, and unable to sleep unless some part of me has physical contact with him. My foot on his leg, or his arm slung around me. Anything at all, as long as I can feel that he’s there.
Leo’s welcomed how touchy-feely and demonstrative I’ve become, to the extent that I wish I’d done this more right from the start. I think it’d show him just how much he means to me, more effectively than anything I could say. It’s clearer every day that physical touch is his love language, and that this is how we were always supposed to be. Right from the moment we met in that coffee shop just before my interview at Wishbone.
I should have grabbed him with both hands then and there, and just ran with things. We could have had years of happiness before today, and I wasted so much time with him for fuck all.
I’m not going to waste one single second more.
“Can you pass me the diagram again, Pumpkin?” Leo asks me, taking another screw out of a small plastic bag and smirking at me. “I want to make sure I’m screwing just right.”
Absently, I hand it to him as my mind turns over my last thought. Just like when we kissed at Em and Eli’s wedding, I feel like a bucket of cold water has been thrown over me once again, but this time for a very different reason.
It’s all so simple.
I love him to absolute death.
He loves me, unwaveringly, as I am and without ever thinking I’m something I’m not.
We’re having a baby together, a permanent commitment that I chose to stick with before I even got to this point because some part of me knew the score.
I’ve been so worried for so long about how stable our friendship is, and how stable it would then be if we ended up breaking up, that I completely missed how rock solid we are as a couple.
I don’t need to try to reinforce and maintain our friendship because it’s given way to something even better and much stronger. And it’s not going anywhere.
I look at him, at his curly hair, securely tied back in a ponytail while he works. At his muscular arms covered in all those colourful tattoos. At the full lower lip he’s chewing as he concentrates on building our baby a chest of drawers. At the hands that have held mine through the best and worst times of my life, and, incidentally, have brought me undreamed-of pleasure. He feels my gaze, because he does a double take and chuckles. “What? Do I have something on my face?” He wipes his mouth. “Damn tacos.”
“No.” I put down my paintbrush and hold my green paint stained hands out to him. “Help me up a minute?” It’s easier these days to have assistance standing up.
“Sure,” he says, at my service straight away. “What do you need?”
Once I’m up, I keep hold of his hands and slowly, clumsily ease myself into a kneeling position, because there’s only one way to do this properly.
He laughs, puzzled. “What are you doing, woman?”
“Something I should have done a long time ago,” I say, finding my centre of gravity and balancing accordingly. He looks down at me with all the love and tenderness I know he has for me, and my eyes fill. Damn hormones. But I’d defy anyone not to get misty, considering what I’m about to do.
“Hey,” he says with gentle concern, brushing a tear from my cheek with his thumb, still not twigging what my plan is, “what’s up, pretty lady?”
“I just…” I sniff loudly, looking up at the ceiling as I try to get control of myself. I’m struggling to find the words, and I doubt I can come up with something cool and poetic any time soon, so I decide to keep it simple. “I love you.”
He goes stock still, his eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them.
“I do, and I’m…so sorry that it took me so long to get here, but…” I take a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. “But I’m not going to fuck about anymore, and…” One more deep breath in a vain attempt to steady my nerves, and I go for it. “Hey, listen, will you marry me, Leo?”
He lets out a cough like he’s been jabbed in the side, and for a long moment he stares into my eyes. “I’m…” He clears his throat, his voice sounding thick. “I’m sorry, I’m gonna need you to say it again.” His eyes are shining with something that looks suspiciously like joy.
I smile through my tears. “Will you marry me, Leopold Beaudoin Gastright Mills?”
“No, not that…” He coughs again, a grin spreading out over his face. “Although that’s pretty great, too. But I meant the other thing.”
Oh. Understanding dawns, and my face softens. “I love you.”
His eyes close as if he’s savouring the moment, and then he lets go of my hands and walks out of the room.
I laugh in surprise. “That’s…not the response I was hoping for,” I call after him.
“I’ll just be a second,” he shouts back, and indeed, in a matter of a few seconds, he returns to the room.
And there’s a blue velvet ring box in his hand.
I gasp with laughter as he kneels in front of me and opens it, showing the most gorgeous engagement ring. It’s a cluster of sparkling diamonds on a thin gold band, chic and antique. “I was gonna ask, but you beat me to the punch,” he murmurs, his face alight with delight.
“Great minds…” I wipe my eyes. “So, who’s proposing to who here?”
“I have the ring.”
“Yeah, well, I asked first,” I retort, feeling every part of me light up like a disco ball, and he pulls me into his arms, murmuring into my hair how much he loves me.
“Are we really arguing about who gets to propose to who, or am I dreaming?” he laughs.
“You bet your arse we are.” How very us .
“So, my answer is yes,” he says in a tear-cracked voice, pulling back and cupping my face. “And given that you asked me , I’m guessing you’re good with me putting this ring on your finger?”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I tease, and he does exactly that. It fits well enough, but I bet I’ll need it resized after the baby comes. “Where did you get this?”
“Same time Dean bought Liaden’s ring, in one of the antique shops we went to. I was planning on asking once the peanut was born, but hey, let’s just do it.”
“Yeah?” I can’t stop looking at the ring. It’s better than anything I could ever have found or chosen for myself, classic but not run of the mill. And the diamonds look flawless.
“Yeah. Fuck long engagements. How soon can we get hitched, do you think?”
I grin. “I’m not sure. Guess you’ll have to find out.”
“Challenge accepted.”