“No, honey, you don’t have to leave school or your friends,” Rosalie said.
First he hugged his mother and then he came over to give me a hug too. I held his small body in my arms. It felt like I had known him forever. He had always been mine.
“Her name is Elsie,” Tristian said on the phone.
“Okay, and what else has she told you besides her name?”
“That she is…was…the accountant for the Baron family. Until she decided to run.”
“And that is what she’s telling you. What are you doing with her?”
“She’s at my place. I didn’t know where else to take her. I need to talk to Dad and the others about it. Everyone’s chilling out for now after the night they’ve had.”
“So she’s just there in your apartment?”
“Yeah. What the fuck else was I supposed to do?”
“She could be a Baron spy!” I growled. “Do you hear what I’m saying, brother? She could be feeding you what you want to hear so you trust her.”
Tristian was silent. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I didn’t want him to think. I wanted him to act.
I hadn’t paid much attention to this Elsie chick the previous night. All my attention was on Davey. But it was unmistakable that she was a looker. She was just Tristian’s type, even though he always insisted he didn’t have a type. That he would fuck any tight warm pussy.
“Yeah, I’ll deal with it,” he finally replied.
“Okay. Good.”
The call ended quickly after that.
When I turned around, I found Rosalie sitting on the bench close to the sand pit where Davey played with his friends. We had been at the playground for over an hour and it didn’t seem like Davey was about to tire soon.
“Everything okay?” she asked when I joined her.
I reached for her hand and she snuggled in close beside me, then placed her head on my shoulder.
“Davey is going to have an actual family. I am going to have an actual family. I still can’t believe it,” she said, blushing.
“I fuckin’ love you,” I said, turning to kiss her.
She kissed me fiercely back. My fingers sank into her hair and her tongue lashed against mine. When we were done, she pulled away, giggling.
“I’m not sure we’re allowed to kiss like that at a playground,” she said.
“I’d like to see who would tell me to stop.”
She bit down on her lip and shook her head.
“You know what I really want to do? Call all those people at the party from four years ago, all those people who thought it was hilarious that we fucked and then you left. I want them to know exactly where we are today and what we’re doing.”
“And what I really want to do is put another baby in you,” I replied.
I saw the look of shock on her face. She wasn’t expecting it. Hell, I wasn’t expecting it either. But I wanted to grow our family. I wanted to experience being a father to Davey, and I also wanted to experience everything I had missed about his childhood and birth. And I wanted to do all that with her.
Rosalie. The girl who brought me to my knees. Over and over again.
Sneak Peak at Tristian
Elsie
Ten years ago
I sat with my legs hanging off the jetty, staring out at the calm waters of the lake in front of me. The sun was about to set and the sky was a deep purplish color I’d fallen in love with.
At first, when my parents told me we’re spending the whole summer out at this lake house, I was hesitant to go. I didn’t want to leave the city, I didn’t want to be away from my friends for that long. But once I got to the lake house and saw how pretty the sky looked in the late evening, I never wanted to leave.
I had a book in my hand which I hadn’t been reading. Still stuck on the first page of the first chapter. I just couldn’t focus on the text. There was so much on my mind. Which, as a twelve year old, usually meant crushes and boys.
It was exactly how cliched I was. Just another stereotype.
I had a crush on Jasper Conron ever since I remembered. Ever since I saw him at kindergarten. He had big blue eyes and a winning smile, but it was like he never noticed me.
Maybe it was my fault. I was too geeky and nerdy, too predictable. I was too interested in books and math. We had spent so long together, with our lives running parallel to each other’s. However, it never happened to coincide. Jasper probably didn’t even know I existed.
The older we got, the more handsome he became. He turned into the guy every girl in school and in the neighborhood had a crush on. And he knew it.
My best friend, Sonya, and I would spend hours daydreaming about marrying Jasper. What our dream wedding would look like. How many kids we’d have.
Just childish stupid stuff.
Neither of us ever expected it to come true. Neither of us expected him to notice us.
And then, just like that, out of the blue, he did.
But it wasn’t me Jasper noticed. It was Sonya.
I was shocked when he walked over to us one day at the cafeteria and asked Sonya if she would have lunch with him. She didn’t even give me a second glance as she breathlessly accepted his invitation and they trotted off together.
When I called her after school that day, because I hadn’t been able to get a hold of her after lunch, she refused to come to the phone. She didn’t speak to me at school the next day. I didn’t know what I did wrong, but it felt like I’d done something.
She was embarrassed of me.
Sonya did eventually come clean. A whole week later.
She didn’t even want to be seen talking to me, so she promised to stop by my house after school. She
