Cocky Secrets (Cocker Brothers #29)

85. Antonio

EIGHTY-FIVE

Antonio

S he’s been quiet this morning and I don’t know why. I’ve asked her a couple times if I did something wrong, but she said no in a way that made me believe her. But just in case, I pushed her for more information and asked again. She shook her head and said we had to go. The doctor was waiting.

“It’s healed up quite nicely. I see you’ve stayed off this arm.”

I eye my girl and tell the doc, “We’ve been careful. She made me.”

He nods, distracted by his schedule. The waiting room was packed. Lots of people got the flu this February. Can’t believe it’s been six weeks since Christmas. Flew by. I have to go back to Louisiana soon. Very soon. I’m itching for home.

“I expected your arm to take longer than it has with as many fractures as it had. How are those ribs doing? Mind if I check?”

“Nope.”

He pokes around them. “Still fractured.”

“Really?” I mutter. “Don’t feel nothin’.”

Meg offers, “Well, you might be used to it, Antonio,” making the doctor’s eyebrows bounce up. She smiles, but tells him nothing about my extreme and very long history of injuries. With all the story swapping we’ve been doing she knows more about me now than anyone ever has. It’s a strange feeling to be this locked into someone. I like it a lot.

His head is buried in a manila folder as he says, “Why don’t you check back with me in another month…”

“I won’t be here.” They both look at me. “Gotta go home. I’m needed.”

He nods and gives me a pain killer prescription that I won’t fill. The second I take Meg’s hand and lead her out of that claustrophobic room, I toss the paper in the trash where it belongs.

We walk in silence to the car. I open her door and kiss her before she gets in. When I shut my door and turn on the ignition, I pause and turn it right the fuck back off. “What’s going on, Meg?”

She frowns at me. “What do you mean?”

“Your face…it’s got no life in it. You’re always smiling. No smile. What’s up? Are you sick of me?”

Her eyelashes flutter like crazy. “No! I’m not sick of you at all!” After a staring contest her shoulders relax into submission. “I told my parents about you. I got a letter back from them, yesterday.”

I shift in my seat, aware that I’m in danger. If she’s this pissed, or off her game, then what they said about me ain’t good.

How could it be?

How could they be happy about a guy like me?

What’d she tell them?

“So? They coming back to save you or somethin’? They worried?”

Her pretty head lowers as she whispers, “They said they’d love to meet you. After they travel to Africa and then to Thailand and then Honduras.”

My tension shifts from anxiety at having to fight to be accepted to rage that they’re ignoring their daughter. “They’re not coming back?”

“They’ll come back to America, eventually, maybe, just not for me.”

“You know what you do? You draw a hand with a middle finger sticking straight the fuck up, and you send that to them.”

She stares at me then starts to smile. “That would be terrible.”

“It would serve them right.”

She starts laughing. “I can just picture their faces! They’d be so surprised.”

Shrugging I mutter, “I think you should do it.”

She crawls over the armrest to kiss me. “I love you, Antonio.”

Those words shoot into my heart in a big way. We’ve never said them yet. I grab her and grunt back, “I love you more than my own life.”

I move the seat back so she can sit across my lap. We’re twisted up and it’s not comfortable for either of us, but who the fuck cares about stupid shit like that?

“You’re going home?” she asks, her voice soft and cautious.

“Yeah. Of course. But you’re coming with me.”

She kisses me and murmurs, “You never mentioned it.”

“What part of you’re who I’ve been searching for and I have to go home made you think I was going back without you?”

We kiss until our mouths are raw, with both of us thinking this is where we need to be. Together. We’re gonna share oxygen until there’s no more air for us to breathe. Share lives. Share parenting. Share friendships. Share misery. Share joy. Share every Christmas that comes our way, especially since our first child, Luke Jett Scratch Martinez, is born the following Christmas Eve a little after midnight.

When my wife holds our boy up for me to see, I cry for the first time since I was six years old. Just a little. Not like crazy sobbing or anything stupid. But I did cry and I didn’t hide it.

I will never let anyone hurt them. Especially not me.

The End.