Til Debt Do Us Part (Married At Midnight #4)

Chapter 14

Fourteen

Dare

T alia is lying beside me, still completely nude, tracing indecipherable figures in the soft skin just below her navel. The sounds of lapping waves and the persistent rain permeate our bedroom. I’ve drawn the curtains and flipped on the soft light on the bedside table. Night has fallen now and the sky is still overcast, so there are no stars or moonlight.

Coupled with the silky comforter and fluffy pillows, it has created a very cozy atmosphere in our bedroom. Just now, it seems like we are the only two people alive. And because we just finished an amazing, athletic fuck, we are both slightly withdrawn and yet content to be together.

The feeling is new… and one that I must admit that I don’t hate.

I peek at Talia. There is a frown on her face.

“Are you trying to figure out a complex math equation or something?” I joke.

Dusty pink tinges her cheeks. She looks up, her brow furrowing.

“Like you haven’t noticed.”

“Noticed what?” I stretch out, folding my arms behind my head and crossing my legs.

Talia snorts and rolls her eyes. “It’s not like you to be nice.”

Her words catch me like a blow to the solar plexus. I wince.

“I hate to say it, but I’m not being nice.”

She spreads her fingers out across her abdomen. It has grown, the convex shape of it ever so slowly becoming more pronounced.

“Ah,” I say. “Your pregnancy is beginning to show. So what?”

She looks up at me, her brow creasing with concern.

“Don’t you worry about what the baby will be like? It seems more real to me every single day.”

My eyebrows arch. “Worry? No, not really.”

“It’s different for you. You’re not growing a whole person inside your body.” Talia rubs her abdomen in slow, rhythmic strokes. “I feel like a crazy person right now. But I can’t stop thinking that I’ll look away and then suddenly, I’ll be nine months pregnant. Or worse, that suddenly my son or daughter will be standing before me, a fully-fledged human being.”

My brow furrows. I reach a hand over to her belly, spreading my fingers over her bare skin. “Are you worried you’ll blink and miss it?”

She shakes her head. “No. I’m just completely freaked out by the fact that our baby is growing so quickly. As we speak, it’s like… getting nutrients and developing fingers. It’s wild.”

I give a laugh of surprise. “When you put it that way, sure.”

Talia scrunches up her face.

“It’s still not real to you. I can tell by how laid back you are. If it was real, you would be freaking out.”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

Cupping her belly, I try to picture Talia heavily pregnant. But I can’t. I can only see her as she is right now, lying next to me. I don’t know whether that means I am shortsighted or if I’m just more interested in the present.

Her mouth bunches up and she looks at me.

“What?” I ask.

“Can I ask you a question?”

I take my hand off her stomach and shrug. “That is a question.”

Talia schools her expression. “Will you tell me about your childhood?”

Her question kills my enjoyment of the moment. I screw up my face as I look at her.

“Why?”

She blushes but doesn’t demur. “Because. I want to know about you, Dare. Right now, it’s kind of like I’m married to a ghost without a past.” Her lips thin. “And I would like to know what made your brother so terrible.”

A chuckle rumbles from my chest. “I can’t say why Burn is like he is. He certainly wasn’t born like that. He was normal all through grade school and college. It wasn’t until…”

Stopping abruptly, I shake my head.

Talia tilts her head and uses two fingers to lightly stroke my forearm. Her delicate touch sends a jolt down my spine and my cock stirs.

“Until what?” she prompts, her voice soft and sweet.

I grunt. “Until he stole Daisy from me. When Burn broke off the engagement by announcing to the family that he was marrying Daisy, he changed. In the blink of an eye, I lost him. He became someone I didn’t know.”

She traces figure eights into my skin but her eyes are locked on mine.

“You lost your brother and your fiancée in one fell swoop. How cruel. That must have been hard for you.”

My only response is a shrug. I swallow, uneasy with anyone seeing just how furious and heartbroken I was. Maybe I still am.

Clearing my throat, I break eye contact with Talia and look off into the distant darkness.

Her voice is more hesitant when she speaks again. “The last thing I want is to pile on. But I would like to know when your mother passed.”

I put a hand over my heart, unconsciously feeling a distant ache.

“Do you have to open and examine all of my scars tonight, Talia?”

She winces. “Sorry. I thought it was best to rip the bandages off all at once. Plus, you’re usually quite… argumentative.”

I heave a sigh. “You’re getting me right after sex, when my defenses are down.”

“That’s the idea.” She smiles.

I stretch, sitting up. Talia sits up too, hugging a pillow to her chest.

“All right. My mother died when I was ten. I don’t really have that many memories of her when she was alive. Either she was very busy or she just didn’t have much interest in us.”

Her eyebrows rise. “Your father surely remembers. What does he say?”

Snorting, I stare off into the distance. “Tripp won’t say her name, even if he is asked a direct question about her. Remy will, but his answers are usually limited to curse words. He has absolutely lost it when asked about her. Everyone is too scared to say her name in his presence.”

Talia lifts her hand, ever so gently rubbing my back. I close my eyes, admitting to myself that my wife’s touch does feel comforting in a way I hadn’t expected before now. I almost feel a kind of relief to be saying these words out loud to someone other than Burn.

It's like scrubbing a boat’s hull to remove hard water stains. It takes an immense amount of work, but afterward, the blindingly white fiberglass is its own reward.

“It must have been frustrating as a kid to have tons of questions about your mom and yet no one to answer them.”

I purse my lips, dropping my head forward. “The day we found out about it, Burn and I were already in boarding school in Scotland. Remy’s assistant Samantha called and told us. She said that Remy had decided it would be best if we stayed at school rather than come back for the funeral. So… that’s what we did. The first time I saw my mother’s grave was six months later, when I came home for summer break.”

Talia’s jaw drops. “Seriously?”

My neck heats and I stare out at the darkness.

“Yep.”

“That’s really fucked up, Dare.”

She moves closer and twines her arms around my torso, hugging me. I don’t know how to feel right now. On one hand, a part of my heart is clearly thawing in the warm radiance of Talia’s affection.

On the other hand, I feel stiff and disjointed. It’s like I have the ancient battle wounds, desiccated and dusty, still covered in stitches. And someone just went around with a giant pair of shears, hacking at whatever fabric they could find and reopening some of the cuts I had thought healed over.

She squeezes me tightly and my eyes flutter closed. I am reminded of the fable of the lion with the thorn in his paw, letting the tiny mouse help him and letting her live in exchange. I am choosing not to lash out in part because this tiny woman is trying to help me. Well, maybe help is the wrong word. It’s more like Talia is trying to understand me, to get closer to me, even though she knows I’m dangerous.

Sliding an arm around her, I hug her. She buries her head against my collarbone, the pillow she was hugging falling to the floor, forgotten.

“As long as I’m alive, our kid will never have to face anything like that.”

Her words are a promise that she whispers as she presses herself close to my chest. They hit me like a quick, hard punch in the ribs. I grimace.

Our kid.

It might not be visible just now, but Talia is growing my child inside her body right this minute. And one day? One day, that infant is going to be a kid, every bit as real as I remember being at ten years old, half a world away from here and suddenly cut adrift.

Mourning my mother.

I hold Talia close for a few more seconds before relaxing my grip. She pulls away, her head dropping back, her lips more appealing than they have ever been. Cupping her jaw, I kiss her, pushing her back onto the mattress.

Her body is lush and warm and willing. The breathy sounds she makes as I use my hands and my mouth to tease her and pull her toward the edge are so fucking hot, I swear that my very soul is on fire. I fuck her like a man who’s going to the gallows, like I’ll die if I don’t feel her come around my cock as I drive it home again and again and again.

I clench my eyes shut as I come, the sensation like freefalling from the top of the highest cliff imaginable. Afterward, I stay inside Talia’s body for a couple of minutes. She wraps her arms and legs around me and welcomes me like a sheltering cove during a storm.

And I’m just a tiny sailboat, blown into the cove by nothing but pure chance.

I keep my eyes closed and press my face against her neck, surrendering.