“I need you to turn my maybe into a definitely.” Célian crawled into my bed at the end of that grueling Monday in the office.
I didn’t kick him out, even though a small, vindictive part of me wanted to. Life was too short to deprive yourself of spending time with those you love, something I’d learned the hard way.
His body seemed to mold into my small mattress. Somehow, he fit. If there was one thing I’d realized this year, it’s that sometimes we belong in the last place we thought we’d ever be.
“How can I do that?” I put my thriller in my lap and let his arm loop around my waist, dragging me into the crook of his shoulder. His lips fluttered along my neck.
“Stay at LBC, no matter how this shit turns out. I can’t make it without you.”
“Make what?” I laughed. “News?”
He sounded drunk, but he looked sober, almost grim. My arms wrapped around him involuntarily. We sank into the hug and didn’t come up for air for long minutes.
“Sense,” he said after a while—a minute or three, or maybe more. “Very little makes sense when Chucks is not around. This is the part where I should say something romantic and profound—that you’re my beginning, middle, and end. But I don’t even know what that shit means. All I know is the very idea of moving to the other side of the country was enough to make me want to kidnap your ass, and not in the sweet, joking way. You’re brave, sexy, and beautiful, and there’s not one woman on this earth who can push my buttons like you.”
“Please say you’re offering me the remote to make this super corny.” I bit down on my smile.
He rolled his eyes, thrusting his groin into my stomach. “Only if you agree on flipping channels. So, what do you say we make it official?”
“This sounds a lot like a proposal,” I snort-laughed.
“It is.”
“Then no,” I answered seriously.
“No?” He blinked, as if I clearly didn’t understand the meaning of the word.
“Jesus, of course not. I want you on one knee, humbled and ringed.”
Jesus: “First time you’re calling me for the good stuff, and you’re going to refuse his proposal?”
He rolled out of the bed, walked over to his duffel bag, and threw something into my hands. A new iPod box. I laughed, opening it. But instead of finding an iPod, I found a ring—a multicolored gemstone ring with yellow and blue, pink and silver, red and purple. It looked like a crown, and nothing like an engagement ring.
Célian went down on one knee beside the bed, bowing his head. “Make me a happy bastard, Judith. You’re the only one who can.”
Not a question, but an order.
And just like that, for the first time since we’d met, it wasn’t difficult to be obedient.
Six months later…
“You look delicious.”
Jude and I just got married in the art room of the Laurent Towers Hotel, in a ceremony that took us approximately four days to arrange.
After the private proposal in Jude’s bedroom, I went down on one knee in front of everyone in the newsroom—on the day Mathias stepped down from his position as the president of LBC—and gave her the real ring, the one that cost enough to buy two apartments like the one she’d lived in.
That was twenty-four hours after the showdown with my parents in my office. The reason we didn’t bother planning a wedding until this week was because we didn’t care.
We are together.
Out in the open.
The world can fuck itself and jizz all over my new suit. I don’t give a damn.
“You don’t look too bad yourself,” Judith counters.
My bride has on my favorite white Chucks under her affordable, fuck-knows-where-she-got-it gown.
For the past two hours, the DJ has played The Smiths and The Strokes and The Shins, and almost nobody has danced, other than Grayson, Ava, Phoenix, Kate and Delilah, Elijah, Jessica, Brianna, and us.
When Phoenix said he was happy for me earlier today, I actually believed him. All his facial features are still untouched and untarnished, so that tells you all you need to know about our relationship these days.
And earlier this week when Elijah, Phoenix, and James (yeah, no way in hell I’m going to call him the D word, unless I’m referring to the thing inside my pants) insisted I have a bachelor party, I almost didn’t scowl the entire way through it.
Judith said she was proud of me for making an effort and being a good sport. I told her I needed to work on my cardio tonight, so she’d better fucking be a team player.
“You think I don’t look bad?” I cock an eyebrow at her.
“Definitely handsome. But you can look even better.”
I angled my head to the side, knowing where this is going. “Do tell.”
She nods. “Naked. With your head between my thighs.”
We didn’t sign a pre-nup. My mother and Mathias did, and look how they ended up. There’s something profoundly telling about committing to someone, but covering your ass in case shit fails. Jude Humphry is the only person I want to see every morning and kiss goodnight before I go to sleep, and admitting defeat when it comes to our marriage before it starts is not in the cards for me.
The guest of honor, our Lab pup, Charles “Chuck” Humphry-Laurent, is running between everyone’s feet, barking and pulling at dresses.
The Warrior watched us earlier as we exchanged vows, and now we’re on to cutting the cake. Our wedding cake is a giant red notebook, like Kipling, adorned with the words Congratulations to Mr. Timberlake and Ms. Spears.
Grayson’s idea, naturally.
I feed my bride a slice of cake the size of her entire face, and she giggles into the frosting. I take the opportunity to lean down and hiss, “Deep throat it, baby,” so only she can hear, and her face turns scarlet, even under the layers of professional makeup.
My mother sneaks up behind us and hugs us into a three-way embrace. Hardly the right time, seeing as I’m sporting some serious wood behind this giant Sour Patch Kids-flavored cake, but what-fucking-ever.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Maman gushes. Her ice water eyes glitter in different shades of blue.
Before we know it, Rob sheepishly joins us in front of the cake, rubbing his daughter’s arm, his smile so dazzlingly happy he looks like a dream. Mrs. Hawthorne stands behind him, looking down and worrying her lip.
Jude turns around and motions for her to get closer. “Anne, get your butt over here and join the hug.”
I want to marry Chucks all over again for that huge heart of hers. Lonely, my ass. She lets everyone in.
“Of course we invited you, Maman,” I finally reply. “You are family.” And I guess, when it boils down to what matters, she is.
After the revelation that James Townley is my father came out, Maman surprised me by announcing that she was staying in New York for the unforeseeable future to try to save what was left of her family. Namely, her son. She cut ties with her regular booty call in Florida and focused on reconstructing the board of LBC.
We made some of the investors who were eager to kiss Mathias’s butt step down and give up their shares by threatening to come out with all the bullshit they’d done along the way, and I finally got my staff back. These days, you can find ads for health care programs and gadgets on LBC. Not a condom or casino in sight.
For the past six months, Jude and I have been doing the whole family dinner thing with Maman, Robert, Mrs. Hawthorne, James Townley and his plastic wife, Phoenix, and Ava—who, by the way, has started dating Phoenix—and Grayson. We take turns, a la Come Dine with Me. So far we agree that none of us knows how to cook, and when it comes to smack-talking about people’s culinary abilities, I take the cake. And eat it.
Saying it’s weird to be a part of a family would be the understatement of the century, but we’re trying to make it work.