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“I love you, Brooke.”
She smiled back at me and offered up her lips to kiss me sweetly. “As I love you, my darling, and I want you to look around and see the whole roomful of people who also love you without question. It is a forever love, Caleb, that they all feel for you and you don’t ever have to doubt, okay?”
I regarded each of them. Lucas and Wyatt who looked completely shell-shocked; Willow and Winter with tears leaking out of their eyes; Herman and Ellen who seemed peacefully calm; my cousins who looked about on par with my brothers; James offering his unwavering support without question. Brooke was absolutely right, though. Nothing was going to change my relationships with any of them. They were still my brothers, my sisters, my uncle, my cousins, and my friend—my family would always be my family. Even Madelaine was still my mother—she was the only one I’d ever known and ever would know. Sadly, there was no changing that fact for either one of us.
We’d both have to deal with it and go forward. In time I hoped we’d be able to meet in the middle and find some peace. I’d had no choice in any of it, but I needed to remember that she did have a choice all those years ago. She could have told my father no and yet she hadn’t. She’d taken on the role of mother to her husband’s bastard love child for better or for worse.
It was all a pretty heavy concept for me to delve into right at this moment, but at least I didn’t feel like something was missing anymore. That odd sense of feeling lost but not really. All my life I’d sensed I was just a little bit off course from the rest of my family but with no real reason to justify why I should feel that way.
Still a savage mind fucking, though.
For everyone—not just me. I couldn’t forget that.
I stood up from the table and knew it was time to share with them all the real reason I’d wanted them to come tonight.
“I realize that was a helluva lot for everyone to take in just now. Not at all what I was expecting tonight when I invited you all here to share in a new venture. So let me just get this out there first, and then we can begin the lovefest, okay?”
Someone laughed.
Lucas broke the tension with, “I’ll always be your younger and much hotter brother!” in a salute with his beer bottle from across the table, and I knew it would all be fine.
I lifted my chin to let him know I appreciated his timely interruption and then focused.
Deep breath.
“My lovely wife has helped me to find a world I was missing out on before she rescued me.” I squeezed her hand and looked down at her sitting so elegantly and beautiful in her turquoise dress with our son growing stronger inside her every day as she waited for me to share her genius idea. I could never pay back fate for the gift of her into my life. I knew I would be forever in fate’s debt, so this was just one small way in which I could begin to even the score.
Everything I needed to live was right beside me.
She whispered, “My Caleb, I love you so very much.”
“I know you do,” I told her before returning to finish what I wanted to say to the rest of them. “A world where good efforts are made helping those who desperately need it. Not many have the resources and financial blessings I was born into, so I wanted to give something back. Blackwater has been sold off, yes, but not to just anyone—and not out of this family. The silent partner on the deed is really a nonprofit we set up called the Sanctuary at Blackwater. And I’m not talking about a sanctuary for wildlife. It was recently approved for a business license from the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services, and will begin moving forward with operations as soon as a governing board has been appointed. That’s where you all come in.” I focused my eyes on my sister. Winter was born for this job. I hoped she would take on the position of director, but if it was her choice not to accept, then I’d be okay with that, too. This would be a labor of love from all angles and only for those who felt so inspired. I merely wanted to offer my family the first opportunity to become involved with the project before going out into the community.
“Begin operations as a place for . . . ?” Winter asked hopefully.
“Women and children who need sanctuary,” I told her.
BROOKE’S eyes never left mine when I made love to her after everyone had gone. I needed the connection to her more than ever after the news I’d gotten tonight. She grounded me in a way that I realized was necessary for m
y future survival. Whatever had happened in the past didn’t define me, and it didn’t change me as the person I’d become. Only Brooke had been able to do that.
With our bodies flush as we lay side by side, I spoke to her belly, which was now slightly rounded with our little John William growing fast inside her. “How are you doing in there, son?” I asked.
We did this daily. I spoke to him, told him about my day, read the financial reports aloud to him, and generally made a nuisance of myself with his mother.
“He says he’s very proud of his daddy for being so generous and caring to help those who need it.” Brooke always answered for Johnny, and somehow I believed her words were his words. The whole thing was ridiculously believable to me.
“That’s nice of him to say so.”
“He’s a very nice boy . . . a great deal like his father from what I can tell.”
“I love you, Brooke. And I love you, Johnny,” I called down to him in the direction of her belly. “Just think, he already is beginning to know the sound of our voices—”
Brooke raised an eyebrow in question at my abrupt pause.
“I just figured out why I fell in love with you the moment I first heard you speak to me at that cocktail party.”
“I think I know why, now,” she said.
