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Ben looked up; tears streamed down his face.“They call me a bastard.”
“They call you a what?”I almost dropped the jar of pickles I was holding, but managed to put it down on the counter before I caused a terrible mess.“Why would they call you such a thing?Your friends?Who calls you that?Boys your age shouldn’t even know that word.”
“Mom.We all know that word.”
“What do you think it means?”I prayed he didn’t know the answer.
“It means you’re not married to Dad.”
Dammit.
I racked my brain to think of something I could say that wouldn’t be a lie, but would also make everything okay.I came up empty.But empty wasn’t an option.“You know that’s not true, right, Ben?”
His face lit up but was also lined with confusion.“Youaremarried to Dad?”
“Well, no.”I shook my head and nodded at the same time.“I mean, yes.That’s true.I’m not married to your dad.Yet.”It was ayetI wasn’t entirely comfortable giving considering Leo and I had talked about marriage off and on for years and never managed to commit to anything.Which was ridiculous, because we couldn’t be more committed to each other.Years ago, we had a wedding date set, but then the first miscarriage happened and we canceled everything.After that, it didn’t seem like something we needed to do.Clearly, we’d both made an error in judgment.Even if we didn’t think it was necessary to have a ceremony to declare our love for each other, Ben obviously did.I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.“Just because we’re not married doesn’t mean we’re any less of a family.You know that, right, buddy?”
He nodded, but I wasn’t fooled.
“It’s not that we don’t want to get married.”
“Who doesn’t want to get married?”
Leo chose that moment to walk in the door.He headed directly over to me, where he dropped a kiss on the top of my head before he ruffled Ben’s hair in the way that we all knew he hated these days, but only tolerated from his dad.He had perfect timing and I could have cried from the relief of having backup for this particular conversation.
“Mom was just trying to tell me why you weren’t married yet.”
Leo’s handsome face twisted into a sly smile and he twisted his head around to look at me.Shit.He was clearly not going to be the backup I was looking for.
“Is that right?”he said slowly.“And what has your mom given as an explanation?”
I muttered a string of words under my breath and shot Leo a look that he would have no trouble deciphering.
“She didn’t.”With his father around, Ben’s entire presence changed.He stood taller, his shoulders pulled back, full of confidence.“All she said was that it didn’t mean you didn’t love each other.”
“Well, that’s true.”Leo winked at me, knowing how it melted me.“But it does mean we’ve been really busy for the last few years, and we haven’t had much time to think about planning something.”
Was that the reason?I’d long ago stopped asking Leo about it.With my parents and Uncle Ray gone, the idea of a big wedding didn’t really appeal to me, and if Leo didn’t care...well, it never seemed to matter much.We both knew how much we loved each other, he’d been able to secure a work visa for Canada, and we were happy.There didn’t really seem to be a reason to go to the trouble.Except...I looked at Ben’s face, so full of hope and question.Apparently there was a reason we’d never stopped to consider.
“You know what, Ben?”I took his hand in mine and to my surprise, he didn’t pull away as he did more often than not lately.“I think maybe it’s time we made the time to plan a wedding.What do you think?”
He smiled like the little boy he still was and nodded with enthusiasm.“Yes.Because then I can be the ring bearer and when Marcus was a ring bearer in his cousin’s wedding a few years ago, he got a present.”
I shook my head.He was nothing if not predictable.
Leo laughed.“Sounds good, but you can’t be the ring bearer.”
“What?”
“Why not?”
Ben and I asked at the same time.
Leo wrapped one arm around me and tugged our son close.“Because you, my son, will be the best man.”
~Leo~
By the time Lexi and I were done talking to Ben about his troubles at school, I still wasn’t totally convinced that getting married would solve all his problems.In fact, I knew it wouldn’t.But it would be a good thing for all of us, and maybe it would even help Lexi out of whatever funk she’d been in for the last little bit.I knew the miscarriages had been hard on her.Hell, they’d been hard on both of us, but there was no way I could understand how she’d felt losing the pregnancies.That much I knew.
