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I look over at my left hand, the enormous diamonds weighing my finger down. I look past them at the man—myfiancé—who won’t let me go. He’s entirely indifferent to how much I don’t want him, and I don’t understand it.
He rolls on his side so he can look at me,
“Can we get a shag rug for the living room?”
“Of course,” he answers. “Whatever you want.”
I nod. It’s not much, but I take my wins where I can get them. “I like shag rugs.”
He cracks a smile. “Then you’ll have them in any room you like. If there’s anything you don’t like in the house, just let me know and I’ll get rid of it.”
It’s mean, but I crack a smile. “What about you?”
He’s not offended. His eyes glitter with amusement. “I’m afraid that’s the one thing that has to stay.”
“Damn.”
He reaches over and slides his arms around me, then hauls me up against his muscular body. He drapes me on top of him like a blanket, then smiles faintly like he’s content.
I’m too tired to keep my head up, so I rest it on his firm chest. “Did you want children?” I ask.
His gaze drifts up as if he has to consider the question. “I’m not sure. I guess I hadn’t decided. It wasn’t a must-do for me, if that’s what you mean. I suppose I figured if I met the right woman someday, she would probably want a child, but I didn’t expect to find a right woman, either. I was open to it, but it seemed unlikely,” he concludes. “You?”
I nod. “Yeah, I wanted children. I grew up as an only child, so I wanted to have at least two. Maybe even four, if I was really feeling ambitious.”
“Four?” The number startles him. “Well, as an only child myself, I can safely say four was never on my list, but I’m not opposed if that’s what you want.”
I crack a smile. “I didn’t say I wanted to have four children withyou.”
“I’m afraid I’m your only option.” We already covered that today, so he doesn’t dwell on it. “I thought you had a sister. Georgia, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. She’s my half-sister, though, we didn’t grow up together. We didn’t meet until we were adults. I mentioned that my dad left my mom and moved to Chicago when she was pregnant with me? Well, Georgia’s mom was in Chicago.”
“Ah. Affair, or…?”
“I’m not sure. Some sort of fuckery, it messed my mom up. She was raised in a pretty devout household, so having a kid when you weren’t married wasn’t something they were psyched about, but then to be left pregnant and alone…” I shake my head. “Wasn’t great. She was heartbroken and kind of left to fend for herself.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Yeah. We struggled a lot when I was little. We always struggled, really. We never got to a comfortable place, but she struggled more when she was young. By the time I was two, we finally had this rental house to live in. It was supposed to be rent-to-own—shedesperatelywanted to own her own home—but the guy who owned it screwed her over. She was overly trusting and didn’t get it in writing, so after she had already sunk a bunch of cash into repairs since it was supposed to be our house someday, he refused to sell it to her.”
Calvin scowls. “That’s unprofessional.”
“He was extremely unprofessional. A smalltime slum lord. He sucked.”
“Did you live there long?”
I raise my eyebrows and nod. “Oh yeah, we didn’t leave. My mom loved the house. She fell in love with it the first time she walked through it. It was a fixer upper, but she didn’t care. Said the place had great bones. She loved everything—the window seat in the dining room, the way the sun rose and the view of the front yard out of the bedroom window. She loved the arches and the built-ins, even the tiny hallway closet. We made a lot of great memories there, and she wasn’t willing to part with them just because the guy was a jerk. She has pictures on the wall of me riding a bike for the first time in that driveway in a little pink dress—because, yes, I wore a dress to ride a bike.”
Calvin smiles. “That doesn’t shock me.”
I smile fondly at the memories. “But yeah, she valued the house more than getting out from under that jerk’s thumb, so we stayed there and she just spent years renting the place. She should own it by now, she’s surely paid the place off at this point, but… the guy’s a dick.”
“I could buy it for you, if you want me to.”
My eyes widen. “Huh?”
“That way you would own it instead. I’m sure your mother would prefer that to the current situation.”
