AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” Zale asked. He couldn’t get anything out of Willa when he saw her on the weekend. Although she seemed solid, he still didn’t like the fact that she’d taken off like that.
Barrett stilled and Zale’s eyes flew to his.
“She’s pregnant.”
Rhys sat back in his seat, surprise giving way to pleasure on his handsome face.
“I trust this is good news, bear?” Rhys asked, his head cocked to the side as he took in Zale’s reaction.
Barrett nodded once, definitively.
Zale sat back and stared out the window. He turned back to look at Barrett and Barrett could easily read the worry in his dark eyes.
“Does she think so?” Zale asked quietly.
Barrett nodded slowly. “She does. She also doesn’t know that I know.”
“Explain,” Zale clipped.
Barrett leaned back in his chair, unused to being challenged, yet knowing the man in front of him demanding answers was the closest thing Willa had to a father since she was fifteen years old.
“Rhys,” he began, “you’re not going to understand all of what I’m about to say, and it’s not my story to tell. I know you’ll get the gist of it, but that’s all you’re going to get.”
Rhys stood. “I’m going to give you a few minutes.”
With Rhys outside momentarily, Barrett spoke plainly.
“Back in May, on the anniversary, I took her to Port Stanley. She talked through the whole mess. Told me stuff she’d never told anybody.”
Zale nodded, his hands folded loosely, his face expressionless, eyes alert.
“She told me her song back then was Tracey Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’. She told me she wished she’d left, wished she’d done anything to avoid what came next.”
The muscle at Zale’s jaw flexed and his lips tightened. Then he sighed.
“It was a goddamned mess. You’re lucky you didn’t see it. You’d never get her face out of your head,” Zale said, lost in memories.
“But you were there,” Barrett confirmed.
Zale nodded. “I was the first person she told. Fuckin’ sixteen years old with the eyes of a war veteran.” Zale contemplated Barrett for a moment, both of their faces still, both with a sea of emotions kept in check beneath the taciturn exteriors. “I was there,” he finished.
Barrett sat back, satisfied that he was asking the correct person.
“I’m picking up a marriage license tomorrow and I’m asking for your blessing to marry Willa in a surprise ceremony on Saturday.”
Zale took a deep breath and looked out the window for several moments, the muscle in his jaw ticking.
Turning back to Barrett, finally, he said in his quiet, mellow, way, “She deserves you. She deserves all that you can give her. I’m so fucking happy right now.” He paused, then grinned.
Pushing his chair back, he stood up and rounded the table to where Barrett stood waiting. Zale offered his hand and then pulled him in, clapping him on the back. “I’m going to want a moment alone with her after you spring it on her, just to make sure, but in case you missed it, you have my blessing.”
Barrett released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and Zale laughed out loud.
Barrett met his eyes and admitted, “That was harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Zale sat back down but leaned across the table, his hands folded in front of him. “How are we going to pull this off?”
Barrett leaned back in his chair and waved at Rhys to come back in. Rhys sauntered in, the concerned look on his face melting away into a smile. He’d been through hell and struggled out to triumph on the other side. Barrett admired him tremendously. Even if he weren’t his brother, Barrett would want this man at his side.
