34. Declan

34

DECLAN

“You really don’t have to do that,” Skylar insisted as she joined me in the kitchen, carrying Mason in her arms. About thirty minutes earlier, while everyone was enjoying dessert, she’d excused herself to feed the baby upstairs.

“I don’t mind.” I turned my attention back to the dishes in the sink, where I was rinsing off all the pots and pans and dishes that had been cleared from dinner.

The rest of the group was still in the dining room feasting on pumpkin and pecan pie. Part of the reason I’d retreated to the kitchen to clean was my OCPD, and another part was needing to take a moment away from the crowd and clear my head.

Everything about today felt too…right. The day I’d spent in the hospital, I’d gotten to know the Comfort siblings and their spouses. Gran, Dorothy, and Fred had met Jimmy, Hank, Skylar, and Luna on the day of the wedding. But our brief interactions didn’t account for this gathering feeling so natural. There was no reason why this holiday felt more familial than any we’d shared with Grandad, Derek, and Raquel.

After dinner and before dessert, we played games. We split into two teams for charades, men vs. women. We tied, although the final game was highly contested. Billy was accused of cheating by his attorney wife, Reagan, who also named his brother Jimmy as a co-conspirator. Since the alleged criminal acts benefited our team, Cash, Hank, and I pled the fifth. We’d also played a few rounds of Heads Up and Pictionary. The highlight of the game was Gran drawing a penis with a tail when she was trying to get her team to guess the movie Cocktail . She’d always enjoyed shocking people, and the reaction she’d gotten from the crowd was exactly what she’d wanted.

The biggest reason for me secluding myself, the reason I was taking some time out in the kitchen, was my reaction to seeing Ashley with Mason. Watching her hold her nephew, change his diaper, comfort him when he cried, and entertain him when he got fussy stirred something inside me. Something primal. Something visceral. Something primitive.

Academically, I knew what it would take for me to father a child. But I’d never felt the urge to impregnate someone until watching Ashley with Mason. Seeing her with a baby made me want to put a baby inside of her. I wanted her to have my child. I wanted her to be pregnant with our child. I wanted to go to the scans with her and find out the sex of the baby with her. I wanted to rush her to the hospital when her water broke and?—

“So, one more month,” Skylar interrupted my inner thoughts.

“Excuse me?” I glanced over at her.

“Of marriage.” She leaned against the counter as she adjusted Mason’s burp cloth on her shoulder and patted his back. “You have one more month together.”

“If that’s what Ashley wants.”

“What do you mean, if that’s what Ashley wants?” Her brows knitted together. “Isn’t that what you agreed to? Isn’t that the deal?”

I looked back down at the sink. I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t my place to tell her that I would gladly stay married to Ashley. That I’d be perfectly happy to remain married to Ashley after the December 25th deadline.

Skylar took a step toward me. “I thought that this was just supposed to be until the company is signed over to you on Christmas Day and then annulled after the new year.”

“It is but—” A noise sounded behind us, and I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dorothy in the doorway.

“Mrs. Wolfe is getting tired,” she announced as Reagan and Isabella filtered into the kitchen behind her with their empty wine glasses.

“I’ll be right there.” I shut off the water and dried my hands. Before I left the kitchen, I looked back at Skylar. “Thank you so much for today.”

“Don’t thank me. Ashley did all the work. She cooked everything, decorated everything, and organized everything, all because I insisted on hosting even though I wasn’t up to it because I just had Mason. She’s the best. She’s amazing .”

“Yes. She is.”

Even Ray Charles would be able to see Skylar was dropping not-so-subtle hints about her sister to me. Clearly, she had no clue that I was her biggest fan. I didn’t need anyone to convince me of Ashley’s attributes. Ashley was all the things she’d listed and more… much more. She was funny, smart, nurturing, gorgeous, creative, sexy…the list went on and on.

More people began to file into the room. Hank joined his wife and took Mason from her. As I walked into the front room, Luna rushed up to me.

“Here!” She handed me a drawing. I looked down at it and saw that it was a picture of a man in a black suit and a woman in a white dress with long red hair under an arch of flowers. “It’s when you and Auntie Lee Lee had a wedding party.”

“Thank you, it’s beautiful.”

She handed me another piece of paper. This one was a drawing of a red-haired woman with a baby and a man standing next to her with a cat, who was disproportionately large at his feet.

“That’s when you and Auntie Lee Lee have a baby, and that’s Mr. Purrfect.”

It seemed I wasn’t the only one imagining Ashley having our baby. Seeing proof that Luna was having the same thoughts I was, had me feeling a lot of things I’d never felt before. “Thank you.”

“No prob, Bob.” She gave me a thumbs up, then skipped off to the kitchen.

I carefully folded the papers up, put them in my back pocket, then sanitized my hands before meeting Ashley, who was standing at the door with Gran, Fred, and Dorothy as they put on their coats. She walked us out and said her goodbyes after everyone was in the car.

Before I got into the driver’s side, she stood in front of me. “Thanks for coming.”

“Sorry again for just showing up like this…without any warning.” I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Ashley alone. I’d wanted to, but it was a full house all day. There hadn’t been a moment to sneak away. I’d really wanted a moment away.

“I’m glad you did. It was a nice surprise. When are you leaving to go back to California?”

“I’m on a red-eye out of Atlanta tonight.”

If I wasn’t mistaken, I would have sworn that there was a flash of disappointment in her baby blues.

“Oh, okay.” She inhaled through her nose, then exhaled from her mouth as she looked down at the ground. When her eyes lifted up to mine, she licked her lips. “So, I guess I’ll see you in a few weeks, then.”

“In a few weeks.”

“Bye, husband.”

“Bye, wife.”

I bent down, fully intending to kiss her on her forehead, but instead, kissed her on her mouth. It was a quick kiss. Just a brush of the lips really before Luna called her from the door asking where the Cool Whip was, and Ashley turned and rushed back inside the house.

The entire drive back to the estate, my mouth tingled. I could still feel her lips on mine. I was only half listening as Dorothy and my grandmother talked about how lovely the Comfort family was and how much they enjoyed themselves. They said that they had made plans to play Mahjong with the woman who ran the boarding house. Fred remarked that he and Jimmy had plans to go fishing.

When we got home, Fred and Dorothy excused themselves to go to bed, and Gran did the same.

“Goodnight, Gran,” I said, still distracted from the kiss we’d shared.

She paused halfway up and glanced over her shoulder. The look in her eyes caused my chest to tighten with concern.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know exactly what is going on between you and Ashley, but don’t fuck this up.”

I stared at her, unsure of what to say. I’d never heard my grandmother use profanity in my life. With that simple yet significant declaration, she turned and walked back up the steps.

First, Skylar spoke to me, and now Gran. Neither of them knew the whole story. They both only knew half. I hadn’t told Gran that our marriage had an expiration date. And it seemed Ashley had told Skylar that it absolutely had an expiration date.

As I left the house and headed to the hangar to fly back to Atlanta to catch the red-eye, I wondered what that said about the two of us. I knew what she wanted. She wanted the white picket fence dream. A dog, kids, and a husband who came home every night. Most of all, she wanted love.

Love . That enigmatic emotion.

That was the one thing I couldn’t give her. I couldn’t promise her that forever. I would never enter into a contract, an agreement that I wasn’t absolutely certain I could fulfill, especially when it came to something as important as marriage. I’d seen the damage it could do when someone didn’t live up to their end of that bargain.

Love was an uncertainty. It wasn’t guaranteed. It was impossible to predict. Why did she need the impossible?