Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 79938 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79938 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Because, when I sat and thought about it, Gramps had been right; I knew it that moment. The decision was made in a blink. She was a stranger that I somehow recognized.
Every day since then had just been adding assurances on top of that choice that had never really been a choice at all.
"What are you doing?" she asked, brows together, confused smile pulling at her lips.
"No one would claim I am a particularly eloquent guy," I started, reaching into my pocket, palming the ring, keeping it a secret for another moment more. "I think you know by now I'm not the wine and roses type. But that seemed to work for you, so I am going to go ahead and do what got you down the street and into my arms in the first place." I lowered myself down, pulling out the ring. "Why don't you take those tits, that ass, those legs, those lips, and what I know is a prime USDA pussy, and let me have them forever?"
She threw her head back to laugh even as a tear slipped out of the corner of her eyes and slid down her cheek.
"Well, I've put up with you this long," she said, giving me her hand, blinking through a wave of wetness in her eyes. "I guess another fifty or sixty years won't be too bad."
So that was how I got her to agree to marry some cage-fighting, arms-dealing, crazy as fuck biker.
Kennedy - 3 years
I was trying not to get my hopes up.
That was a pretty shitty mindset to be in right then, but after three miscarriages, I wasn't going to let myself get all hopeful until I was told for sure that we were out of the woods.
I took a slow, deep breath, letting it out in what was almost a sigh as I sat in the waiting room of a very upscale, obnoxiously expensive doctor's office. At Richard's insistence.
"Whatever it is," Pagan said casually, squeezing my thigh.
I know there was nothing casual about him right then.
I knew this because the first time I was pregnant and I told him, he had freaking lit up. I had never seen anything like it. He had been a happy man on our wedding day, sure. He had looked at me like I was the only woman he had ever seen in his life. And, let's be honest, he had seen more than his fair share.
But at the idea of having a baby, he unexpectedly looked like I was carrying the sun. Like I was the reason for all things ever in existence.
Losing the baby ten weeks in had been devastating for both of us.
But we weren't giving up.
The second, we were slightly more trepidatious.
The third, we were sick with worry.
This one, well, we were almost resigned to what seemed like the only outcome for us, despite the doctors telling us that they couldn't find anything wrong with either of us, any reason for us not to be able to have a full-term baby.
Which was why, twenty minutes later, after listening to the whooshing of the ultrasound machine and feeling the cold jelly on my stomach, I almost didn't believe him when he told us that the baby was healthy.
Five months.
We had never made it past three.
And five meant that at any time, if I went into labor, the baby had an eighty-percent chance of surviving. If we made it to twenty-seven weeks, that went up to ninety-percent.
My eyes slid to Pagan's finding the sun-look again, knowing for sure right then that everything we had been through the past few years had been worth it for him to look the way he did.
Two months later, and only eight weeks premature, we welcomed a surprisingly hefty baby boy into the world.
Five pounds and seven ounces.
"I'm not fucking crying," Pagan insisted as he turned away, making me smile at his back through a rush of tears in my own eyes.
"Of course not," I agreed, watching the baby get scrubbed and tagged and whatever else they needed to do to make sure he was healthy.
It was about an hour later as he was clutched to my breast, Pagan with me on the bed, that we discussed the topic for the first time, perhaps being too superstitious about it before.
Names.
"I know Gramps would like another Robert. The fourth and all that cheesy rich dude shit."
"Well, for all intents and purposes, he is going to be a little rich dude." Seeing as we were the sole beneficiaries of Richard Sr.'s will when he passed. Which was hopefully not for a good, long time. He had, over the years, become almost like a father figure to me, a fatherless girl. He had been the one to walk me down the aisle, to offer me franchise advice on my business, to be there for every holiday and birthday, even if that meant he was surrounded by all our criminal friends.