Unfinished Ex (Calloway Brothers, #2)(34)

“Hey now.” Tag nudges us apart. “Jaxon didn’t mean anything by it. He’s just worried about you.

We all are.”

“Well, don’t be.” He picks up his shirt and heads up the embankment.

Tag throws me a venomous stare.

“What? Like you weren’t thinking it.”

“Yeah, but dude… not cool.”

“I know it was a dick thing to say, but I’m tired of worrying about him every time he goes off on another excursion. I’m sick of seeing Mom get crippling anxiety waiting for a phone call that he’s injured or dead.”

“We all are, Jax, but he’s a grown man. We can’t tell him what to do. If we try, we may make it worse.”

“Shit.” I rub my temples. “I know. I’m sorry.”

He pats my back. “Come on, let’s go find your dog before he makes friends with Old Man Henson.”



~



I sit at the table with my steak.

Heisman’s eyes follow me as I retrieve the TV remote from the couch. “What?” I say. “I’m just catching the end of the Bama game.” He doesn’t look away. He thinks I’m lying. To prove a point, I sit and eat and actually watch the game for two hours before flipping through the channels.

He stares at me again. He knows I’m going to do it. I know I’m going to do it. I tap my foot against the hardwood floor. I bite the inside of my cheek. I roll and re-roll the magazine on the coffee table. Then I turn on XTN.

I glance at Heisman. “Shut up.”

She’s not on. I pull out some papers to grade, then go to the kitchen to find a new Sharpie. I hear Nicky’s voice and race back out before leaning against the doorway to watch her. Her spots never last very long—a few minutes maybe. I don’t even pretend to stop myself when I grab the remote and queue up the show I recorded this morning. Then I view it four times.

“Goddamn it!” I throw the remote. “Get out of my fucking head.”

But instead of getting drunk and going to bed like any sane man would do, I sit alone in the dark on the front porch and wait. I wait because my house is in between the train station and her parents’

place. And I know she’s going to walk by around eleven o’clock.

And apparently, I’m a masochist.





Chapter Fourteen



Nicky




Two little girls play on the floor of the train as their parents try to control them. It’s late. I’d be misbehaving too if I were three or four and it was this far past bedtime. Finally, their mother calms them down by reading them a book.

I rest my head against the window and let the rocking of the train lull me into a trance.



“Morning, wife.” Jaxon is smiling from ear to ear as he brushes a clump of hair out of my eyes.

I lean over to kiss him. “Good morning, husband.”

“Do you think that will ever get old?”

I gaze at my finger that has two rings on it now. “Never.”

“Did you have fun last night?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I tease. “Which part are we talking about? The wedding part, or the part that came after?”

He pins me to the bed and hovers over me. “The whole part.”

I seductively bite my lower lip. “Best night of my life. If I was in that movie, Groundhog Day, and had to live one day over and over again forever, that would be the day.”

“I fucking love you.” He leans down and kisses me. “I even love your morning breath.”

I laugh, giving him a big dose of it.

My phone alarm goes off, alerting me it’s time to take my birth control pill. Jaxon moves off me, grabs my phone, and silences it. “Maybe you should skip it. Maybe you should skip all of them.”

My jaw drops. “Jaxon Calloway, I know you’re not suggesting we do something reckless like get pregnant the day after we got married.”

“How would that be reckless? We’re twenty-two. We’re married. We’ve been together for nine years. Hell, with as much as we have sex, pill or not, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.”

I giggle. “We are kind of like rabbits.”

He puts a hand on my stomach. “Do you know how gorgeous you’ll be when you’re carrying my baby?”

The sheet comes with me when I sit. “Okay, I kind of thought you were joking, but now you’re scaring me. We said we’d wait until we were both established in our jobs. I know you have one, but it could be a while before I get a decent offer within a good commuting distance.”

“What if we do family first, job next?”

“We both have a mountain of student loans. Not to mention we already agreed we’d wait. And we’re only twenty-two. We have plenty of time to have a baby.”

“Babies. Two. I’m thinking girls. Close together so they can be best friends.”

I shake my head. “You really do have this all planned out, don’t you?”

“Nicky, I’ve known you were going to be the mother of my kids since we were fifteen.”

My eyes narrow. “But we’ve been together since we were thirteen.”

“Yeah, but it took you two years to touch my dick. That’s when I knew.”