His Pretty Little Burden: Chapter 35

THE ALFRESCO and lawn area is dotted with overhead fairy lights, while the dense darkness of the bush creates black borders around the space. Anything could be within that black abyss, but it’s not menacing. It’s beautiful and wild.

Music soars around us, ‘This Town’ playing through the speakers. The melodic voice of Niall Horan singing about love. The words remind me of Benji, being children and never saying the things I wish we had.

‘Everything comes back to you.’

Konnor and Blesk are dancing under the twinkling lights; her high ponytail flicks around as she giggles, not taking him seriously. He tries to teach her the steps Cassidy showed them earlier, but she’s not as graceful as Cassidy. He seems to like that more, though, somehow.

I peer across the lawn at Shoshanna and Bronson tangled together in the free-standing hammock. She throws her head back laughing at something he says. He’s animated as he talks. I’ve only known him for a day, but I’m sure whatever he’s going on about is ridiculous or completely mad or both.

In the gazebo, Cassidy has fallen asleep in Max’s lap, cradled in his big arms like a toddler. Beside him is a baby monitor, but he’s fixed on his wife’s face. His eyes, stormy grey, study the girl in his arms as though he has just in this moment fallen in love with her, as though he is helplessly falling.

‘Butterflies, they come alive.’

Clay’s furrowed brows and tight assessing lips roll into my mind. I smile. There is no doubt that Benji’s memory hovers around me; regret and uncertainty do that, keep the memories lingering instead of laying them to rest with him. But… the parts of me responsible for loving aren’t his anymore. If they ever were.

My heart is big for Clay

My hands shake for him.

My breath catches for him.

‘Everything comes back to you.’

At the sound of Shoshanna’s laugh, my throat tightens around a knot of jealousy. I sigh, wanting moments of laughter in a hammock, wanting peaceful sleep in Clay’s arms, wanting to dance on his feet like Blesk is doing right now with Konnor. They all look… comfortable. Maybe I’ll have that with Clay one day. But Clay Butcher is at odds with comfort. And I’ll take whatever that brilliant man gives me with the knowledge it’s more than he offers anyone else. That’s enough.

It has to be enough.

The sound of the sliding door breaks through the trance Niall Horan has me in.

‘Get back inside, ya, boofheads.’ Xander blocks the dogs from coming outside with his leg, then sidesteps the tumbling canines, exiting the house and joining us. He walks across to me with a soft smile on his handsome face. ‘You okay, girlie?’

I nod, pretending it’s just a passing question, but his trained eyes can’t be missed even in the dim of the gathering night. He means it on a deeper, more visceral level. ‘Are you okay?’ They all know. It was in their eyes all day.

Pity.

Deflecting, I say, ‘I bet Stacey passed straight out.’

‘Too much beer. She had three pints; that’s a lot for her.’ He plonks down beside me on the bench. ‘She’s usually not a beer drinker.’

As the memory of my miscarriage being number three throws a rock of sadness into my stomach, I mutter, ‘Three is the magic number.’

‘What number is that?’

Cringing at my context-less comment, I dismiss it with a wave of my hand. ‘It’s just one of those things people say.’ He arches a brow at me, not allowing my digression to take root. I roll my eyes. ‘Okay, my mum used to say, ‘bad things come in three.’ Do you think that’s true? It seems to always be the case.’

‘Nah, girlie.’ He scrunches his nose and shakes his head, a sweet kind of amusement, that isn’t mean, rides his tone. ‘That’s called a self-proclaimed prophecy. It’s a dangerous thing.’

I frown. ‘Huh?’

He twists to face me, and I mirror him. ‘It’s like when you think don’t trip, and then you trip. Your mind makes it happen or finds a pattern in the sequence of events. When they are just random. Shitty and random, buddy.’

I collect up my hair, pulling it down the shoulder furthest from him so I can see his face without strands curtaining him. ‘I didn’t make these bad things happen to me.’

‘No. Of course not, Fawn. But the number…’ He stares across the yard at his brothers, not observing them but contemplating his words for several moments. He looks back at me, an idea dancing in his blue eyes. ‘Say, if something else happens, does it blow this conspiracy out of the water? Or do you restart? Start from one and just count to three again?’

I keep restarting… I snort-laugh. ‘It’s silly, I know.’

‘Try this—’ His grin widens, a flash of those perfect teeth dazzling me. ‘Good things come in threes. I guarantee it, Fawn.’ He hails two fingers, saying, ‘Scout’s honour.’

I feel his comment warm my heart, the awakening of that organ wanting one person and one person only. I nod towards the sliding door. ‘Where is he?’

A sigh leaves him. ‘Where do you think? His office.’

I stand up and walk to the sliding door, opening it and holding it like that as I peer back over my shoulder at Xander. Sitting alone on the bench, he watches his brothers with a soft smile on his face.

For the past eighteen years, I have scratched at the surface of what a family looks like. I’ve ripped my nails from their beds trying to get to the core of it. Feel it. It’s more than dinners and movies and conversations. More than sharing a space. It’s effortless togetherness. Laughter on a hammock. Cradling your wife. Dancing. It’s in the resting smile on Xander’s face as he sees their happiness.

‘Hey, Xander?’ I call to him, and he slowly turns to look at me, not caring that I’m still hovering near, watching him. ‘Thanks.’

‘Anytime, girlie.’

It isn’t hard to find Clay. I’m used to the never-ending corridors and hallways of his mansion in Connolly which makes this large five-bedroom dwelling a piece of cake to navigate.

I push the office door open. It slowly swings to reveal him sitting at the desk, watching someone on the screen talk. The burly Italian man addresses him as boss. Clay nods. He must be in an online meeting of sorts. Dressed in jeans and a shirt, he looks casual, but that does nothing to gentrify him. The power he wields is unmasked—obvious. Effortless. It is in his mannerisms. In the easy way he sits. In the graceful beauty he displays. In the unaffected twinkle within his eyes that warns and swoons in equal measure.

I shuffle my feet, contemplating what to do, hesitant to interrupt him, but the music riding the air at my back makes me desperate for his attention. His reassurances that we have something, not the same thing, but something that if you squint resembles what his brothers and their partners have together.

‘Come in here, little deer,’ he says without moving; I should really be used to his X-Men abilities by now. ‘No, Vinny. When have I ever called you little deer? … Yes. Keep looking into it. Keep the warehouse surrounded. I’ll check in soon.’ He shuts his laptop and turns in his chair to face me.

I look down at my feet and then back up. ‘Will you dance with me?’ I ask, still glued to the doorframe. ‘Can you dance?’

He grins, his piercing blue eyes rolling up and down my body in easy slow laps. ‘Dancing when you’re six foot five is problematic.’ He looks at his desk and then back at me. ‘You’re too far away.’

I take a step towards him, disliking the space between us, too. ‘Have you seen Konnor and Cassidy dance? They’re incredible. Like something off Ballroom Dancing or Dirty Dancing or Footloose.’ He nods to his desk, and I take that to mean ‘slide up here and sit in front of me’. ‘Do I accept nods as a response?’ I tease, using his words, and the corner of his lips twitch to curve further. I continue, ‘You know I’m not your employee. I’d like your voice not your nods.’ I contradict that entire sentence by doing as he silently commanded. Sliding along the wooden desk, I position myself in front of him, and plant my bare feet on his thighs.

He leans back, eyeing me. ‘Cassidy is a professional ballerina. That’s why she can dance.’

‘Woah.’ A nasty twinge moves inside me—envy. What have you tried, Fawn? Well, sweet fuck all. I just survived. ‘That explains it then,’ I say sadly, feeling the sting associated with my lack of talent or skills. ‘And Shoshanna is a doctor?’

His eyes soften on me. ‘Yes.’

‘Wow. Quite a family,’ I point out stupidly, an unwelcome sour taste pursing my lips. I hate it. ‘And you, you’re—’ I open my arms, wishing I would just shut up and not draw attention to the way this is making me feel shadowed. A little grass flower amidst delicately cultivated roses. ‘The most powerful man in the city. The man who nods and things happen. And I’m… just Fawn. Is it okay to be unspectacular? Ordinary?’

‘You couldn’t be ordinary if you tried.’

My eyes want to bounce anywhere but to his face, want to hide my average existence as though he doesn’t already see it. I’m impressed by him. That turned into a crush and that turned into love. I want to impress him so the same chain reaction can occur. ‘Is it okay to simply find my accomplishments in being a good mother one day?’

He grips my ankles. ‘It is.’

‘And that would be enough for… for someone spectacular to love… one day?’

He pauses for a moment, and the silence stretches an arm to me, an invisible hand turning my chin until I hesitantly glance back to his knowing smile. God, why am I so needy? Why am I so transparent? He finally says, ‘I imagine that kind of person would need someone to be ordinary with, sweet girl. I imagine a man who is always striving might only survive by having the comfortable presence of someone who grounds him.’

‘You hate being comfortable, Sir.’

His hands slide up my legs, resting on the outer swell of my bare thighs. ‘I’m beginning to love it, little deer.’

My heart balloons again, and I try not to laugh as I say, ‘You know something that’s real and ordinary and beautiful and unspectacular?’

‘What?’

‘Dancing… badly.’

His assessing eyes switch. He leans forward, sliding his hands around my waist and down to my arse. Gripping my backside, he lifts me to straddle him. ‘I’ll dance with you.’

I tighten my arms around his neck and my thighs around his waist. My heart is so snug in my ribcage, bursting with him and love and the moment. The low hum of the music moves around the room, and he dances with me in his arms.

‘I’m in love with you,’ I whisper into the crook of his neck. ‘I know it’s a stupid word. An unspectacular and ordinary word, but it’s the one that means what I feel. Can I say it to you? Can I say it as much as I want?’

His breath is hot on my neck as he says, ‘Yes.’

On the other side of his chest, I feel his heart hammering at the same pace as mine. I wonder if it’s also swollen, like mine. ‘How do you feel?’

He kisses my temple; it’s too chaste, too much for me to handle. Tears quickly flood my eyes when he states definitively, ‘Comfortable.’

And there it is. This moment. Him. It wasn’t an ‘I love you’ or ‘you’re my world’ or even ‘I like you a lot.’ It was one word with limited sentiment twisted through the tone. But from his mouth, it was fucking Shakespearian.

Good things come in threes. ‘You’re my number one,’ I whisper to myself before burying my head in his neck, closing my eyes, and feeling his body sway us around his office.