Page 75 of Rescued By the Alien Bull Rider

I placed Autumn back in her cradle. Then, gingerly, like I was pulling something from Autumn’s tiny fist instead of Zohro’s, I took back my tablet.

“Pa, you really hurt me.”

He hung his head.

“But… Thank you for calling me today.”

“Jolene,” Zohro whispered. Tense. Maybe even distraught.

“Thank you, because you’ve given me some closure. It really helps me to know that you regret what you’ve done. But…” I gazed at Zohro, who looked stricken beside me. “But Zohro is… He’s fucking everything. And…”

Ah, shit. Here we go. All or nothing.

“And I love him. I choose him. I’m staying with him.”

Zohro went entirely still. I didn’t even think he breathed. The leaves rustled overhead. Autumn yawned. Wyn snorted softly. The moment stretched with incredible, diamond-like silence between my husband and me, cushioned by the mundane sounds of our life all around us.

And then, Pa’s voice.

“I’m happy for you, Jolene.”

I wrenched my attention back to him.

“Really,” he said. “That kind of love… That shit is once in a lifetime.” For a minute, he didn’t speak, and his eyes looked very far away.

Like they were gazing twenty-three years into the past.

Then, thickly, he said. “I’d better go. I’m sorry. About everything. I’m not asking you to call me. But… If you don’t mind too much, I hope that you’ll send me a picture every once in a while.”

“Of Autumn?”

“Of both of you.” His fingers came suddenly into view as he fumbled with his tablet. “Goodbye, Jolene.”

“Bye, Pa.”

The screen went black.

I cried out, and dropped the tablet, when a huge, warm body crashed into mine.

“Jolene.” My name was a guttural groan. “I love you.”

My whole world shrank down to only those words.

“You… You do? Like… Like a sister, right?”

He froze, then reared back, looking at me like I’d just suggested that he eat his own hat.

“Pardon,” he said dangerously, “me?”

“I…” My mouth flapped open and shut as I groped about for the words to explain. “You… Your sister! She was pregnant and you couldn’t help her, so you helped me instead. Because you’re so kind!”

Confusion, and then pure astonishment shaped his features.

“You keep saying that I am kind,” he said slowly, as if he could not believe any of this, “but I can assure you with absolute certainty that I am not so kind as to marry someone I do not want! It was pure, selfish desire that drove me to accept your proposal that night, Jolene! A proposal I had already gladly accepted before I even knew that your situation so closely mirrored Meryn’s!”

“Wait… What?!”

“That night! I was about to tell you that I wanted to marry you. But you interrupted me with the grand declaration of your pregnancy. I decided that I wanted you so badly that it didn’t matter. I’d take you pregnant or not. I’d take you any way that I could get you.”

---