Page 50 of The Lover
I was. I was getting mad at why she was even remotely making this difficult. This was a no-brainer and I didn’t understand her reticence.
That’s when it occurred to me. What she might be thinking.
“Are you mad at me?”
“What? No. Why?”
“For putting you in this situation. For…for getting you pregnant in the first place.”
“Jake Talley, your sexist phone is ringing.”
“Ellie, I’m serious.”
“We did this together. We used protection. It didn’t work, but there is no blame in this. I don’t blame you any more than you could blame me for getting knocked up. It happened. I’m just thinking all of this is happening really fast. We don’t have to move at lightning speed.”
Lightning speed was exactly the pace I wanted to go. I wanted it done. I wanted us married, I wanted her back home, I wanted her in my bed as my wife. Then our life could start. Our future. With our kid.
Our kid. Every time I thought about it, I got a little crazy. Could I really do this? What if I was likethem? What if I was the kind of person to skip out on a kid and a wife? The type of person who could forget he even had a child…
I checked myself. I wasn’t that person. I knew I wasn’t that person. Which is why I knew marrying Ellie now wasn’t some kind of knee-jerk reaction to her being pregnant.
“I want to marry you, Ellie. I should have told you that. I should have handled everything better but I was stunned.”
“You do?” she asked me quietly.
“Yes.” Wasn’t that obvious?
She bit her lower lip and seemed to think about that. “But you didn’t want to before. When we fought about me staying in town and I asked you…”
“You didn’t really give me time to think, Ellie. I get why you took the room over the Hair Stop. And I was fine with dating and taking things slow and wooing you, but…”
“But I’m pregnant,” she said. Said it like it was a bad thing.
“Ellie, I’m not marrying you because of that. I want us. Yes, and the baby. I want us to be a family. I want that now. As soon as we can make that happen.”
She smiled. A full-blown Ellie smile. Finally, FINALLY, I knew I had said the right thing.
“Okay. I’ll tell Frank. Two weeks.”
I nodded, satisfied. I looked down at my plate and realized I hadn’t taken a bite and it was because I had this feeling of dread in my stomach. Like Ellie was going to tell me she didn’t want me or the baby. But of course that didn’t happen. So I was hungry again.
“Speaking of the wedding…”
See, that was awesome. She was talking about the wedding. The wedding that was going to happen between us. Soon. Making us husband and wife. Officially for real this time.
“Yep,” I said even as I took a large bite of the burger I’d ordered.
“I want it to be more than just us. I want friends there. I already asked Chrissy to be my maid of honor. I think you should invite Don and his wife. They’re your friends.”
I rolled the idea around in my head. Part of me was hesitant. I didn’t want people to know why we were doing this so fast. I also didn’t want people to think… that I was just marrying her because of this.
Maybe I didn’t want to people to think she was marrying me just because of this.
But Ellie gave me a legitimate smile today, and it was the first one I had had since before leaving on my fishing trip. I would give her anything she wanted.
“Sure. We can do that. Plan a nice reception back at the house.”
Another full-blown smile. And she was clapping, in that way that she did like I had just given her the universe. Had I ever told her how that made me feel? Probably not. It wasn’t like I was someone who shared emotions easily, but when she did that, when she clapped like a little girl on Christmas morning getting her first toy, it always made me feel as if I had achieved something. I had made Ellie happy, ergo I had accomplished a victory.
