Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
We don’t hide things from each other, no matter the consequences. It’s a promise we’d made to each other that has made things much easier between us. We still have our moments when we want to wring each other’s necks, but these days our arguments are more like playful banter, and our lovemaking after each fight only seems to get more intense each time.
I don’t know who I have to thank for this, whether it’s my doing or hers; I just know I don’t ever want things to change. Now, as if life hadn’t already given me more than I deserve, she’s pregnant. That realization was a whole other ordeal in itself because she was nowhere near ready, and she let me know at the top of her lungs. Apparently, I did it by myself.
It was just a few days after our honeymoon when we found out, and in a most peculiar way at that. We’d barely made it back to my wing of the estate, which had been redone to suit our new status as a married couple instead of the bachelor pad it was before.
Walls had been knocked down, and passageways closed off to make the place more private. All of this was done while we were gone under my little brother’s supervision, and I have to admit, he’d done a good job. He’d stuck to the plans I’d had drawn up for most of it, but he wouldn’t be Roman if he didn’t add his own personal touch to my shit.
The fact that he’d accepted his sister-in-law without any waves more than made up for it, though, so I let him have his way without too much fuss. Speaking of which, my Jess has fit in with my family better than anyone who came before her.
The women I’d dated before my heart chose her didn’t even come close, and it was plain to everyone. Mom had all but given up her place as matriarch, passing the reins over to Jess as the wife of the firstborn, but Jess was not having it. She swore that if Victoria didn’t take half the load, she wouldn’t lift a finger.
Mom couldn’t care less; she and Dad had a year of travel already planned and would only be home for the holidays and to spend time with their grandkids. Roman and I were apparently on our own. At first, I thought this was the reason for Jess’s upset stomach and lit into Mom for putting all this on her so soon after the wedding, but Mom just rolled her eyes, laughed, and picked up the phone to call Mrs. Thornton, my new mother-in-law.
When I heard the word pregnant, my knees buckled, and my head spun. That was the first time I suspected she might be with child. Dad had to put his two cents in then, asking me what I thought was going to happen after all the time we spent locked away behind closed doors, and I had to threaten him to mind his own business, or I’d tell Mom about some of his shenanigans behind her back.
Somehow I had turned into my brother, the tyrant, and only now do I understand why he’s the way he is with his wife. Having that heavy responsibility for another life is no small matter. I panic when I have to leave her, and think about her every few seconds, and if I could, I would drag her around with me everywhere I go.
That nut would never allow that, though, because she’s not suffering under the same curse I am. She likes her freedom way too much, if you ask me, and now that my ring is on her finger, she seems even more out of control than before. She’s like a bird whose pinioned wings had been fixed, and there’s a new light in her eyes that I now use to measure where we are from one day to the next.
If that light dims, I know I’m in trouble, whether because of something I did or something she imagined me doing. Hormones have made her imagination run off the rails, and it’s always a toss-up from one day to the next what will come out of her mouth.
I thought for sure once she calmed down and accepted the pregnancy that she’d be much easier to get along with, but nope, that was just wishful thinking on my part. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m almost certain that she’s even worse now.
JESSICA
This kid had better stop messing with me or else. For the past few months, I’ve done a very good job of ignoring it, but now that my tummy is sticking out in front of me, it’s kind of hard to do that. Everyone within earshot seems to gravitate to my stomach these days, as if I’m some vessel carrying around an anomaly.