What Grows Dies Here

He grinned wider, grabbing onto either sides of my neck and kissing me again.

Thoroughly.

When he was done, I’d forgotten why I was mad at him, forgotten all about shopping. Until he spoke, of course.

“Mark my words,” he murmured against my mouth, hand on the swell of my stomach. “You’ll be my wife before this little girl greets the world.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Wanna bet?” I challenged, then turned on my heel and walked away.

Those two words were the last thing I said to him before everything was destroyed.

“Karson wants to marry me,” I told Stella as we walked through the store with all of our bags.

Okay, all of my bags.

Stella’s face lit up in naked happiness for me.

“Of course, he does! You’re amazing,” she smiled brightly. Her grin faltered when she saw that I was not smiling back. “You’re not happy,” she observed.

“Of course, I am!” I huffed, stopping abruptly at the exit to the store. “I’m pregnant to a man I adore, who feeds me well and fucks me even better. He’s building me a closet!” I was getting very close to screaming now. Even in the most upscale of neighborhoods in LA, a five month pregnant woman screaming in a baby store wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen that day.

“And I keep arguing with him, I keep saying no,” I said, quieter this time.

Stella’s face softened. “Honey, you are under no obligation to say yes to something you don’t want to do just because you love him. Even if he is building you a closet,” she added with a playful shove. “You are building a life together. You make decisions together. Your life can look however you want. You can design it. And he will get over the marriage thing. He’s just an alpha male who wants to declare you his.”

“No,” I argued in little more than a whisper. “No, that’s not it.”

I thought about her words. About this morning. About all the times when Karson had quietly taken my hand and said he wanted me as his wife. There was no need for him to own me, to declare me his, have me say I’ll obey him forever.

It wasn’t that. No. It was something so simple, so fucking pure that I’d overlooked it.

Like an asshole.

Karson simply wanted a wife. He wanted me. A family. He wanted what he’d never had growing up. He wanted to prove that he was not his father’s son. He wanted to treasure me.

I blinked myself out of my thoughts, frowning at the stores lining the streets. “We need to go to Oscar de la Renta,” I announced.

Stella screwed up her nose in confusion at my abrupt change in subject. “I’m not going to argue about our girl being clad in couture straight from the womb, but I don’t think we’ll be able to carry much more.” She motioned to all the bags we’d accumulated in a few short hours.

“No, it’s for me,” I told her. “Oscar is the only place I trust will have something suitable off the rack. Of course, we’ll have a proper, appropriately lavish ceremony once the baby is born and I’ve got back into shape. I’ll have something custom made. But for now, Oscar will do.”

Stella stared at me in question.

“For our wedding,” I told her, jostling the shopping bags so I could find my phone. “We’re having it today.”

She blinked. “Today?” she repeated.

I nodded, tapping at my screen.

“Don’t you need like marriage licenses, ordained ministers, things like that?” she asked.

I looked up from my phone. “Honey, I’ve broken myself out of a Balinese prison which involved a small misunderstanding and a lot of illegal drugs that most definitely were not mine. Not only did I break out successfully, I also managed to direct the authorities to the rightful criminal. Think Mr. Darcy in the second Bridget Jones,” I said. “This is nothing.”

Stella grinned. “So you’re getting married today.”

I nodded. “So I’m getting married today.”

“You think you want to tell the groom?” she asked dryly.