Page 108 of Deceitful Oath

“Maybe don’t drop that?” Rafael laughs, shimmying down the tree and falling onto one knee. He picks it up, placing it back into my hands. “It’s kind of irreplaceable.”

I curl my fingers around the orange, gawking at the beautiful vintage diamond ring hanging around its stem.

“But I already have a ring?” I ask stupidly, glancing down at the sun-shaped beauty on my hand. “And a husband.”

He chuckles lightly and clears his throat. “A man can’t propose to his wife a second time without a new ring, can he?”

“But …”

“Will you just listen for once?”

I nod, my eyes already misting over. Rafael grins, taking my hand lightly. The other one is still holding the orange, and I grin, thinking we look like a medieval matrimonial painting.

“Lux Davis, you’re the light of my life,” he begins. I immediately start crying, making him concerned. I wave him on, dabbing my eyes with the orange.

“You’re the weirdest, most amazing human I’ve ever met,” he continues, looking bewildered at my orange-as-a-napkin trick. “You love surprises, but you have no idea how much you surprised me when you showed up in my life. And how much you continue to surprise me each and every day. From morning to sundown, and even in my dreams, I spend all my time in awe of you, falling more and more in love each time.”

“Oh my gosh, Rafael, please,” I bawl, sinking to my knees. “You’re killing me here.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughs, a tear fighting for its life in the corner of his eye. “I want to give you the big fairytale wedding, before I give you the big fairytale life. Will you marry me, again?”

“Yes!” I screech, tackling him to the ground. He gazes up at me, radiating love and happiness. I know he can still kill a man in under three seconds, but right here, under the orange trees, smiling sweetly at me, he’s a big teddy bear.

I lean to kiss him, and he moans, pulling me closer. As his big, warm hand slips under my dress and our kiss intensifies, I open my eyes and peek up at the orange tree above us.

For once in my life, I’m in exactly the right place at the right time.

Epilogue

Lux

I toss my hair over my shoulder, smiling a little at the recently-dyed purple ends.

Rafael had taken me back into the city yesterday to get the last items we would need for the baby, and because I had been feeling down about how vastly pregnant I was, he had found a salon that would dye my hair a new, fun color.

“I have the best husband slash fiancé ever,” I sing-song to myself as I drag out the box for the large, inflatable pool that we purchased.

I knew that Rafael didn’t want me to give birth here at home, but I was determined to do so. I had been telepathically ordering the Bean to make her appearance rapidly enough that Wolfie couldn’t drag me to the city and the special doctor he had all picked out for her birth.

“I bought you a really nice swimming pool to be born in, Eve,” I say out loud to the empty house and the child in my belly. “I really hope you remember our pact to have the birth here athome, because I so, so much don’t want to have you in a stinky hospital full of bossy nurses and doctors.”

We had decided to call her Eve because Rafael’s mother had been born on Christmas Eve. Originally, we had planned to use her real name, but then we realized that keeping a low profile in this sleepy little town wouldn’t last for long if we kept dropping clues that could easily be tracked by anyone with the most basic of research skills.

I manage to free the wadded-up plastic pool from its box and I grab the automatic pump that we had bought at the same time. I consider taking the pool downstairs to blow it up, but figure I can carry it down once I have it all inflated. It’s not like it’s heavy.

I hook up the pump and giggle with silly delight as the future birthing location for my baby expands before my eyes. In keeping with the trend of humoring the uncomfortable, pregnant lady, Rafael had let me pick out a truly obnoxiously colorful kiddie pool. I grin at the swooping cartoon dolphins and the cute little cartoon palm trees all over it.

Now that it’s all blown up, it’s bigger than I thought it would be. Oh well, nothing for it but to get it downstairs and make sure it will fit into the space where we are planning to have the birth.

Holding the pool in front of me awkwardly, I start to shimmy down the stairs carefully. A couple of times I get stuck and have to rotate the pool a little to give my belly and the pool the room necessary to pass by the support posts for the banister.

“Maybe people were skinnier when they were pregnant back when this house was built,” I say under my breath as I wiggle past another part of the railing. I heave a happy sigh now that I’m at the bottom of the stairs and go to put my foot on the floor in the foyer.

Except I don’t put my foot on the floor, I put my foot in the pool as I squeeze it past the last support post for the banister.

I don’t even have time to scream before I’m tumbling toward the ground. I instinctively pull myself into a ball, desperate to protect the Bean. I hit the ground on my back with a startling jolt that sends all the air out of my lungs at the same time as I hear a loud, menacing cracking sound from the region of my feet.

The pain is immediate and shocking, and I almost throw up. My head spins dizzily as I lie on the wood floor with the swimming pool over my head, my hands pressed to my belly. I gasp for air, trying to control the dizzy swooping inside of me and assess if I have hurt the baby or not.

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