Page 77 of Stone Rules

“Why is the door closed?” she asks. “And why do you look so nervous?” Her hand comes up to cover her mouth and she squeals. “Oh, my God. Don’t tell me you have a playroom. As in whips and cattails and red leather couches with handcuffs?”

I laugh. “You read too much,” I say.

“I didn’t read it,” she replies. “I saw the movie.”

“No, Charlie. It’s not a playroom. But now that you mention it, would you have been upset if it had been?”

Now both of us are laughing. And I’m glad, because the tension I’m feeling over what’s behind that door was getting to be more than I could take.

“Go ahead, open it,” I tell her.

She slowly steps towards the door, turning the knob carefully as if she’s afraid of what’s on the other side. When she sees the room, she gasps. She gasps harder and deeper than she did when she saw the view from the bedroom. And then she turns to me, tears pooling in her eyes. “You made a nursery?”

Chapter Thirty-six

“Well, Dr. Chavis did say we could start planning. I’m planning.”

I watch her look around the room that I decorated in yellows and greens. Although I hired someone to paint it, I did most of the decorating myself. I put together the crib, the changing table, the glider-rocker. I even had an artist paint a mural on the wall.

Charlie’s hand comes up to cover her mouth when she sees it. I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds on this one. We’ve talked a lot over the last few months. She told me about the mural painted on the wall in her childhood bedroom of the unicorn that protected her during those devastating years. The one she has tattooed on her inner thigh. I mulled it over for days. Would it bring back horrible memories, or would it inspire hope?

“I can paint over it if you want. I just thought—”

“That it would protect him,” she says, tears streaming down her face.

“Yes.” I nod.

She goes over to the wall to touch it, her hands shaking as her fingers trace the outline.

“Shit, Charlie. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

She shakes her head, wiping her tears. “No. No. It’s perfect, Ethan. But why did you do all this? Do you want the baby to stay here sometimes?” She motions around the room. “It’s so much.”

“Sometimes?” I say, my voice dripping with incredulity.“Allthe time.” I walk over and turn her around so she’s facing me. I take her hands in mine. “Him. Her. You. I want you both here. I want you to live with me, Charlie. I want us to live together as a family.”

Her hands start shaking again.

“This is when I ask you to marry me again.”

“But what if . . .” She looks around the room. I know what she’s asking.

“Charlie, over the past two months, we’ve talked about everywhat ifthere could be. Don’t you know by now how much I love you? How much I love this baby? And you can deny it all you want, but I know you feel the same way about me. I know you’ve felt it for a long time.”

“How?” she asks. “I mean, if I can’t be sure, how can you be?”

“Because it was all over your face the last time we made love, and pretty much every day since.”

She looks up at me in disbelief.

“Don’t believe me? I’ll show you.”

“Show me?” she asks.

“Yes. Come on.” I pull her down the hallway, back through the living room and into my office. I sit down on my desk chair and pull her onto my lap. I use the mouse to click through a few screens on my computer and pull up a video.

When she realizes what I’m showing her, she looks at me with her jaw wide open and her face blazing with a blush. “Oh my God, Ethan. Have you watched this before?”

“I’m a guy.” I shrug. “Of course I’ve watched it.”

---