Page 96 of Sex. Love. Marriage.
Picking her up, I hold her. “Are you going to spit on me?”
Her brow comes together, the tiniest pinch of her baby soft skin, but she doesn’t say anything. She yawns and lays her head against my shoulder.
Unable to process what’s happening, my heart pounds. Raising my hand, I rub it over her back and sway to the music with her. I can count the number of times I’ve held Fin on one hand. Every single time it’s been because she used me to get up onto something else or to get closer to Kelly.
Only now, she’s letting me hold her because she wanted me. I always thought Fin’s aversion to me had to do with the fact that for the first few weeks of her life, I didn’t hold her. I was scared to. In fear of getting attached to her, I distanced myself. I think she sensed it and did the same. Whatever the reason, holding her now, I regret not having made the effort sooner.
Look around me. There’s nobody she wants and she’s laying her head on my shoulder. Placing her hand over my heart, she closes her eyes. Are you crying? It takes some herculean strength on my part not to. I do good. Yeah, there are some tears, but I’m more concerned with what’s happening around me because the groom just spotted the bride, and the best man is standing between them.
All hell is about to break loose.
“Are you tired?” I ask Fin, tipping my head forward to catch her half-lidded eyes.
She nods and points to the house. About then, my mom comes by and reaches for her. “I can put her down for you if you want.” She takes Fin from me, Sevi holding her other hand. He’s covered in dirt and has a cake pop in his other hand. It has one bite taken out of it.
Shit.
Ripping the cake pop out of his hand, I eat it. He growls at me. “Puppies don’t eat cake,” I tell him, thinking this will keep him from biting me.
Thankfully, Sevi shrugs it off, and my mom takes the kids inside. Kelly walks over to me, her eyes wide. “You should say something.”
I stare at her. “To who?”
“To Jonas or Justice, I don’t know.” She gasps, throwing her arms up. “Don’t let them get in a fight.”
“From the looks of them, they’ve already been in one.”
“I can’t fuckin’ believe you!” Jonas screams to his would-be, but not-now wife’s face. “Did you fuck him while we were together?”
Silence fills the backyard; the question answered by Kelsey’s lack of words.
Jonas steps toward her, his anger rolling through him. He scans her face, waiting for it. “Are you fucking serious?”
Kelsey panics, her eyes snapping from Jonas to Justice, then back again. “I didn’t…. not after we were engaged.”
Jonas gets right in her face, his fist hitting the side of the house behind her head. “We’ve been together for eight years. In that time, did you fuck him?”
There’s a simple nod, one I know too well.
Kelly gasps beside me, her hand over her mouth. “Holy shit,” she whispers into my shoulder, shaking her head. “Noah, do something. Don’t let him touch her.”
He’d be a dead man if he did and he knows it. Not by me, though I would surely stand up for her, but her dad isn’t having it. “That’s enough,” he snaps, grabbing Jonas by the arm. “Leave her be.”
Not only that but take a look at Justice and the set scowl directed at his younger brother. This isn’t over between them.
I stand next to Kelly, waiting to see if I’m going to break up another fight tonight.
Life and relationships, they’re messy. And we don’t make the right decisions half the time. I’m not saying Kelsey should have cheated on Jonas with his brother of all people, and I hate to be the one to side with Justice here, but that girl, she was his from the beginning. I feel like Jonas was just borrowing her.
I know what you’re thinking, that sounds awful given my disposition on Nick cheating on Xianna, but it’s the truth. I feel that way about Kelly and Maverick. From the beginning, Kelly was mine the moment she walked into my parents’ barn at six years old and told me to shove a stick up my butt. She wasn’t giving me her sweet tea I desperately wanted. I didn’t know I loved her back then, but I did. She was mine.
And Kelsey, she was Justice’s the moment she rode on the back of that 4-wheeler with him the summer she turned thirteen. It’s funny how it happens, how people fall in love in the strangest ways and that bond cements. There are cracks in it, sure, but they’re surface deep.
Justice takes a deep breath and steps toward his brother, eyes wild, lips curved in a sinister way. Justice is bad to the core. He scares even me sometimes. “Leave her alone. This isn’t on her.”
And Jonas, he’s the good kid. The one with a future that doesn’t involve prison, which one could argue is fifty-fifty with Justice. “Yes it is!” he shouts at his older brother, slamming his hand into his shoulder. “I can’t even believe the two of you.”
With a quick step, Justice shoves his brother into a nearby table. “Knock it off, you little shit.”
