Page 13 of Side Trip

Her brows fold. “Something’s bothering you.”

He stares at her for a long moment, then sighs. “All right. I don’t want to wait to have kids. Let’s start tonight.”

“Tonight?” she asks with a laugh. “You’re drunk, Mark.”

“Drunk on loving you. Do you still want three?” His tone is serious. He angles his head in Dara’s direction. Three kids, just like his sister. Exactly the number Judy wanted.

Joy’s smile falters. She looks at Mark’s chest, and the sterling bracelet with the heart-shaped sapphire on her right wrist catches her eye. Her something blue. Judy’s bracelet. Judy had been wearing it when she died and her mom wanted Joy to have it.

“Do me this honor,” her mom had asked of Joy before the ceremony. “It’ll feel like Judy is here with us.” Joy’s face had crumpled, but she let her mom put on the bracelet.

Mark watches her closely. “What is it?”

“I ... It’s just—” She fumbles for words, then shakes her head. “We can’t start tonight.”

“You still want to wait?”

“Yes, of course.”

He looked around the event tent, then back at her. “Do you plan to push off everything?” he asked, his voice strained.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You pushed out our wedding date. For a while there ...” He lets his voice drift off to nothingness.

“For a while what? You can’t say something like that and not finish it.” Her eyes dart back and forth between his.

“I didn’t think you wanted to get married.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to marry you.” She’s wanted to marry him since he first swung the idea past her during her junior year. He’s dependable, kind, and loves her parents as much as she does. He listens when she wants to talk and doesn’t pry in areas she finds difficult to discuss. He trusts her judgment, even when she doesn’t. And he’s passionate, about her, family, his career, and life. What more could a woman ask for in a husband?

“People change. You changed.”

“When?”

“When you moved here. You seemed different.”

“Because I moved to a new state and started a new job. It was a bit overwhelming. Why are we even talking about this?” she asks with a tight smile to soften her challenging tone. Mark had proposed the day after graduation, and she moved to New York shortly after to be with him. New city, new job, new home. Overwhelmed was an understatement. Lonely, confused, and disheartened were more like it. She needed time to adjust.

She’d pleaded for Mark to be patient with her. Every engaged woman experienced the wedding jitters. Joy reasoned that she was no different. But in truth, she needed time to sort through the ten days she’d spent with Dylan. Would the life she’d chosen to pursue in New York as a cosmetic chemist banish years of guilt? Would marrying Mark truly make her happy?

“I want a family with you, Mark. I want everything you do. All I was trying to say is that I still have my IUD in. That’s why we can’t start tonight,” she explains. “And we just got married. Can’t we enjoy some time alone first? Once we have kids we won’t have any time together, not for a long while.”

Mark’s eyes briefly round to saucer-size. He leans his forehead against Joy’s. “I’m such a jerk.”

“True, but a lovable one.”

“I’m sorry. I just assumed—”

She presses a finger to his mouth, halting his words, relieved to put this conversation off for another day. She then runs her fingers in his hair. “You know what I want more than kids right now? You, naked, in our bed, loving me.”

He groans low in his throat, then kisses her deeply. “Want to get outta here?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

CHAPTER 6

BEFORE

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