Page 35 of Devil's Own: Roughneck

“You want to go again?” she asks in clear shock, but I decide to take it a whole different way.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

Once I get her to the point of no return, I thrust inside once more and lay down the rules. “You’re taking my name.”

Her walls begin to spasm. “Wh-What?”

“You. Taking my name.”

“Griffin?” she asks right as her eyes roll back in her head. “Oh god—” She sucks in a breath. “Griffin Fredricks?”

The woman’s so far gone that she does not understand me.

“GiaStockton, babe. When you marry me.” I pull out, then thrust back in one last time and we both lose ourselves. Shit—she feels good.

After a few minutes of heavy breathing, she asks, “We’re getting married?”

“Not tonight, but yeah. I’m thirty-two years old. Do you think I’m letting the first woman I’ve ever loved dangle on my chain? I like it. I’m putting a damn ring on it.”

“For future,” she says, smiling. “It’s probably best not to refer to the woman you’re ordering to marry you as ‘it.’ We tend to frown on that.”

“Noted.”

“Isn’t it fast?” she asks.

“By whose timeline? I don’t live my life for anyone else except for you. So I don’t have two fucks to give if anyone thinks it’s fast. I think it’s right. Do you think it’s right, babe?”

She shakes her head up and down. “Yes.”

“Then there you go.”

“I think Waite will be happy. He started talking about me living life for myself before he moved up to Ohio. I knew he was getting ready to jump ship before he ever told me because he’d never said anything like that before. He met a girl who was staying at her grandparents’ place for the summer. She wasn’t his first, but she must have been the best.”

“Remember being that age. A young buck’ll do just about anything when the pussy’s sweet enough.”

“He followed her up there. Clearly, it was no love for the ages, seeing as he’s a free agent now.”

“That bother you?”

“No. There’re only two things I care about where my son’s dick comes into play. First, that he wraps that shit up tight. He doesn’t need STIs or babies because he knows that if a baby results, hewillman up and take care of his responsibilities. I don’t care if he and the woman stay together. Plenty of people co-parent apart. But that kid didn’t ask to be created.”

“The second?”

“The second—consent. If she doesn’t enthusiastically jump on his offer, he better damn well walk away. No questions asked.”

“Does he know? About…?”

“No. I never wanted to give him cause to dislike himself. It would be hard to find out that’s how you came into being. My beautiful boy didn’t need that knowledge hanging over his head. He knows I got pregnant as a teenager because he found the documents for his official name change. So I had to tell him why.”

“Name change?” I ask.

“I’d named him after my brother. After I married my mistake, I changed his name to Fredricks to match mine. That’s the one good memory he left me with. My husband thought Waite made a cool first name. So my son went from Daniel Waite to Waite Fredricks. I should’ve known from all his excuses for why he couldn’t adopt Waite that something was up. I was just too young to see.” She shrugs. “Live and learn, right?”

That kid’s life would’ve been so different had he been born to another woman. Kid. She was just a damn kid when he was born, yet she still took better care of him than my mom ever took care of me and she was twenty when I was born.

The kitchen needs cleaning, but I tell Gee to hang in here and let me do it. I need a little bit of time to myself. Here’s the thing: with Gia a part of my life, a part that I plan to make permanent in the future, I should get to know Waite a bit better. I already like him, but that’s all surface shit.

Once I finish the clean up, I head back into the bedroom. “Would you mind if I see if Waite wants to hang out, just him and me?”

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