Carter wiped his mouth, nodding. “I’m sure.”
He didn’t sound too sure.
“And now, things have changed.” He set his finished plate to the side and leaned in, arms folded over the table. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do. But you came to me for a reason. I’m certain Father would just tell you to get your head out of your ass and stand by your wife, holding her hand, and to take your ass out to the store to get whatever weird shit she’s craving.”
“Hostess cupcakes,” I supplied.
He paused looking at me, questioningly.
“She craves them when she’s pregnant.” I’d already seen a few wrappers in the kitchen’s garbage can a few days prior. A small form of guilt hit my belly when I realized I wasn’t the one who had made the grocery store run to get what she’d been craving.
“Yeah, well, Father would likely tell you to quit your whining and head to the store to stock up on Hostess cupcakes. But, you didn’t go to Father. You came to me. And my advice will be a little different. I’m Patience in your marriage.”
I gave Carter a look like he was crazy. “You’re two months pregnant?”
He huffed rolling his eyes. “Screw you, asswipe. Anyway … I go to a job everyday that could kill me. Hell, given all of the shit that’s happened with the squad and department lately, I was closer to death than ever, remember?”
I nodded solemnly, hating that I did remember.
“Yeah, and through all of that, and my subsequent promotion, Michelle has never, not once, asked me to quit. She’s not even hinted at it. She hasn’t asked me to try to transfer to a station with fewer and less dangerous calls. None of that. And if she did, I wouldn’t hesitate to oblige her. Deep down, I’d fucking hate it, but I’d do it. You know why?”
I pushed out a breath but didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to.
“Because family over everything. If my wife needed me to be in a safer role so she could sleep better at night, that’s what I would do. But that’s not the heroic part. The real hero in this scenario is my wife.Becauseshe’s never asked me to change. She knows me better than anyone on this planet, and she knows I’d do it for her. But she also knows it’d go against who I am at my core. Protecting, serving, and saving people is the cornerstone of who I am. Not who I choose to be but who I was born to be. It’s the same reason I left for the military at eighteen without a second thought. Same reason I quit, too. I was tired of killing people. I chose to save them instead. It’s how I met my wife. And she knows asking me to go against my base instinct would be her asking me to betray myself.”
Turning to stare out of the window, I inhaled deeply and exhaled. I wasn’t asking Patience to betray herself. I was just asking her to put our family first. The faces of our four children came to mind. I couldn’t imagine a world in which they didn’t have their mother to raise them. No. The deeper truth was, I couldn’t imagine a world whereIdidn’t have her with me, always. To raise our children, to grow old with, to fight with, and then make up with. That was a world that just couldn’t exist.
“No,” I shook my head. “She’s not you, Carter.”
“Aaron—”
“No,” I said more firmly, to the reception of more stares from around the restaurant. “Patience is not you. Our children, the ones who are already here, need her. I need her. She can’t have this baby.”
I was adamant in my decision. Nothing was changing my mind. Not even my stubborn wife.
Chapter Twenty-One
Deborah
Present
“You know they’re all up to something, right?” I said, looking over my shoulder as I sat on my side of the sleigh bed in our master bedroom. A smile blossomed on my lips when I found Robert’s sizzling gaze on me.
His smoldering eyes ran over my shoulder, up my neck, and to my face until he met my eyes.
“They’re always up to something. Little shits.”
I giggled. “It was you who decided to have four of them.”
He shook his head. “No, that was decided by something greater than me, princess.”
I let out a sigh. How that pet name could still sound so damned good from his mouth after forty years of marriage was beyond me.
“C’mere,” he growled.
I yelped when he moved quicker than a man his damn age should be allowed to move, and I found myself on my back, my husband hovering above me. I lifted my hand and ran is through his greying hair. The color might’ve been different but it still felt soft and silky to the touch.
“Can I tell you something?”
