Page 113 of Emmett
Surprise crosses his features, and I shrug with a laugh. “I’ll besixty-fourwhen this one graduates high school,” he says, pinching his nose.
“If they don’t get held back,” I tease.
Davis approaches with two glasses of eggnog in his hands, handing one of them to Nash with a nod. “Merry fuckin’ Christmas, huh?”
“Davis!”
“Shit, sorry,” he cringes.
I look around at my family; at my sisters on the floor, sharing their new toys and myfiancéhelping them to open more. I look at my best friend, gossiping with Ava and Sophia on the couch. I look at my uncle, jumping onto my dad’s back as he cheers and laughs.
I look to the tattoo on my arm and the scar that hides beneath it; and I think about how close I came, twice, to missing this. It took a lot of hard work, and I wanted to quit on more than one occasion, but the man that I am today couldn’t look more different from the man that I was when I gave myself this scar; and I think that man would be proud of me. I hold those memories close and I use them to remind myself of how far I’ve come and what I’ve survived, but I don’t let them win anymore.
I’m a constant work in progress, but I can finally say that I amhappy.
NASH’S EPILOGUE
Five months later
As I crumple the paper in my hands and set it into the trash can next to my desk, Emmett nods toward me. “What do they want this time?”
“Forgiveness, money, the usual,” I chuckle.
My fiancé moves toward my desk and sits at the corner of it, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll write ‘em a quick letter,” he muses. “Six words.‘Dear Molly and Jefferson, eat me.’That would get the point across, right?”
He gets so angry whenever a new letter arrives with their names on it, the frequency of which has only increased since Fowler-Montgomery Entertainment opened its doors, the love child between his father’s company and my own. He wants to protect me from them, but he doesn’t understand that I don’t need him to. They don’t hurt me anymore, and theycan’t. They can beg all they want for whatever they want, and I’ll simply laugh at them and throw away their letters every time; because I know now that I was never the problem. I was achild.
Emmett has shown me that the things they’d said to me and about me were because something was wrong with them, not with me. He’s shown me that I am not the sick, unlovable demon that they told me I was; that I allowed myself to live as. He’s shown me what unconditional love truly is and that the ‘love’ that my parents had for my siblings and I wasanything but. I do pray for my siblings now, every time that I step foot into the church. I still can’t bring myself to answer Tripp’s calls, but I’d like to try, one day.
Standing from my seat, I brace my hands against Emmett’s thighs. “I love you, pretty boy,” I tell him just before meeting his lips in a kiss. “I can’t wait to marry you.”
“My dad has shown me twelve venues thisweek,” he laughs. “And Davis said we ‘better have some good fuckin’ steak,’” he adds with a thick southern drawl.
“Any requests from your stepmother?” I tease as I press my lips to the curve of his jaw.
“All she wants is for Theo to be born,” he chuckles. He pulls in a sharp breath as I nibble on his earlobe. “Maybe a vote on the flowers.”
“Mmhmm.”
As I press my lips to his, his tongue meets mine and I work the buckle of his belt to open it.
“Ava wants to officiate,” he continues as I pull his pants down to his ankles.
“Pretty boy,” I say, looking up at him as I drop to my knees and offer a few slow strokes to tease his cock. “Stop talking.”
Pressing light kisses to the base of his shaft as he hardens, I work my way to his tip and slide my tongue over his slit as precum drips out of him. As I pull him into my mouth, his fist tangles in my hair and he pushes my head down, forcing his cock into my throat as he lets out a groan. I love his cock; it might be the prettiest one that I’ve ever seen, and it never fails to get so spectacularly hard for me. Watching him still try to keep his composure while I play with it, even after all this time, fills me with a thrill that’s almost enough to get me off.
Emmett’s breathing picks up as moans fly out of him and I know that he’s getting close. “Nash,” he warns, “I’m gonna come.”
While I appreciate the courtesy of his warning, hardwired into him to be a gentleman in all aspects of his life, I give him more friction with my tongue against the sensitive head of his cock until his head falls back, his mouth dropping open. “Oh, fuck,” he pants as he twitches in my mouth, filling it with his cum.
After swallowing it down, I pull my tongue along his shaft to clean away any that I may have missed, staring up into his honeyed eyes as I do.
“Christ, you give good head,” he tells me, cupping my face as he catches his breath. As he moves to stand, I meet him in a kiss to let him taste himself on my tongue – something that he’s grown to love, but refuses to admit out loud. “When we get back from this dinner, I’m fucking you on the piano.”
“I thought you wanted to stop and meet that puppy?” I tease.
Stuffing his cock back into his pants, he chuckles. “She’ll still be there in the morning.”