CHAPTER SEVEN
DAMIAN
IT HAD BEEN THREE WEEKS since my world had fallen apart at the wedding. Twenty-one days of trying to figure out exactly when would have been the best time to tell her what my family had put me through. I couldn’t have told her about them being in shit like they are because I hadn’t known, but I could have and should have told her everything else.
I’d gone and collected our shit from the hotel room and had called Tab repeatedly to find out where she was, begging her in my voicemails to let me know that she was okay. Then I’d gotten angry that after everything we’d been through together, that she had just believed the first bit of bullshit that had come up and had then thrown it in my face.
On my drive home, I’d called Penny to find out if she knew about our parents, but she didn’t know a thing either. Once she’d graduated and got a high paying job as a financial consultant, she’d closed the doors on them. I’d told her everything after Kayla had died and she was nearing graduation. She’d only been two years into her degree when it had happened, so I waited another two years and told her a week before her big day when I was drunk out of my mind. She’d cut my parents out of her life and had moved on to bigger better things.
Now, I was moping around my home. Everything I had reminded me of Tab and it was killing me. I’d driven past her apartment that first night and her lights had been on in her bedroom so I’d continued on, thinking that if I gave her time she’d call me. I was so fucking wrong.
Sitting staring at the pair of scrubs that she had left here, an idea came to me. I knew exactly how to get Tab back.
Grabbing my phone, I rang a friend of mine named Rory and told him my plan. He agreed to help me out like I knew he would. Now, it was on.
TABITHA
I regretted what I’d done, but Brett had used and hurt me so much that when that woman had said that he’d benefit financially from me, I’d freaked out and lashed out. I didn’t know how to fix it.
Damian had left me voicemails on my phone, but I’d been too afraid to listen to any of them in case he was yelling at me. Then a couple of days became a week and I realized that he’d have gone back to work and probably back to the Meat Market too. The night I’d remembered about the agency I’d cried myself to sleep at the thought of him with someone else.
The only thing that had gotten me through the worst of it was my little Toby, but I’d come in on Monday to discover that he’d been adopted. Someone had wanted an obese flatulent dog whose stomach rubbed the floor as it waddled. That had led to me bawling in the break room and going home early. I’d even called in sick the next day and had missed my classes. Now, I was back at work and the place wasn’t the same without him.
We’d just given a German Shephard a good tooth cleaning and he was now in recovery and would be going home in a couple of hours. I was walking to call the next appointment through when the door buzzed and in walked Damian.
DAMIAN
She had swollen eyes and looked like she hadn’t slept in days, but she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
On the drive over here, I’d almost crashed my car into a bush when the little asshole under my arm had let one rip in the car. I’d opened the windows, but my eyes had already been streaming by then and I was gasping for air. Rory had brought up the farting to Tab’s boss when he’d adopted the dog for me and he’d almost shit himself as he slept on the table while Rory signed the papers. The vet had recommended a certain diet food for him which I’d bought almost the entire stock of later that day. So far, I was pretty certain it was getting more rancid than less fragrant.
I’d got here through some miracle, though. As we’d been walking across the lot, I’d been impatient to get to Tabitha and regardless of the tugging on his lead, Toby could only go at one speed with his girth. Losing patience, I’d picked him up, being careful not to squeeze his middle, and had jogged to the door when I’d seen her coming into the waiting area. He was wearing a hat again today, but this was a special one for Tabitha.
Walking up to her, I put my free arm around her and pulled her to me, burying my nose in her hair. “Fuck, I missed you!”
I expected her to push me away and to lash out verbally, but instead she burst into tears and held on tight. “I thought I’d never see you again,” she wailed.
I didn’t want to let her go, but there was a room of nosy bastards watching the show that we were providing them. “Baby, is there somewhere that we can go to talk?”
“Exam room three is free,” her boss said from behind us, scaring the shit out of me.
Turning around, I nodded at him gratefully as I steered us down the hall to the free room. Guiding her in, I closed the door behind us by which point she’d stopped crying and was now standing staring at Gaseous Maximus in my arms.
“Why do you have Toby?” She asked. “How do you have him?”
Passing the weight over to her, I shook my numb arm out. “He’s mine. Well, no he’s ours.” She just stood there staring at me in shock. “Look, I adopted the farting little fucker for you. I knew that you loved him for whatever reason, be it damage from the gas that he’s let out around you or whatever. But, I figured that he needed a home and you were the best person for it,” she stood listening as it all came pouring out of me. “I have a house and a garden so he has space to exerci…” I stopped, thinking back to him trying to walk across the lot just minutes before. “To do his shit,” I corrected, then stood waiting for her to say something. The wait was painful.
“You adopted him?” I nodded. “For me?” I nodded. “To live with you?” Another nod. “Both of us.”
Sighing, I walked up to her and took her face in my hands. “I’m in love with you, Tab. You’re the first thing that I think of every morning, and the last thing I see every night. These last three weeks have been hell without you and quite frankly I can’t function without you.”
The tears were rolling slowly down her face. “But what about the agency? I can’t share you.” She sounded so pained by the prospect that I felt like crying for her when I thought of how I’d feel in her shoes.
“Baby, I quit. You were my last order.”
“Holy shit.”
Nodding solemnly, I wiped the tears away. “And what that bitch said, I would never use you for anything. Well, maybe sex, but you’d be using me too,” I added the joke in to make her smile because the tears were killing me. It worked and she rolled her eyes. “But I didn’t know about their current state financially because I left them behind years ago. They made me marry a living fucking nightmare who took drugs, drank, fucked guys all over my home and then killed herself sucking a guy off while he drove.”
“You can’t be fucking serious?” She asked, her voice slightly shocked, but a lot angry.
“Yup. And it was my car.” I added that point in, because really it was pertinent to the story and how much shit she’d put me through. I mean, a man and his car have a sacred bond and she’d killed my car.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Damian,” she whispered, putting the farting fatso on the floor. “I hate that they put you through that.” She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. Every time I held her, I had to bend down for her to do this, but it was always a pleasure and never a chore to have her so wrapped around me. “I hate that I put you through shit too.” She was crying again.
“It’s done,” I said firmly, and it was. I had to think that if had been through everything she had, I wouldn’t have reacted well to the implication that she was using me either. It had been a shit weekend filled with stress, so I could let her off this one time. “Just don’t do it again.”
“I won’t,” she promised as she tugged me to her even tighter. My body was starting to wake up and the exam table beside us wasn’t looking too bad when I saw a pair of dirty gloves in the trash beside us with what looked like brown smears on them. Fuck that.
“Baby, please stop,” I begged, lifting her head away from where it was nestled and looking her in her beautiful eyes. “It’s over.”
Nodding, she took a deep breath in, and smiled up at me. “I’ve missed you so much.” I can’t say I was tired of hearing her say that, in fact it healed something inside me when she did. “I can’t believe you adopted Toby for me…” she looked behind me in what I assumed was the little shithead’s direction. “Why is he wearing a hat?”
Grinning, I turned to pick him up, nearly slipping a disc in my back as I did. There had to be a way for him to lose some of his weight. With a long-suffering sigh, he settled, and as we turned to face Tab, he did what I hoped he would do.
Rubbing his head on my chest, which I’ll admit was kinda cute, he knocked the elastic holding the hat in place, making it pop over his muzzle again.
Tabitha burst out laughing and reached for him, before catching sight of the ring that was tied in place with the silver streamers on the top of it.
Putting Toby on the exam table, I got down on one knee, hoping to Christ that the floor was clean and that I wasn’t kneeling in old shit cells or dogily fluids or whatever, and started what I’d been practicing for days now.
“Tabitha Dixon, I think I fell in love with you the second that I saw you. Literally all I can see is you. I promise to be faithful, I promise to love you and cherish you…” Shit I’d gone off script and it was starting to sound like wedding vows. The nerves had made my mind go blank. Fuck it, I was going to have to wing it. “I promise to be everything you want and need and to love you more than anyone has ever been loved in the history of man.”
Standing up, I reached over to get the hat from Toby, but stopped when he started growling at me. The closer I got, the more rabid he sounded. In the end, I decided that it was worth sacrificing my hand and snatched the hat off him. Quickly yanking the ring off, taking the silver streamers with it, I threw the hat back at the still snarling dog, who instantly calmed.
Turning back to Tabitha, I saw that she was crying again, but this time with laughter. “Will you marry me?” I asked, holding out the ring, my hand shaking.
Seeing the size of the diamond without the hat cushioning it for the first time shocked the hell out of her. Yup, I’d gotten a good-sized diamond. Not too much, but not too small either.
She stood staring at it in shock for so long that I was starting to break into a sweat. The little shit had gotten the hat back on his head and was standing looking between us.
“Tab,” I croaked, my throat and mouth dryer than the Sahara.
Looking up at me, she broke into the biggest grin that I’d seen on her face yet, and I swore then that I’d make her grin like that every fucking day of her life.
“Yes!”
I couldn’t stop the shout of ‘Yes’ that came out of me as I grabbed her up and swung her around. I’d just put the ring on her finger and was leaning down to kiss her when Toby let another one rip, obviously moved by the display of romance and love that he’d just witnessed.
Gagging, the two of us bumped each other out of the way to get to the door first. “He’ll fall if you leave him on the table,” I said with the last clean oxygen in my lungs, knowing full well that she wouldn’t let that happen. Opening the door, I lunged out of it into the hallway.
She came out looking somewhat green, with the fat farter waddling behind her, hat still on his head.
“What the fuck did I sign onto?” I asked her, staring at the dog. “He’s what-twelve or something though so it’s not like…”
“No,” she interrupted. “He’s around eighteen months old.”
Staring down at him, I tried to imagine everything he’d eaten to make him that fat and flatulent in just eighteen months. What did he eat? Children?
Looking back up at Tabitha, the sappiest and most honest truth hit me. So long as I had her, I could do it.
THE END…FOR NOW.