Chapter 23

JL finally let out a breath when the ref made the sign with his arms indicating that Hernandez had tapped out. She jumped up and down, clapping. “He did it! He won!” JL hollered to Frances.

“He did!” Frances yelled back, excitedly. “And stop jumping, or those babies are going to fall out!” Frances held JL’s shoulders to restrain her.

“Do any of you people know anything about babies?” JL scoffed, then reached into her pocket to take out her phone, which had been vibrating for the last twenty minutes.

“I did it, sweetheart!” Enzo yelled through the cage.

“I know! I’m so proud of you,” she yelled back, and then looked down at her phone to see ten missed calls from her friends. She tapped on the first text and her heart plummeted.

“What’s wrong?” Francesca said when JL plopped back down on her seat. Enzo must’ve noticed something was wrong, because he was by her side before JL had a chance to say a word and before the winner was officially announced.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

JL turned the phone around so that he could see the photo that Jonah had sent her. “Motherfucker!” Enzo roared when he saw the pictures of the bulldozers knocking down the Walls. He rarely cursed but this was a motherfucker kind of moment. He took her arm, yelled something over his shoulder to Frances about calling her later, and led JL to the car.

“Calm down!” JL said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it fucking matters! I will not be responsible for taking that away from you. That painting was beautiful, and I won’t allow it to be destroyed. If he destroyed that, I swear to God, I will never—never!—speak to him again.”

“He’s your father, Enzo. Don’t say that.”

“He’s a heartless asshole,” Enzo said as he drove in and out of traffic.

“Drop me off at home. I can’t see it. I don’t want to see it.”

Enzo slowed down and looked at her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You won tonight. I’m so proud of you. I’m having twin babies with a wonderful man. Things are great. It’s been tough with Mom gone; I don’t want to witness another ugly thing in my life.”

“I’m sorry about all of this.”

“It’s over. We’re moving on. Let’s move on together, okay?”

He pulled over at her apartment, opened the door for her, and led her inside.

“Be careful, Enzo. Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“I won’t.” He kissed her, and before she closed the door, he added, “Oh, and we’re getting married next week in Vegas. You might want to pack.” Then he ran to his car, leaving her speechless.

JL woke up the next morning to an empty bed. She dialed his number, “Hey, where are you?”

“I’m working some things out. I didn’t want to wake you up by calling.”

“You never came home?”

“No. I have to go, but be ready to go somewhere with me around two, okay?”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, but he had already hung up.

It was almost three in the afternoon when Enzo arrived back home. He looked bone tired. He still wore the same clothes from the fight, he had stubble on his face, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “You okay?” She brushed her hands over his face. “You need sleep.”

“I’ll sleep later. I have something to show you, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” she said warily, and let him lead her to his car.

They drove for some time before he pulled up in front of an older house on the outskirts of town in an expensive community. Mango trees and massive palms obstructed the view of the house. He went around, opened her door, and helped her out and along the long uneven path until she finally came face-to-face with a beautiful home. It wasn’t the massive home he’d had when they first started their fling. This one was definitely older, with keystone finishes and blue Bermuda shutters in front of the windows. He opened a lockbox and pulled out a key, which he used to open the front door. “Where are we?” she asked.

Instead of answering, he walked across the threshold, turning on a light as he did so. She looked around the empty house. “Enzo? Where are we?”

“Do you like it?”

“Well, from what I can see, it’s very nice.”

“I love all the hardwood,” he said, and then pointed to a wall of French doors that led outside, but all she could see was more trees. “And I love all the natural light and all the trees. It’s very quaint. Like a big cottage.”

“Yes…,” she said, though she wasn’t sure what was going on.

“Come.” He led her down a hall, turning on lights along the way. “Here’s one room.”

“Is this your house?” she asked.

He ignored the question. “There are four rooms. This is one of them. It’s smaller,” he said as he opened the sliding door to the smallish closet and then walked to another door. “But it does have a bathroom.” She looked over his shoulder, unable to say much.

He pulled her to the other rooms and showed her around until he led her to the final room. “This is the master bedroom.” It was painted off-white with dark hardwood floors and dark crown molding like the rest of the house. She spun around and, just like the main part of the house, this had a big wall of windows. “More windows, nice, right?”

She just nodded and let him pull her to the bathroom. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

It was. It was the most phenomenal bathroom she’d ever seen. It had a claw-foot tub right smack in the middle of the room, a huge shower for two, and a big skylight above. It was gorgeous. “It’s like a little sanctuary. Wow.”

“I know. I fell in love with it too. But I haven’t shown you the best part. You ready?”

“Don’t really know what to say, Enzo. Whose house it this? Aren’t you supposed to be broke or something? Is this your house? When did you buy a house?”

He still didn’t answer. “This is going to be tricky when your belly gets really big. I don’t think you’ll fit.”

She hadn’t even noticed the spiral staircase in the corner of the room. “Where does it go? Are you about to show me a secret sex dungeon or something? Have I completely turned you into my sex slave?”

He was right behind her as she climbed up. “Well, that’s one use for the room,” he said with a laugh.

Once she reached the top, her heart stopped. It was a room, the same size as the master bedroom, with a glass roof and glass walls, like an atrium surrounded by all the foliage from outside, full of canvases and easels laid out everywhere. “Enzo?” she whispered.

“This one’s your room. I mean, I can turn it into a sex room if you prefer. But I think you’d prefer a little creative haven. You can do whatever you want in here. I know you can’t draw on the walls since they’re mostly glass, but it’s all natural light, and I just thought that—”

She threw herself on him. “It’s…I just…” She took a deep breath. “I love it.”

He cupped her face in his hands. “And I love you.”

Her heart stopped.

Completely.

“I thought I could save your Walls. I didn’t. I failed you. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am. But this room can bring you peace, I think—I hope. I bought this place a few weeks ago. I wanted to show you, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you with things. But when everything happened last night, I knew I had to do something to make you happy. To show you that it would still be okay. I think I fell in love with you during our first date. You made me just so happy and free. I’d never felt that before, and I know I fucked it up. But I bought this house for us. I just thought that it was perfect for you.”

“Enzo, you didn’t fail me. You have given me more in a few months than anyone has given me my whole life. I didn’t need a house to know that you love me.”

“Well, I promised to make you happy, and if I’m going to whisk you off to Vegas I need to plead my case. There are two more things I need you to see.”

He took her hand and led her downstairs to the kitchen. She looked up and saw one of those wrought-iron pot racks, from which hung a gleaming set of pots and pans, and her breath caught. “Oh my God!”

“I just had it installed this morning.”

“I never thought I’d have a family. Now I’m getting a family and a wrought-iron pot rack,” she squealed. “I love this house. I love the art room.”

“Your art room,” he corrected her.

“My art room. I love my art room. But this room, this one right here, is my favorite. I want to be the mother who cooks while her kids sit on the island eating cookies and telling her about their day at school.”

“You can’t cook, sweetheart.”

“I am so going to learn!” She skipped around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers happily. Then she stopped and her expression turned serious. “You make me believe I can have all the things I never thought I could have,” she told him, her chin trembling.

“You were literally skipping merrily a second ago.” He wiped a tear away.

“I know!” She sniffled. “Stupid twin hormones.”

He pulled her toward his chest and held her tight. “Anything you want, I want to be the one who gives it to you. The family, the husband, the life full of color and art—whatever you want, it’s yours.”

“I want that too.”

“So, you’ll marry me voluntarily?”

With a weak laugh, she said, “Yeah, I’ll marry you voluntarily.”

“Thank God, because I wasn’t sure how I was going to haul you onto that plane kicking and screaming.”

She pulled away and her eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you were broke. Unemployed.”

He laughed. “I am.”

“Sugar, people who are unemployed don’t buy houses like this.”

“I can afford it. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, I’m starting to think your definition of broke and unemployed and my definition of broke and unemployed are different.”

He snorted out a laugh. “I don’t have a five-hundred-million-dollar portfolio anymore, and I don’t have the steady income that came with having a job with my father.”

“But…?”

“But I had savings and I had my own connections. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Maybe we can’t go jet-setting on a private plane around the world for a month this year.”

She laughed. “Not this year? But what about next year?”

“If things go the way I plan them to go, then, yeah, next year I’d say we can go pretty much wherever we want.”

“That’s great, Enzo. I’m happy for you.” She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Can you still do MMA?”

“I can. But I decided that I’m done with that. I’ll still train and go to the Academy, but I don’t need to compete. It’s not what I want anymore. I don’t need to be a top professional. That’s not my life. I love it, but I love other things just as much, and I don’t want to take time away from being with you so that I can do that. Having it as a hobby is more than enough.”

“We can do both. While I paint you can train. Neither of us has to make it our whole life. Just hobbies.”

“Speaking of which, there’s one more thing I want to show you. Hold on to your panties, lady, you’re going to love this one.”

She giggled at his horrible attempt at a southern accent.

“If you’d said no to the marriage proposal—”

“Proposal? You didn’t propose shit, buddy. You basically said, ‘You’re marrying me.’ ”

“True. But if you’d refused, this would’ve changed your mind.”

He escorted her outside, shut the door behind her, and then turned her around. The entire backside of the house was primed white, and there were buckets of paint sitting on the ground. “I want you to make this your wall. All of it. The entire back wall of the house. Will you do that for me? For us?”

“Enzo, you didn’t have to.”

“I also hired a professional photographer who went out there and took portraits of both your walls and as many of the other ones as she could that hadn’t been knocked down. She’s transferring them to large canvases, and I hope you’ll use them to decorate our home.”

“Is that what you were doing all night?”

“I couldn’t stop my father, so it was the least I could do. With the photographs, they’ll always be part of the house.” He pointed at the thick slab of cement. “And, by the way, thank God I had some savings. You wouldn’t believe the cost involved in finding a professional photographer and hauling her ass out to the Design District in the middle of the night while bulldozers tried to tear everything down!”

“Holy shit, Enzo! You’re crazy. Thank you!”

She stepped back, her soon-to-be-husband’s arm wrapped around her waist, and looked at her painting, which was now part of her very own house. “Sometimes a girl can get the happily-ever-after without ever setting foot in a fairy tale.”

“What movie’s that from?” he asked, kissing her head.

She turned into his arms and kissed him lovingly. “No movie. That one was all me.”