Chapter Thirty-Eight
Morgan
Saturday, One Week Later
The scent of coffee wafted up my nose, stirring me into a waking position way before I was ready for it. Mind you, I never wanted to wake up when I was in Terrance’s bed because his mattress was so damn comfortable. At least I was way over the stage where I’d struggle to recall where I was because it wasn’t home. I’d spent enough time in this bed now to know that I was here. My second home, so to speak.
“Terrance, where are you?” I groaned into the pillow. “I can smell coffee and it has me craving.”
“Good job I’ve made you some then.” I could hear his voice before I could see him, so I forced myself into a sitting position to wait for him, managing to pull the sheets up to fully cover my naked body just in time.
I knew that it was a pregnancy bump, and so did Terrance, but I couldn’t help feeling subconscious that maybe I just appeared a little bit on the chubby side at the moment.
My breath sucked out of my body for a split second as Terrance walked into the room, in the way that it always did when I saw him for the very first time each day. His stunning looks always blew me away, and I had the strong feeling that they always would. Sometimes it took me a moment to remember that he was mine.
“You look beautiful this morning.” he grinned as he handed me a mug. “But then again, you always do.”
I sipped my drink, sucking back the compliment like it was keeping me breathing. “Thank you.”
“You know what, I’ve been thinking.” His tone of voice stilled my heart for a second. He was about to tell me something very serious, I could tell, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it or not. “I’ve been thinking that we’ve come very far in the past few weeks.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” I coughed a little awkwardly, wondering where the hell this was going.
“But maybe not quite far enough. You’re mine, you’re having my baby, so it doesn’t make any sense for you to live a million miles away from me.”
“I don’t, it really isn’t-” I started, but he leapt in, talking right over me.
“It’s too far. I want our baby to grow up here. I want you to be here all the time. I guess what I want to ask is if you’ll move in with me.”
“Oh my...” It was what I wanted, and it made a whole lot of sense, but it still felt a little overwhelming. Terrance wanted me to live here, with him. It was like a dream come true, and I couldn’t believe it. I was so lucky!
“Well, I would love that, I just...” My eyes welled up, the emotion getting the better of me in the way I was getting a lot recently. It was safe to say that pregnancy hormones really had me at their command. “I’m a little overwhelmed. This is too much.”
“I’ll get a truck over to your home today to pick up your things, if you like? There’s no point in waiting, is there? It’s a little nearer to your work, and then when we buy any baby stuff, it can all just be here. We can start getting prepared sooner rather than later.”
“Yeah, sure, that sounds lovely.” A vision of our baby’s home came to life in my eyes. I could picture the nursery, the stroller, the crib, and I liked the way it looked. “Thank you, that sounds amazing.”
I drank more of my coffee, simply trying to keep the happy tears to a minimum. It was crazy to weep at every little thing, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. My heart was everywhere, my brain was all over the place – it was just lucky that I would get a lovely baby at the end of it all.
“Well, I suppose we better get started then,” I announced with conviction. “Big day today, after all.”
***
“We don’t have to unpack all this today, do we?” I asked Terrance doubtfully. “I didn’t think I had anything. I can’t believe how many boxes there are.”
They took up more of the living room than I cared to acknowledge. The right thing to do would’ve been to get it all sorted, but I felt overwhelmed by it all. I was already exhausted, and I didn’t know where to begin. “I’ll do it over the next few days, honest.”
“Will you stop worrying?” Terrance insisted with a lovely smile. “It doesn’t matter to me how long it takes you to unpack, just as long as you’re here. You just sit on the couch. I’ll go and make you something to drink.”
I fell into the comfort of the couch, embracing the warmth I felt surrounding to me. It would take me a while to accept this totally as my home – maybe it would come easier once my stuff was all unpacked – but at least I felt comfortable here.
As he sat down next to me with the drinks, I felt a tension in his shoulders, something weighing down heavily on him that he needed to share, but in typical Terrance style, he didn’t know where to begin. “What’s wrong?” I asked him softly. “You seem tense.”
“I have something to tell you,” he admitted, which had my heart hammering loudly. “I found it out a couple of days ago, but it’s taken me a while to get my head around it.”
“Right, what’s that?” I had to gulp down, to keep my emotions inside.
“Braxton has been doing some digging, into my family history, and he found out the information I never thought I’d discover.”
My mind reeled as I tried to work out exactly what this could be, but I came up with nothing. There was just too much in Terrance’s complex family history, and now that it had been put behind us, we didn’t discuss it anymore. Or so I thought.
“I didn’t ask him to look into it, but Braxton knew that I needed to know. He...he found out why I grew up without a mom.”
Oh God, this was huge – monumental in fact. I knew that this bothered Terrance, even if he didn’t like to admit it. The loss of his mother and the lack of knowledge about what had happened to her was eating away at him all the time.
“She didn’t leave. I guess I always thought that was what happened even if I didn’t like to admit it; she died. She...she had trouble with drugs. Maybe this predated her meeting my dad, maybe not. I guess I won’t ever know everything, but when my brother and I were young, she overdosed. She died. I don’t know whether it was on purpose or not, but at least I know something.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said redundantly, stroking his arm. “How does that make you feel?”
“Well, I’m glad to know. I think she might always have been this thing in my mind if not, something that would’ve troubled me for life. It’s sad that she’s dead, and there are a lot of holes in the story still, but the majority of it is there. I think now I can move on.”
He stood up and paced the room, lost in his own thoughts. I wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, to make things better, but I couldn’t. I felt like he needed to be lost in his own mind for a while.
“You aren’t with me for the money, are you?” he asked me, almost as if he didn’t realise what he was saying.
“No, of course not. I would never... It hasn’t even....” Why was he asking this? Did he suspect I was? I’d never done anything to give him that impression.
“I mean, it’ll be good for our child to grow up comfortable, but we don’t need it all, do we?”
“Erm, no of course not.” I agreed with him, but I had no idea where this was going with this. He was pensive and a little stressed, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Okay, then I need to do something. Wait here a moment.” I remained fixed in one place while he shimmied into the bedroom and came back out clutching onto a briefcase. “Right, come with me.”
I leapt up, unsure if questions were necessarily right about now. I had a feeling that I just needed to go with this to see where Terrance was headed. There was a mania to his steps as he took me into the elevator, but as he hit the button of the floor Braxton lived upon I knew everything would be alright. At least we were only going to his home!
I hid behind Terrance as he hammered on the door, still trying to figure out where this moment was taking us. Some strange things were just spoken about, and I was worried that maybe this knowledge of his mother was playing havoc on him in a way that he hadn’t yet discussed.
“Hold on, coming!” As Braxton swung the door open, Terrance pushed his way inside, and I followed meekly with an apology on my face. “Terrance, is everything okay?”
“Everything is good, yes... At least, I think so.” He paced the apartment, clutching onto the briefcase as if it contained state secrets within it. “Thanks to you, I mean, you’ve been a great support and a friend to me. I never could’ve done any of that without you.”
“Oh well, you know I don’t mind...” Braxton blushed, trying to take the compliment in the way that it was intended, but Terrance kept running his mouth at a million miles an hour.
“This is the money we managed to receive for the loan sharks, but wasn’t needed to be paid off, after all. I have it here, and I want to give it to you. I don’t feel like I need you as a bodyguard anymore, so I want you to have this. I want you to have this money and I’m going to give you more, too.”
“No, boss, I don’t want any of that...”
“Nonsense, this is what I want. You’ve gone above and beyond in so many ways – you took a bullet for me, you discovered my mom’s fate, you...you moved here just to be close to me. Trust me, Braxton, this is what I want.”
He slid the briefcase across the table, and Braxton stared at it with utter bewilderment. “I don’t need any of this. I would’ve done it anyway...”
“This is happening – take it.” They stared at one another in a stand off, one that I just knew Terrance would win. “Braxton, I love you. I want you to have this. It’ll mean everything to me if you take it.”
“Oh well, thank you.” Braxton blushed and shrank in on himself, but he accepted, knowing that there was no point in arguing any longer. “Thank you, boss, it’s... Well, it’s great.”
As I watched everything start to make sense, I couldn’t help but smile. Terrance was giving some of his wealth up to the friend who had always been there for him, and that only made me love him more. He was kind, generous, sweet...the perfect father for my unborn child. I rubbed my bump, mentally telling my baby that her (or his, I wasn’t totally set on the gender, I was only winding Terrance up with that) dad was the best man around.
Terrance sensed my eyes upon him, and he turned to face me with glee on his expression. We shared a moment of sheer love, and in that moment, I felt like everything was complete.