After staying a couple of months in Virginia it felt good to be back home, especially now that Monica was right alongside me. We'd decided that Vegas was going to be the place for us, not Tennessee and most certainly not Virginia. Nevada is where I call home and Monica had no objections to calling it hers as well.

The shop was all set up in Nashville, thanks to Vikki and Hugo intermittently taking charge of things for me. I mean they really had nothing to complain about since I was flying them into Tennessee, paying for their hotel rooms, and giving them time and a half to get everything up and in order. Those couple of months I didn't do much but be with Monica whenever she was out of class.

I would sketch that damp dark cell that I'd been kept in repeatedly. Then I'd burn the images one by one. It was a cathartic experience to say the least because for a few weeks after the incident I had had horrible night terrors.

I'd wake up in the middle of the night after seeing Monica with that needle in her neck. I'd think about all the fucked up things I'd been told was going to happen to Monica if they'd gotten their hands on her. My mental state was more than a tad fucked for a straight four weeks. The man to blame for the entire thing was my own fucking father to boot.

He'd tried to talk to me before he'd left but I wanted nothing to do with him. When he'd insisted it turned into a giant blowout which had everyone in the penthouse finding some excuse to leave. Even Monica and her father had made themselves scarce after he'd coaxed her to leave the two of us to sort things. By the end of the argument our relationship was worse than it ever had been and that's saying something considering our relationship has always been rather shit.

I was happy I'd chosen a different life, to be entirely different from the man I'd grown to loathe. In that argument I'd told him that I would never put my family in that kind of danger. I would never put my child in harms way over pussy and a business deal. In that argument I'd realized how so unlike my father I actually am, how much better of a father I'd be than him. That had also messed with my head a bit as well.

Monica would ask me every now and again what I was thinking about when I'd stare off into space. Nine times out of ten it was the fact that I was reconsidering the future I'd once deemed myself to have— a single loner with no family tying him down. There would be no children to pass on genetic defects to. No wife to end up resenting me down the road. But here I am young, married, and thinking about how I'd be a much better father than the one that'd brought me into this world.

"You're doing it again." I shake my head, ridding myself of the thoughts rolling around in it. "You're staring off into the abyss. Will you tell me what you're thinking about finally?"

I wasn't sure if I could or how she would take it. I didn't want to get her hopes up when I could potentially change my mind. I didn't want to give her a reason to leave me when we were finally together again. She was here, moving in with me, unpacking her things in our room, our home. I didn't want her running out on me as soon as she'd gotten here. So, instead of giving her an answer I just shrug.

"I hate that you won't tell me what's on your mind, Boston. We talked about this. We said we'd be open with one another about everything." She grabs ahold of my hand and looks up into my eyes with an unsure face. "Are you having second thoughts about me moving in with you?"

"No. God no, Monica." I grab her hand back fiercely. "I'm not thinking that at all." She looks unconvinced and I hate it. "Listen, I've been having second thoughts about some things in my life but not you. Never you. You've never been something I've ever wanted to reconsider."

"But you are reconsidering something?" I give her a nod but nothing else which makes her face fall. "I wish you would just tell me. I will understand whatever it is. I'm not going to judge you for it. You can talk to me."

I pull my hand away from hers and spear it through my hair as I rock slightly on my heels. Chewing the inside of my cheek I give her a once over while saying, "fine, I'll tell you what's going on in my mind but I want you to keep an open one. It's nothing definitive. It's just something I've been thinking a lot about since I got into that argument with my dad."

"Okay." She gives me an encouraging smile. "Tell me."

"The kid thing." I look away from her feeling a bit nauseous. "You know, having one and everything."

"What about it?"

"I think in the future... Like down the line... Far down the line... If I'm still here..."

"You'll be here." Her words are quiet, barely more than a whisper.

"It doesn't quite work like that, baby. You know that." When she goes to say something I hold up a hand. "I think I'd make a decent father. I think it's something I'd be into after we've experienced our own time together, just you and me for a while. I think it's something I could be down for." Her eyes sparkle marginally and there's a giant smile on her face when I look back her. "But—" I hold up my other hand. "I'm not sure that... that this feeling is going to last but it's something I've been thinking a lot about."

"Because you've realized you're not your father? That we aren't your parents?" Her words nearly knock the wind out of me, so I just stare at her. "Your father told me the story of their marriage. And after he did I gathered the real reason behind why you don't want to have children. You don't want to become him. You don't want us to become your parents. It's why, when I first met you, you were so insistent that I come with you. That I didn't give into the life— the one that I'd been told I should live. It's why you couldn't stand me being with Carter." She reaches up and strokes my cheek. "Because you loved me enough to see I deserved better— that I deserved someone like you. Someone who would never bind me into an ordinary life and would let me take my own steps as I make my own way."

I feel myself get slightly choked up. How did she know all that? How could she see all that? Because now that she's vocalized it, I know every word is true.

"After talking with your father everything became very clear to me. Every action you've made in our relationship." She boops my nose with a finger from the hand that'd been on my cheek. "You are not your father, Boston. You are the polar opposite. And you are a good man. One of the best I've ever met."

"I've tried to be that, the opposite, for as long as I can remember. Watching my parents marriage fall apart was enough to make me never want to have a wife, never have kids. Other than that I have a heart defect, it was the other reason why I was so impulsive. Why I am so impulsive. I watched my mother wither away in that mansion of a house. She became this cold and bitter woman and the two of them would hardly ever talk. They went to functions and they acted the part but that's all it was— an act.

"I didn't want that for myself. I didn't want that for you. I met Carter and heard the way he talked about you. The way Eric talked about you, like you were an object and I hated it. Then when I saw you with him, knew what he wanted, I just couldn't let that happen. I just... I saw..." I shake my head not being able to really explain it to her.

"You saw my future being what your mother's was." I look at her with a nod of the head.

"Yeah, I didn't want another beautiful woman, who clearly has so much potential, to be tied down and chained to a man that wants all the glory. A man like my father."

"Your father wanted the best for you. He wanted to give you a bright future."

"By doing so he snuffed out my mother's brightness. Then embarrassed her by being with someone half his damn age afterward." I grit my jaw thinking about the way my mother had looked at herself those few months after he'd started dating Amelia, when he'd moved in with her. "It wasn't fair to her and I know she may have wanted that divorce, finally wanted some freedom, but my father escorting someone closer to my age than his own around was like the ultimate slap in the face to her."

"I can imagine."

"Carter would've done something like that to you too. I could see that future for you as clear as day. Someone like you," I lift her chin to meet my eyes, "you've got so much potential to be so much more. I wanted you to see that too."

"And I love you for it." I reach down and kiss her. It's soft and slow. When I pull away she gives me a warm smile. "Thank you."

I bump my nose with hers with, "anytime."

"So what now? Where do we go from here?"

"Anywhere, baby. We can go anywhere. We can do anything."

"Together."

"Always together. From here on out."

Her green eyes shine brightly as she takes my hands in hers. And I know her and I will never be my parents because we're one and the same. She's my partner. My equal. The person who balances me perfectly. The love of my life.

A/N:
Next chapter will be the last chapter! I can't believe we're already coming up to the ending of this book. It's always wild to me when I finish a book.

Thank you all for reading, truly.
❤️