I did not complain.
Not in the slightest.
Though I didn’t know exactly what he got up to, I figured being the CEO of all sorts of businesses—an organic food company and a solar power startup being two that surprised and amused me—he had a lot of work to get done, and the beauty of technology made it so he could do all that work at the bottom of the world.
His other work, the stuff we had not completely gotten in to—yet—I assumed it would be slightly more difficult to conduct over Zoom. I wanted to ask him who was running that side of things, especially while Karson was here but I wasn’t ready for that yet. Now that I’d committed to forever with this man, I let myself put off such conversations. They’d come eventually. I just wanted to enjoy the time we had here.
But his midnight life always crept in.
To be fair, he didn’t try to hide the gun. He had it resting behind the door in the second bedroom. I didn’t have an occasion to go in there, except the day I was looking for a pair of tennis shoes I’d packed with the intention of taking up running while I was here. Needless to say, I hadn’t worn them once. I was only searching for them because Jay wanted to go for a walk. A walk. It seemed so ordinary, so fucking vanilla, it excited me more than a simple walk should’ve. He’d read about a hike nearby. It was then that it had occurred to me in the months that I’d been here, I hadn’t gone out of my way to explore this beautiful country. Sure, I worked six days a week more often than not, with long hours. But there were long weekends, sporadic days off. I just hadn’t had the thirst to ... marvel at something. To seek out any beauty.
Until now.
Hence me all but skipping into the room in search of my tennis shoes. I found a gun instead.
I stared at it, resting right next to my Louis Vuitton suitcase. It looked ridiculous sitting there, like it was a prop for a photoshoot. I knew well enough it was no prop, it looked heavy, imposing, dangerous. Regardless of that, I moved forward to touch it, for what reason, I didn’t know. Larger hands beat me to it.
I whirled to see Jay standing there, frowning at me. “What are you doing, Stella?”
I frowned back. “What am I doing?”
“Yes, what are you doing, trying to handle a gun?” he clipped.
“What is a gun doing here in the first place?” I snapped, putting my hands on his hips.
Jay’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t answer me.
Ah, so we were back to that. Silence when he didn’t want to answer something.
“Where did you get a gun?” I asked, staring at the weapon in his hands. I was shocked, but also a little turned on. There was something so utterly masculine, dangerous and right about seeing something so powerful, so deadly, in Jay’s hands. Something about the fact that I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to use it on anyone who meant us harm.
I likely needed therapy being so turned on by the fact that my fiancé was brandishing a gun with familiarity and purpose, but I was going to need therapy for this whole damn thing.
“You think I’d spend time here with you—the single most precious thing in the world—without some kind of firepower to protect you?”
I blinked at him. “We’re in New Zealand, Jay,” I huffed out. “In small town New Zealand for that matter. There is nothing to protect me from.” Beyond that, I knew this country had very strict laws when it came to guns which, of course, my crime lord fiancé had circumvented rather quickly.
“There is a man walking around the beach with a shotgun,” Jay countered.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “I knew I’d regret telling you that.”
“This is my life Stella,” Jay asserted. “This will be our life. There won’t be a time when I’m not prepared, armed, ready for something to take you from me. At some point, someone is going to try to do that. It’s the nature of my business. That’s not going to change.”
No apology. If anything, it was a challenge, another time where he was daring me to walk away, testing me to see if he’d scared me enough.
I didn’t love guns. Didn’t love violence. But I loved this man. And guns and violence were a huge part of his life. Of our life now.
And I’d lived without the violence and the guns. I hadn’t liked it. So I stepped back, grabbed my tennis shoes and we went on a hike. A hike during which Jay pulled me over to the side of the trail and fucked me against a tree.
Yeah, life with Jay was so much fucking better.