His face turns green, and he barely gets his napkin to his mouth before he spits it out.
“So I shouldn’t be expecting my new husband to cook for me every night then?” I joke.
He runs his hand through his hair, and I notice some sweat coming through his T-shirt.
“I promise I’m a better cook than this. I’ve made boxed macaroni and cheese and hot dogs a hundred times for Rose and Atlas. I don’t know what happened?” He stares at the food again incredulously, like it did something wrong to him.
His cheeks pink. He’s sweating even more now. I don’t know why he’s so nervous, but I try to ease his mind by lifting my wine glass.
His eyes bulge as he watches me drink the wine. I know he thought for sure I was pregnant, but I’m not. Short of peeing on a stick, drinking my wine will have to convince him.
Except, one taste and I’m spitting the liquid out as I get a mouthful of cork.
“What’s wrong?” Langston asks.
“Um…the cork disintegrated into the bottle. It’s more cork than wine at this point.” I put the glass back on the table.
Langston inspects his glass, takes a small taste, realizes I’m right, and then sets the glass back down in a huff.
“I’m sorry. I can order delivery.”
I shake my head. “It’s okay. I’m too nervous to eat much anyway. I’ll eat once I know the kids are safe.”
He nods with a frown. “What happens when this is all over?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean with us. What kind of life do you want? Where should we live? What do you want out of life?”
I look out at the ocean. The sun has begun to set. We should get some news from how the missions are going. “I can’t imagine this ever being over.”
“It will be sooner than you think. What do you imagine our lives like then?”
Our.
That word sounds so nice leaving his mouth. We haven’t had ‘our’ since we were kids. I’m not foolish enough to think that just because I have a ring on my finger that anything is going to change. I’ll still live alone, and Langston will continue to be an incredible father.
Langston stands up then. It’s clear he’s not happy with whatever he sees on my face. He takes my hands as he kneels in front of me.
“Stop thinking that your life going forward is going to include anything but me and the kids in it,” he says.
I shake my head. “You can’t make promises like that, killer. You might hate me when this is over.”
“I already hate you,” he says with a wry smile.
“
For real,” I say. When he says he hates me, it means I love you, or as close to love as he can feel. “And nothing will change once the kids are safe. They aren’t mine, not really. I’d make a terrible mother.”
His eyes narrow as he clenches my hands tighter. “You’d make a wonderful mother.”
I want to argue more, but there is no use doing that now, so I don’t.
“Once this is all over, I see us building a house on a private island somewhere. We have more money than we need. We’ll live on the island, the five of us.”
I’d rather live in the house he already built—our dream house. I don’t care that he and Phoenix lived in it together already—it’s mine.
“We’ll live happily ever after as we watch the kids grow up until they leave us to start their own lives. We’ll get a dog, maybe some cats to fill the house while we wait for grandchildren. Maybe we’ll start a charity for underprivileged kids.”