Page 13 of Bossy Bride: Emma and Jesse

“It’s fine,” I tell myself, grabbing a bottle of water and closing the door. It was just a dream. Everything is going great. Johnny is having a baby, for fuck’s sake. I’m gonna be an uncle again. Joey and his partners are all happy and satisfied. Maisy comes every other weekend to spend time with them.

Hell, I even have a fucking client. First fucking client in years. Some young teenager who wants to learn how to race yachts. He’s not from a big important family, and I’m not taking money for it, but still. This kid… he’s good. He reminds me of myself at that age. And I could be a part of his rise. A huge part.

Everything is good. Everything is perfect. And next spring Emma and I will have the perfect wedding and it will only get better.

Even Zach is doing things. I’m not really sure what, but he’s living down on Key West and working with Emma’s brother, Luke, on some boat.

We made it.

We got out.

We gave away fifty million dollars to charity last night.

But my eyes wander back to the Bossy Building across town. It’s like a siren song calling me back.

“Fuck.” The sound of my own voice startles me out of the lingering dream-state. “Jesus Christ, Jesse. Pull yourself together. It’s just a stupid building.”

I uncap the water, drink it down, cap it back up, and then go back to bed.

Emma turns over when I get in under the covers, her hands instinctively wrapping around my upper arm as she snuggles up to my chest.

I push the weird dream away. I push all the anxiety away and concentrate on what I want instead of what I think I deserve.

Because deep down I want Emma, but I don’t think I deserve Emma.

And I do.

Dammit, I do. She was the first girl who ever found her way past the thick, cynical, drugged-up walls around my heart. And she never left. She’s been in there, inside me, for thirteen years.

It’s our time now.

So I think about that instead.

I think about sleeping with her every night for the rest of my life.

I think about Saturday night dinners with her family. I think about that whole street of cottages the Dumas family owns and how her mother already calls the blue one the Emma and Jesse house. How we will spend our lives down there with them. And maybe my brothers and their partners will have their own houses too.

One will be called the Joey, Huck, Wald, and Brooke house. And one will be called the Johnny and Megan house. Alonzo will be my friend and we’ll go fishing with his father every summer and catch giant swordfish. And we’ll go diving with Tony, and boating with Luke.

Maisy will be there, learning to dive, and swim, and fish, and sail, and then Johnny’s new baby. One day, Emma and I will have our own crew. We’ll sail the world with them, and teach them how to read the stars in the sky, and we’ll go places. Special, faraway tropical places you can only get to by boat.

And one day, years and years from now, we’ll forget.

We’ll forget all about the Way. And the Bossy. And the Kane estate and their missing, dead daughter.

We’ll forget that my father and uncle were killed. We’ll forget all the bad things and only remember the good ones.

That’s how I fall asleep.

Forgetting.

But I wake up in the morning remembering everything. The dream. The fear. The Bossy.

And that fucking building is still staring at me from across the city when I look out the window.

“What are you doing, Jesse?” Emma is rushing around the penthouse like a crazy person, trying to pack up everything we’ll need for a week in the Keys. “Did you call the car service?”

“Yup,” I say, shaking myself out of the lingering bad dream. “And the jet is fueled and waiting for us. My man Miles is baking up those Barbie and Ken mini-rolls as we speak.”