My breathing turned heavy.
Sweat gathered on my lower back.
He’s her brother.
Chill the fuck out.
Unlocking my hand that’d squeezed my bottle of radioactive liquid until my knuckles turned white, I latched onto normalcy. I swallowed down my nonsense fear and asked, “What was your question again?”
He rolled his eyes. “I wanted to know how you even know what marriage is. I mean, you must, seeing as you spouted off a bunch of feelings and made my sister say yes.”
“I know what marriage is.”
Josh huffed. “Yes, but how? Did you have TV reception out there? Do you remember your parents before you were taken?”
I swallowed again. “I don’t remember much of anything before they took me.”
“Then how...?” He waved his bottle in the air. “You do know what marriage is, right? I mean, you just proposed to my damn sister. That shit is for life. I don’t like you, buddy, and I’m still on the fence that you have her best interests at heart even after hearing your story, but I can’t deny that she feels something for you, so I’m willing to be on my best behavior.” His teeth flashed in a tight smile. “Especially while my mom is here. Don’t want to stress her out any more than she already has been.”
I nodded. It’d been an unspoken agreement that the truth Gem and I had shared with Joshua would not be repeated to her mother. She’d received the condensed tale that I’d been hurt, Gem’s car hadn’t been usable, and there was no way to contact the outside world while I was recuperating.
I’d expected Gem’s mother to become guarded around me. To ask questions like Josh had. Instead, she’d just hugged me again, told me how glad she was that Gem wasn’t alone all that time, that I’d had help to recover, and welcomed me to the family.
She didn’t even know I’d proposed to her daughter the second before she’d walked in. She’d just blanket invited me into their world, and I wasn’t above accepting that invite because the deeper I fell into this new existence, the less inclined I was to leave it.
Yes, it was fucking terrifying.
Yes, my lungs still tickled with the aftermath of inhaling smoke as Fables burned to the ground.
And yes, I still had no idea who I wanted to be or how I’d fit into all of this, but one thing was for sure—I didn’t want to do any of this without Gem.
Therefore, she needed my ring on her finger and her last name to become mine.
“So...” Josh rolled his eyes. “Jeez, is it always this hard to get answers out of you?”
I looked at him. “I know most things that you do. Probably more if you don’t have time to read. I might have been hidden in a valley, away from conveniences and societies, but there were books.”
“Books?” His tone went high as if what I’d just said was stupid.
My hackles rose. “Yes, books. I read every single one of them in the library.”
“Library?”
“You going to repeat every word I say?”
He blinked. “So...you weren’t in a cave or something?”
I couldn’t stop the sarcastic laugh falling from my lips. “Would men and women who have the money to traffic kids for their kink want to play in a cave?”
“Well...” He shrugged and took another drink. “I don’t know how that stuff works.”
I narrowed my eyes, tasting my highlighter pink water for the first time. The sugar went straight to my head, adding another level of pain to my constant headache. I put the bottle on the table and stretched out in my chair. “There’s money in flesh. The place I was kept was...nice.” I rubbed at the odd pang in my chest at the thought that Fables—for all its imprisonment and pain—was now nothing more than ash on a valley floor. “It had many rooms, lots of expensive decorations, and hundreds upon hundreds of books. All on different topics. Topics that saved my life.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t know a thing about how to grow my own food until I started reading about cultivation. I didn’t know how to fix generators or other household stuff before I found the section on engineering. If it wasn’t for those books, I wouldn’t have stayed alive on my own.”
“That’s a big statement.” Josh wrinkled his nose.
“It’s the truth. I know what marriage is because I read every single romance book in that place. Fantasy, reality, fiction, and nonfiction. I know what falling in love is. I know what sacrifice is. I know what’s expected of me. And I also know what a fucking gift I’ve been given by Gemma saying yes.”
“Yeah, well, it’s too soon for all of that.”
“Not for me.” I shook my head. “I told you...it’s inevitable.”
“We’ll see.”
“No,” I growled. “It’s happening. When I’m able to earn a living and control my past, I’m marrying her.”