Inked Ever After (11 page)

She didn’t get a word in before Tate turned to him. “This is
Emma. She’s—”At that her voice broke a little, but she plunged forward. “Was.
Emma was Jonah’s girlfriend.”

James strode toward her. Jonah’s girlfriend? Tate had never spoken
of her. “Nice to meet you, Emma. I’m—”

“The groom, James Bowen. I know,” she replied, shaking his
hand. “I got the wedding invitation.”

James moved closer to Tate. She seemed a bit shaky. “So
you’re staying for it?” she asked. “It’s still several weeks away. I would love
for you to be there.”

Em hesitated. “I don’t know. I came to see my folks. I’ll
try to stay until then. I guess after all I was right, and you were going to
get married before me, uh?”

Pain flashed across Tate’s face. She didn’t answer but
instead asked. “How have you been?”

Em shrugged. “Better.” Tate’s gaze drifted to the ground. Em
seemed to take pity on her, for she forced a smile on her lips and looked
around. “I see Rosita’s is like always.”

“You could come by a bit later. Have dinner with us. We were
supposed to go to Cape John, but I’m sure we could leave later, right, James?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

“See?” Tate said to the girl, her tone pleading. “Stay for
dinner. Elle would love to see you.”

Now it was Em’s turn to look at the floor. Then those sad,
sad eyes locked with Tate’s. It was clearly taking a lot for her to be there.
“Thank you, Tate, but I don’t know. Maybe another day?”

Tate tried to hide her disappointment and nodded. Hugged her
too. “Whenever you want. Just give me a call.”

“I have to go now.”

“Guys, cake sampling. Ticktock,” Paige yelled from the
kitchen.

Tate turned to Em, somehow apologetic. “We have to decide on
the wedding cake today.”

The girl smiled the most sorrowful smile James had ever seen
and hurried to the front door.

As she was opening it, Tate called out to her. “Em?”

“Yes?”

Tate ran to her. “So good to see you. Don’t be a stranger.”
Whatever she answered and whatever Tate said after that, James didn’t hear it,
but both were misty-eyed when they parted.

Tate was very quiet on their way to the bakery. Having to
choose a cake for the wedding didn’t seem to improve her disposition. At all.
As a matter of fact, she was very unenthusiastic and they left the place
without deciding on one.

In the truck on their way to Cape John, she sat in silence.
Hands clasped together. Eyes shiny. Retreating into herself.

Fuck. Shit.

The silence was so heavy it was difficult to breathe. He was
almost scared to ask, afraid she would shut him out once again. He wasn’t sure
he could take it. Not after yesterday.

He braced himself, gripping the steering wheel so hard his
knuckles were fucking white. Etching a dent on it probably. “Are you okay,
princess?”

A couple of seconds ticked by. It seemed like an eternity to
James.

Her no came in a barely audible thread of voice.

He glanced at her. She was shaking her head, eyes fast
filling with tears.

James drove the truck to the shoulder and turned off the
engine. Before he could turn to her, she was already crawling onto his lap.
Wrapping herself around him and sobbing.

“No, I’m not okay, James. Not okay at all.”

His heart clenched at her admission. “I know, sweetheart.”

He hated she was in pain, but at the same time he was
fucking relieved she was not hiding it.

“She couldn’t get out of the restaurant fast enough, James.
Em used to love being in Rosita’s. She was there every night at closing time,”
she began, but then choked up and couldn’t continue.

It had also been very difficult for Tate to be in Rosita’s,
surrounded by all the memories and the pictures on the walls. But she’d managed
to carve a space of her own there, and he was damn proud of her because of it.

He cradled her in his arms, murmuring words of love to her
and stroking her back, until she cried herself dry.

“Em is such a wonderful person, and Jonah was so taken with
her. I always told her she was going to get married before me. Turns out I was
wrong. She moved to Seattle some weeks after the funeral. She was as broken as
the rest of us. Jonah was a ladies’ man, much like Max, but Emma brought him to
his knees in no time. From the moment he saw her, he was gone. They were
together only for six months before he died, but I have no doubt he would have
married her. If he hadn’t been killed, that is.”

“She seems lovely.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything for a while, just played
with the neck of his shirt.

“Em was pregnant when Jonah died,” she finally said, lifting
her pained gaze to him. “I don’t think anyone knew, not even him. Em told Elle
and me. She was so happy. She was planning to tell him but never got a chance.
Jonah would have been ecstatic.” Tate’s smile faltered. “She lost the baby a
month after he died. The doctor said the stress had probably caused the
miscarriage. She was hysterical, kept saying she’d killed Jonah’s baby.”

He flinched, totally at a loss for words. Fuck.

Such devastation. Such sorrow. No wonder his woman was
crumbling.

“I’m fucking sorry, love.” How he wished he could take this
burden from her.

“I tried to be there for her, I really tried, but I was hanging
on by my last thread too, and at the end she left town. Back then, right after
the funeral, the pain was horrible, James. You can’t imagine. The thought of Em
and Jonah’s baby was the only light in that tunnel. When that light
disappeared, it became so damn dark. Pitch-black. Elle lost it almost as badly
as Em; she was nowhere to be found for two weeks.”

Yeah, he could see that. Elle was a runner. She pretended
nothing fazed her, but it was a smoke screen. Things cut her deep.

“It was a good thing we kept it from Mom. It would have
killed her. She was like a walking zombie then, too sedated to comprehend
anything, so she never found out she lost a grandchild too.”

“Love, I’m sure you did all you could for Em.” For everyone
actually. Taking care of and being strong for them. Trying to keep them afloat
to the point where she all but drowned.

Her voice broke. “It wasn’t enough. She left.”

“Sometimes leaving and putting distance is the only way.”
God knew if something happened to Tate and their unborn baby, he would lose his
mind.

She shook her head. “I’m sure you would have found the way
to do right by everyone.”

And there it was, her misplaced sense of failure, like it
was her fault she hadn’t been able to keep everyone together.

“Baby, you did right by them.”

He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t told him about Em, or
about the baby, but he knew the answer: it was too painful. For four weeks they
had clung to the baby as their lifeline. Losing him must have been like losing
Jonah all over again.

They were silent for a long while.

“I love you, princess,” he said against her hair.

“It feels wrong,” she whispered.

He stilled. “Loving me feels wrong?”

“No, James. Loving you feels totally right. I mean being
happy. Being happy feels wrong.”

Then it dawned on him; the wedding was the first really
joyful thing that had happened to the Cooper family after that horrible
accident that had truncated all their lives, and she felt guilty now—guilty for
being happy. And afraid to let him know all those contradictory emotions were
warring inside her. Afraid he would think less of her. As if anyone who knew
what she’d gone through could ever think that.

“Being sad feels wrong too,” she continued, her face still
hidden in his neck. “Like I’m letting you down by being sad. So you see, I
can’t win.”

Tenderness swelled unbearably in his chest. No wonder,
besides repeating she loved him, she hadn’t been able to coherently express her
feelings. How could she when she was conflicted about feeling them? Convinced
that she was letting those that she loved down. The dead ones by being happy,
the live ones by being sad.

“Look at me,” he said, bringing his fingers to her chin. She
obeyed, her eyes red and swollen. A deep shame shadowed them. “Princess, you
could never let me down, much less by being sad. Ever. You have the right to be
sad, and to be happy too. Pissed, gleeful, mad, excited, furious. You have a
right to all of those. Feelings are feelings: they aren’t right or wrong; they
just are. You can’t smother them out of guilt. And I didn’t get to meet your
dad or Jonah, but I know they loved you very much. There’s not a doubt in my
mind they’d want you to be happy.”

She buried her face in his neck again. “I know, but this is
so fucking unfair, James.”

“Life is unfair, princess. Bad things happen to good people.
Lady Luck is a motherfucking bitch. But we keep our chins up. We don’t give up.
We don’t surrender. And we come back swinging.”

He felt her smile on his throat. “We come back swinging?”

“Yep. And flipping the bird if need be.”

She lifted her gaze to him. “At Lady Luck?”

“At whatever tries keeping us on our knees, princess.”

* * * *

“The sushi was the bomb,” Tate said as they walked hand in
hand to the cabin.

The Mendiolas’ Mexican food had been exceptional, but their
sushi was even better. Lots of deep frying, lots of spices. Killer rolls.
Fusion at its best.

“Yes, it was,” James assented. “No wonder the place was
packed.”

After crying all over him and talking her heart out in the
truck, she’d fallen asleep. By the time James had woken her up, they were
parked in front of Kamikaze.

“On your feet, princess. Let’s go.” She felt so depleted she
hadn’t really wanted to go in, but James had insisted. “This is good. Trust me.
You’ll see.”

And he’d been right, like always. The second they entered,
the Mendiolas had descended upon them. Carlos’s siblings, his parents, his
grandma. Fussing over them as if she and James were part of their family.

“It isn’t anything like I remembered.”

“I bet it isn’t,” James said, chuckling. “That place looked
like Hooters meets Hard Rock Café meets sushi bar.”

True. Mendiola’s had been a quiet family restaurant.
Kamikaze was anything but.

“One thing hasn’t changed though,” Tate said as they reached
the cabin and sat on the porch. “Their food is still frigging hot. My mouth is
on fire. Almost numbed. I should have gone for the dessert. Maybe it would have
helped.” Although she somehow doubted it. All the beers they’d pushed at her
hadn’t. Wasabi explosion night hadn’t been a figurative name.

“If you want some dessert, we have the wedding-cake bites
they packed for us in the bakery,” James said, gesturing toward the cooler he’d
left on the ground. When the owner realized Tate was in no condition to be making
her mind up, he’d given them some samples to take along and asked them to come
back in a couple of days.

She shook her head. They would give her indigestion. At the
very least.

James wrapped his arm around her shoulder and, tucking her
to his side, kissed her temple. “What’s up with the cakes?”

Tate burrowed against his chest, breathing him in. “Nothing
per se; it’s just that we wouldn’t go sampling if Jonah were alive.”

“How come?”

“He’d have made it for us. He was the greatest pastry chef
I’ve ever met.”

“Is he the one who taught you how to bake?”

Tate was a mess in the kitchen, she knew, but her desserts
kicked ass. Not even Nils, Rosita’s chef, could top her.

“Yes, although those are nothing compared with his
masterpieces. He loved to experiment and had very particular tastes. He had a
thing for spices and licorice,” she reminisced with a soft smile. He’d mix the
most unlikely ingredients and come up with the most interesting, yummiest
concoctions. “I’ve always wanted a traditional five-tier white cake. I would
have probably begged my brother to make one like that for the wedding. But
now…” She lowered her gaze. “I hated all those stupid traditional wedding cakes
they offered us today. Absolutely hated them.”

So much so she had been unable to swallow even the tiniest
bite. Much less pick one out. That, of course, didn’t change the fact they were
one wedding cake short.

Apart from vetoing two from the selection they had been
offered, James had seemed to like the rest equally. “It will be better if you
choose, James. I’ll go with whatever you say.”

And if he wouldn’t agree to make the choice himself, she’d
just close her eyes and select one randomly.

James placed his finger under her chin and tipped her head
back. God, he was so handsome. His expression was relaxed, his eyes sparkling,
the sea breeze ruffling his shaggy hair. The sun had bleached some strands,
turning them almost white, which stood in sharp contrast to his tanned skin.
“Fuck traditional, baby. What about asking for something more unconventional?
Something more on the lines of—chili-chocolate cake?”

Tate’s face must have lighted up, because she felt her
cheeks on fire. “Could we?”

“Of course, princess. We can do whatever we want.”

“Chili-chocolate cake and lime-licorice frosting was one of
his favorites. We all loved it.”

“So chili chocolate and lime-licorice frosting it is,” he
decreed and kissed her softly on her lips.

Tate blinked back tears, fighting to keep her voice steady.
“That’s not really a traditional selection in a wedding. Not all the guests may
like it.”

James shrugged. “I’m sure the people who matter will love
it. And my family will eat anything.”

Tate climbed on top of him, and sinking her hands in his
soft hair, she kissed him, hard and long. She loved him so much. There were
really no adequate words to describe what she felt for this man. They all fell
short. “I don’t know what to say.”

A smirk split his face. “Don’t say anything. Imagine a black
five-tier chili-chocolate cake. Kick-ass gothic wedding cake. Your waitress is going
to faint when she sees it.”