Always Us (The Jade Series #8) Read Free Page B

embarrassed.”
    She reaches back and swats at my leg. “Which is why I’ll be quiet.”
    She leans forward a little and I massage her neck.
    “Garret?”
    “Yes, Jade.”
    “I’m so happy being here. Having a real Thanksgiving with you and Frank and Ryan. And it’s so great seeing them living in a house that’s new and doesn’t have a leaky roof and peeling paint. All of it just makes me happy.”
    I lean over her shoulder and kiss her cheek. “Good. I love seeing you happy.”
    And that’s why I can’t tell her what’s going on. All her happiness would disappear if she knew the truth. Jade hasn’t had much happiness in her life and now that she finally does, I’m not going to take it away from her.
    “Did you mean it when you said we would have lots of guest rooms in our house?” she asks.
    “Of course I did. We’ll need lots of rooms for when people come visit us.”
    She flips to face me, her face beaming. “That’s what I want. I want both our families to come to our house for the holidays and summer barbecues and birthdays.”
    It’s sweet how Jade gets so excited about family. This family thing is all new to her and she loves having them around.
    I kiss her. “We’ll make sure there’s plenty of room for everyone. Maybe we’ll build a guest house. We have all that land. Might as well use it.”
    “That’s a great idea! Let’s do that. Then people can have more privacy if they want it. They can stay with us or in the guest house.”
    “And that’ll keep the main house from getting too big. If we get too many rooms we’ll end up with a house the size of my dad’s and we don’t want that.”
    “We won’t have that many rooms. Your dad’s house is huge.”
    “I don’t know, Jade. Like Ryan said, with the guest rooms and the rooms for our six kids, it’s gonna add up to a lot of rooms.”
    She rolls her eyes. “I was joking about the six kids. I had to get Ryan to shut up.”
    “That’s a relief. I mean, if you want six, that’s fine, but it seems like kind of a lot. And you’d have to be pregnant for almost six years of your life.”
    “Not if I had two sets of triplets.” She laughs. “Can you imagine us trying to take care of triplets?”
    Jade has been bringing up the kid topic a lot more now. She doesn’t say she wants kids, but she’ll at least talk about it or joke about it like she did just now. I think she’s been talking about it with Jennifer, her counselor. Jade usually doesn’t tell me what she talks about at her counseling sessions, but I can guess by the topics she brings up at dinner or when we’re just sitting and talking. And this kid topic has come up several times the past few weeks.
    “Garret? Are you awake?”
    I realize I haven’t responded to the triplets comment. “Yes. The triplet thing threw me. I was trying to figure out how that might work. I think we could handle it, but I don’t think it’s something we should try for. One at a time seems like a better option.”
    Now that she’s more comfortable with the kid topic, I sometimes just pretend we’re planning to have kids and see how she reacts.
    “I don’t think we have any control over it, Garret. We may try for one but end up with three.”
    “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what we get.”
    “Yeah.” She looks directly at me and smiles. Like really smiles.
    Wait. Did she just agree to have kids? What was the ‘yeah’ referring to? That we’ll wait and see if we have kids? Or that we’ll wait and see if we have one or triplets? And what’s with the huge smile?
    “Jade, did you just—”
    She interrupts my words with a kiss. “Just give me a little more time, okay? And then we’ll talk.” She smiles again. “But yeah, I want that.”
    Holy shit, is she serious? I think she just told me she wants to have kids. But she said she needs more time. More time for what? To be 100% sure? From the look on her face, I think she’s already there. Damn. I did not expect