Whisper

A couple of days later, Peyton came home and I had to go back to work. My mom came over to help Peyton out with the baby. For some reason that the doctors couldn't figure out, having the baby had left Peyton very weak. Her iron levels were very low which left her out of breath after even the most minor activity. The two of them had worked that out at the hospital.

What shocked me was one day as I was giving Peyton breakfast; it wasn't my mom who came to sit with her but her mom.

"What would you like for breakfast, Honey," she asked stepping into the room. "Oh you're already eating."

"Will takes really good care of me, Mom," said Peyton.

"I can see that," said her mom. "Will, I'll make dinner. You just go on to work and don't worry about her."

"That's kind of hard," I said. As her mother went into the nursery to see if Will Jr. was awake, I looked at Peyton. "It won't be long now," I whispered. She got the weirdest look on her face then. It was a look that I'd never seen on Peyton's face since we'd been together.

All the way on my drive to work I ruminated on that look. I figured out that Peyton was probably some kind of control freak. And my deciding to dictate some phase of how our fake/temporary marriage was going had pissed her off. I started to feel like the sooner things ended the better.

When I got home that evening, I noticed that her mother's car was still in our driveway and there were a couple of other cars there as well. If her mother had made dinner and stayed over it might give me some time to work on some of our household projects that I'd neglected over the past few weeks. I drove my Mustang into the garage and left by the door that opened into my yard and there he was.

"You have a lot of room here," he said. "I like the deck you're building. This will be nice when you finish it." And then he walked back inside of MY house. Every single word that he'd said had simply implied that everything we had wasn't good enough for his daughter. He also implied that I wasn't good enough for his daughter. He'd also implied that she wouldn't be here for long. He'd said "YOU," have a lot of room here. That told me that if he had his way, I'd be living here alone. Then it was the deck, "You're building." That implied that if I was as successful as Peyton deserved, I'd have been able to afford to have professionals build it. The whole one sided conversation just left me pissed off.

Then there was the fact that the bastard had just started talking to me like we were friends or he was some sort of mentor figure in my life. It was as if in his twisted fucking mind the whole thing about him throwing his daughter to the wolves had never happened. Maybe he wanted to think that I'd stormed the fucking castle and begged for the hand of the princess in marriage and he had reluctantly given her to me and therefore could offer me sage advice from time to time.

I guess I was supposed to simply forget that he'd thrown his own daughter out like garbage and hadn't given a fuck about what happened to her because of his church twisted views on parenting.

In the end though, I had to admit that the bastard had my nuts in a vise even though he didn't understand it. In order to get rid of Peyton's ass, I had to make nice with him so she could blend back in with her family. That night was a big step towards that. The entire family was there. Julie was there. Jeff offered to come over on the weekend and help me with the deck.

I got to meet the youngest sister, Penny, who was a year younger than Peyton. I'd actually seen her at the hospital and hadn't related her with the others because her perfection was marred by the fact that she wore glasses. But when she took them off to wipe them, you could clearly see the resemblance. After that, the glasses just made her look even hotter.

Peyton had gotten out of bed to come and sit at the table to have dinner with us. I fawned over her and she loved it. I even carried her back to bed, while her mom and sisters were almost in tears about how romantic it was.

If it hadn't been for her father, whose middling comments belittled everything we did or had, it would have been a truly nice evening, however fake it was.

Over the next few weeks that was how it went. We did all kinds of family activities that blended both families and our neighbors into one huge extended family. I tried to keep my family out of things to limit the amount of pain they'd have when it all blew up, but wasn't successful. Before I knew it, Peyton's mom and my mom were in the same book club and bridge club. My mom even started going to church occasionally and joining in a lot of the lady's activities and charities.

I knew it was time to bring on the endgame, so I sat Peyton down one evening to talk to her.

"Peyton, I think it's time," I said.

She just smiled at me and said, "It's past time, Honey, but the doctor said that having the baby kind of tore me up down there and he wants us to wait until the inflammation down there is completely gone. But trust me. I want you just as badly as you want me; maybe even more. You shouldn't have gotten me started doing that. We're going to be doing a lot..."

"Peyton, what are you talking about?" I asked.

"Making love, Silly," she said smiling. "Isn't that what you were talking about?"

I just nodded and we moved on. We had a few more dinners with both sides of the family and a big picnic with everyone. By the middle of the summer, our house became the place where everyone hung out.

The only fly in the ointment, again, was her father. Not only did he have to constantly talk about how everything we had was never great, only nice or okay. He'd started to talk about how he'd always wanted things to go for Peyton. One evening he went too far and I had to politely excuse myself and leave the table.

"Peyton, do you remember that nice man you dated a couple of times, Larry Miller? Well he's a young man who's going places in this world. He's already made a mark for himself in the sales world. I heard from a business associate of mine that he won some kind of sales award. He lives in New York now. He bought himself a huge old mansion and is renovating the whole thing. It'll be worth millions when he's done," he'd said. Then with everyone looking at him, he lightened it up. "Not that your little house here isn't cozy. But that Larry Miller, that's a guy."

I'm sure John knew that his Larry Miller comments had gotten to me when I left the table. And like most bullies, once he discovered that he'd found my weakness, he continued to use it whenever he had the chance.

If I got a raise, he'd trot out the Larry Miller play. When I bought Peyton a brand new car, the exact car that she wanted, he swore that Larry Miller would have bought her a Lear jet by then. And as he ate at me, I realized that we long past the time line for the plan. Fall was already here and Will Jr. was eight months old. The original idea was for us to break up in time for me to go to MIT back in September.

"Peyton, are you ready?" I asked.

"Of course, I'm ready," she said. "I love you, Dummy. I'm always ready. You were the one who got attacked while we were still in the shower last night. And I really liked it when you..."

"Peyton, that's not what I meant," I said. "It's October, somehow we kind of missed our scheduled breakup."

"I know, Will," she said sadly. "How long do I have?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"How long can you put up with me," she said. "I don't want to prolong your torture especially when you've been so wonderful and..." she just started crying. It was even worse than when I first met her at that bus stop.

"Peyton, you should be happy," I said. "Your plan worked just like you figured." She looked at me and started crying even more.

"Will, it didn't work at all," she said. "It failed completely."

"What do you mean?" I asked. She sat down and took my hands in hers.

"Will, do you believe in love at first sight?" she asked.

"I guess it's possible," I said. "Shit, I believe in ghosts and even in vampires, so what do I know?"

"Will, when two people fall in love at first sight, it's usually just lust," she said. "They go off and screw each other's brains out and wake up and discover that they don't even like each other. It's awkward and then they go their separate ways. Love isn't like lust. Love can include lust, but love is more about the feeling you have about that person and it has to be mutual. When you love someone, you put their needs ahead of yours. You want them to be happy above all else. You just glow when that person comes into the room. "

"Will, growing up, I had seen you around and I always thought that you were a nice guy. You're kind of cute and a lot of the girls around town thought you'd be husband material. Even though you and I had never spoken to each other, I liked you. But when you stopped what you were doing to try to make me feel better on the worst day of my life, that like changed."

"Like my mom said, when you came in there and confronted my father over me, it became even stronger. When you started taking care of me, I knew that we would work. But Will, that first night when you slept on that couch and gave me your bed, I loved you. I half expected you to come to bed with me and I was going to let you."

"My dumb assed plan Will, was never about getting back with my family. Will, you were rubbing my tummy every night and talking to OUR baby, I was in heaven before we got married. I came up with the whole marriage thing because I wanted to be married to you. I thought that once we got married, you'd never want it to end like I don't. I thought that maybe you'd start to love me too. My mom and even your mom are sure you do, even though you've never once said it. I tell you at least five or six times a day that I love you, but you've never said it. I guess that if I was as smart as you seem to think I am, I'd have figured that out by now." She sighed and another huge tear rolled down her cheek.

"So Will, you've done all of this, including changing your plan for your life, for me. You did it all just to give me a chance to be happy, so it's time for me to make you happy. I'll go back home to them tomorrow. Can we have one more night together, please?"

"But if you really think that all of this was just to get me back with MY family, then maybe you aren't as smart as I've always thought you are either, because Will, MY family is you, me and OUR baby," she said.

For a long time we just sat there, with me in shock. Finally I spoke. "Peyton, I love you too," I said. "I think I have from the very beginning but I just never thought that you'd feel the same way. I agreed to marry you, Shit, I'd do anything for you. I've been trying for so long to just keep it together because I knew that when you did leave me, it was going to kill me."

"Oh my God," she gushed. "I'm in love with a moron." She grabbed me and started raining down kisses on me. "Will, you changed your entire life for me. A bulldozer couldn't pull me away from you. We'll be together til death do us part."

After that night, the years just ticked by happily. There was one incident after we'd been married for about three years that changed things between Peyton's father and me though. It was Thanksgiving and we were having dinner at her family's house. I'd recently been promoted to head my department. Everyone in town was talking about it. I was the youngest head of the engineering department in the company's history.

Jeff, who was majoring in Engineering, had mentioned it and asked me if I could get him an internship with the company. And I'd told him that I'd take care of it. A few minutes later, Peyton's dad started talking about how he'd heard that Larry Miller had just bought a Ferrari. That car, he'd said, was probably worth more than my house. Peyton had slammed her knife and fork down on the table so hard that she'd chipped her plate.

"Daddy, I need to talk to you, now!" she said. She pointed towards her father's office that was off limits to everyone. He got up and followed her there. It was really awkward sitting at the table after that. I helped collect the dishes and take them to the kitchen. After about twenty minutes of muffled voices coming from the office, Peyton stepped out and closed the door behind her.

"Will, grab your son. We're going home," she said. All the way home she never said a word. She just smiled and held my hand as usual.

When we got into bed that night and she reached for me, I asked her what happened. "Will, we'll still see my mom and my brothers and sisters. But I was just tired of all of the bullshit. Every time he opened his mouth, God damned Larry Miller fell out. I hope the two of them are happy together, because I'm really happy with you. Of course, I'd be happier if you were IN me instead of staring at me like that but..." I got the hint and she was happy within moments. I couldn't believe that she'd stood up to her father for me.

The next evening, when I got home, I got to find out exactly how strongly she'd done it. It had been a major blow to her father's well-being. The first had been when her father had found out that she was pregnant. This had been the second. And he was waiting for me in the driveway when I got home.

"Will, can I talk to you?" he asked. I was surprised because he usually just started talking and told me what he wanted to say.

"Sure," I said. "Let me get the door."

"No," he said grabbing my arm. "I'm not sure I'd be welcome."

"Of course you are sir," I said.

"Then I shouldn't be," he said. "Will, I'm an asshole. I just didn't realize it until yesterday. I've always wanted the very best for all of my kids. I always thought of you as being okay but I was never sure that you were good enough for Peyton. Yesterday, when Peyton was bragging about your accomplishments and then Jeff started in too, it was just too much. I didn't know that you'd graduated first in your class and were going to go to MIT for an advance degree in Engineering."

"Sir, none of that matters," I said. "I'm happy and..."

"But you could have been rich and..." he said.

"Sir, I am rich. Peyton and Will are much more valuable to me than all of the money in the world," I said.

"My daughter thinks about you the same way," he said. "I can't believe that it was me who ruined her life."

"Sir, you didn't ruin her life..." I began.

"Yes I did," he snapped. "I was the one who refused to let her date. And even then, I had to approve everyone she even thought about dating. She didn't go out on a single unsupervised date until she was twenty one years old and I practically threw her at that bastard. He conned me too, you know. I thought I knew everything. Peyton didn't know anything about dating or men and I just fed her to him like a lamb to the slaughter. He slaughtered her alright. He left her pregnant and then he just ran out on her. Her reputation and my family's would have been destroyed if not for you. And I've been throwing him in your face for years. I had no idea what an asshole he was. I spoke to a few people in town about him. Did you know that whenever he comes into town to sell to his customers here, he's still doing it?"

"Leopards don't change their spots sir," I said. "But in the end, I still feel that I got the best end of the deal."

"No son," he said. "Peyton did."

After that, we were all one big happy family until the summer that W2 or just Two turned eight. I was a doting father. I was very involved in everything that he did and Peyton and I only grew to love each other more. There was simply nothing I wouldn't do for Peyton. We were so happy that naturally something would have to fuck it up.

It was a typical Saturday morning. Two and I were in the backyard. He was practicing his swing on the practice pole we had next to the garage. Two was the shortstop and best hitter on his little league team. We had a game that morning, which was why I was in such a hurry to cut the grass. Peyton was having some of her friends over to plan a big backyard party for Two's birthday. After cutting all of the grass in the front of the house, I'd cut the grass in the back. All I need to do was to use the string trimmer and do the edges and trim the hedges and plants and we could head for the game.

Peyton came to a lot of Two's games but I never missed one. Most of the time, she just sat in the stands holding my hand. I think she was there more to be with me than to watch the game, but I didn't mind. Our love life and even our sex life, was more vigorous than it had been from the start.

I've often thought that perhaps it was the way we got together that made us hold onto each other so tightly. But the reason didn't matter, what mattered was that we did. We had been arguing a bit lately which was unusual for us. She just seemed to be cranky and kind of bitchy. I thought that maybe since she'd been tired lately that she was coming down with something.

A couple of Peyton's friends were already there. They were sitting in the kitchen while she got ready for their meeting.

My Black and Decker dual reel string trimmer picked that moment to run out of string. I put it down on the side of the house and went to the garage for a replacement cartridge.

"Two, remember what your coach told you," I yelled to him. "Don't stop when you make contact. Swing through the ball. You'll get more distance on the ball that way."

"Got it dad," he said. He hit the next one harder and his follow through was perfect. I tapped the top of his batting helmet so the bib went over his eyes.

"Dayaaaad," he whined. "How am I supposed to see like this?"

"You can't see?" I asked.

"Not at all," he said.

"Good," I yelled tickling him until he fell on the ground screaming with laughter. "We're leaving in twenty," I said.

As I went back beside the house, I was trying to change the string cartridge as I heard them.

Unfortunately, I could only make out bits and pieces of the conversation. I was lucky I heard what I did because they weren't even talking. Their voices were barely above a whisper.

I heard one voice say, "...Larry Miller is back again," there was a brief pause and the other said something that I couldn't make out, but it ended in, "She loves him..."

I heard "Whisper whisper...best sex she's ever had."

"Whisper, whisper... doesn't know how to tell Will..."

"Whisper...doesn't know how he'll take it..."

I was stunned. I just stood there. I guess I'd always known that the bastard would be back someday. But the word around town was that he was some kind of big shot. He lived in a multimillion dollar mansion in New York and was dating a supermodel. While she was out of town, he was banging women left and right. Why the hell would he need Peyton?

Then I remembered that though I'd gotten used to her, Peyton was still the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She wasn't the kind of woman a man could forget. Maybe Larry had just decided that enough time had passed since the way he'd deserted her and had come back for her.

What hurt me more was that apparently Peyton had gone for it. But shit, what did I expect? Women always had fallen for Larry. Peyton herself had even told me that she just couldn't resist Larry, even after the first time. She'd sworn to herself that it wouldn't happen again but he got her again the next time he saw her.

And all this time I'd really believed that Peyton loved me. I guess I was just someone to be there for her while Larry was away. Shit, I was almost crying as I stood there.

"Will, what are you doing?" she snapped, pulling me out of my thoughts. "You're supposed to be doing the trimming, not standing there staring at the ground. What is it with you? Those hedges aren't going to trim themselves and..."