Wild Billionaire Romance - Chapter 51: Chapter 51

MARAT
By the time we returned home, it was dark outside.
I held Dumplin’ in my arms as she cried for the better part of the drive. She’d exhausted herself, nodding out sometime in the last fifteen minutes.
Whatever stress she’d been dealing with, the pain of her turbulent past she’d been carrying alone, it must have been tremendous.
She didn’t wake up when Josef parked in the lot beneath our building. She didn’t stir at all. Not even when I picked her up in my arms, princess-style, and carried her out of the vehicle.
I entered the elevator with my wife’s warm weight and felt grounded in a way I never had. She belonged with me. Whatever was going on, we would figure it out.
Selfishness was part of my nature and shitty husband or not, I couldn’t give her up. I wouldn’t.
The elevator jerked to a stop, and her eyes opened abruptly. Destiny jerked awake. She whimpered and pushed against my chest. But I squeezed her, keeping her in place.
“Put me down. I’m too heavy,” she said, her voice scratchy from all her crying.
“Hush. You’re fucking perfect. And I got you,” I replied.
I didn’t want to put her down. Didn’t think I could if I tried. Not just yet.
Something about her tears, the way she’d sobbed her heartbreak all over me, made me want to hold on to her. I wanted to help ease her burden. To carry some of the weight and lift the pressure off her.
Goddamn, this woman with her big blue eyes and her even bigger heart was doing things to me. She was changing how I felt about a lot of things, and that was unexpected.
Another surprise that came with marrying a stranger. Whether or not it was a good surprise was still up in the air.
I carried her to the couch, not trusting myself to leave her be if I took her to the bedroom.
My cock was half hard already, and I knew that made me a sick fuck. But I would never not want her, and that was something I just needed to accept.
“Want a drink?”
“Yes, please,” she whispered.
“Soda? Vodka? Water?”
“Got any wine?”
“Yeah. Red or white?”
“Um, red, with a splash of lime soda if you have it,” she said.
I nodded and went to fetch her drink, pouring myself a vodka. I went back, handing her the glass I filled halfway for her, and taking the seat beside her.
“Will you tell me now?”
She nodded, taking a long sip before placing her glass on the table.
“I was four when Timmy and his family moved in next door,” she started. “He was my age, but I was bigger than him. He was so thin and pale, weak most of the time. He was diagnosed with acute myeloid Leukemia when he turned seven, and it was a long fight from there to remission. I stuck with him through it all. I read to him. Collected his schoolwork. Brought him get well cards from our classmates.”
My heart squeezed inside my chest.
Fuck. What the fuck?
Of course, my sweet Dumplin’ made friends with the sick boy next door.
She’s a fucking angel.
My wife had a heart so fucking big she could hold the whole damn world inside it. She wasn’t finished with her story, and I didn’t want her to stop, so I listened.
I. Me. Marat Volkov.
For the first time in my life, I shut the fuck up, I bit my tongue, and I listened to someone else’s story. But it was more than that.
I not only listened, I was riveted. I was hungry for her words. Greedy for every detail she could remember. I paid close attention to the nuances of her voice as she spoke. The feel of her in my arms as she sobbed and spilled her soul to me.
And I absorbed it all. I took it in. Every so often, I squeezed her reassuringly. I kissed her head. I hummed my understanding. Cradling her face, rubbing the nape of her neck, I needed her to feel me. I had to make sure she knew I was there for this. For her.
Always. I’m keeping her. I’m not letting her go.
“We lived in an apartment building that had two apartments on each floor. So, our bedrooms were next to each other, sharing a wall. Bear helped us drill a hole through the wall so we could run a string, and he made us one of those tin can phones so we could chat, and I could read to him at bedtime.”
I watched her face, tracked her expressions. God, when she remembered something happy her eyes fucking glowed. And when the sadness came, they welled with tears. And I sat there, taking it all in, greedy for every nuance, every facet of my wife.
“When he was sixteen, he fought with his parents to allow him to attend school and he got better. Timmy did really well for a little while. We went to prom,” she said and smiled, big, fat tears running down her face. “He wore a ruffled shirt just to make me laugh. But soon after that, he got sick again.”
“I’m so sorry, Baby.”
And I was. So fucking sorry. I couldn’t even imagine.
“I know. He was so good. And he didn’t have a chance, Marat. He was running out of time, and he knew it. Timmy wanted to get married. We were best friends, shared everything, and he wanted to marry me. To do something he’d always dreamed of,” she said and sniffed.
I let her have her moment. Pushing down the jealousy that stirred in the periphery of my soul. She didn’t need the weight of my idiotic emotions right then, so I remained quiet. A shoulder for her to lean on. An ear to listen to her story.
It was a heady thing being needed, and when I thought about it, I realized I maybe liked it. Okay, fine. I really liked it. Being needed. Being useful. Not just being a face to look at or a body to fuck.
Dumplin’ needed me for more than that, and I fucking needed her to.
But it wasn’t my time to talk, so I just let my feelings simmer as I tried to be there for her.
“His parents were dead set against it. My parents, too. They refused to allow it. But we both turned eighteen that year, and we’d just graduated. I had some money saved, presents from family. So, we ran away.”
“You ran away?” I asked, thinking how fucking hard that must have been.
“We took our savings, combined them, and got on a plane to Las Vegas. We found a cheap motel, put our bags away, and got married that afternoon in a little chapel. That’s when I started going by the name Destiny. Timmy said it suited me. He told me I was destined for great things,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes, processing and absorbing what she’d just said. I hated that another man had given her the name she went by. But I understood. Or I tried to.
I didn’t know Timmy. But he was right about one thing. My Dumplin’ was destined for great things.
She was going to have a wonderful life. And I was going to provide it.
“And your parents?” I asked.
“It took them a little while to find us. Just a couple of days. I was a stupid kid, I used my bank card to pay for a motel room.”
“You weren’t stupid, Dumplin’,” I said, and she petted my chest, comforting me.
This woman is too good. My Wife. My sweet temptation.
Destiny was baring her soul. She was sharing every raw detail of her heartbreaking tale, and she was trying to make me feel better.
The shit she’d gone through when she was just a teenager. I couldn’t understand.
Where was her brother? He was six years older than her. Plenty old to protect her, stand between her and four angry adults. Why didn’t he do something?
Adrik would have. He would have done that and more, just like I would do for him. But I didn’t ask her.
She needed to get this out, and I needed to listen. It was the least I could do after tricking her into marriage and moving her back across the country. For the first time, guilt hit me over what I did, and it hit me hard.
Fuck. She’s too good for me. She deserved better. I have to make this right.
“When our parents landed in Vegas, it was a bad day for Timmy. I was working at a shitty little truck stop when he started throwing up. He’d been alright the first few days,” she said, her voice scratchy.