Rubble: Devil's Rose #12

Chapter 30: Nicholas Frasier

"When you're ready, come downstairs. Be with the people that care about you. They'll tell you just have incredible you are, alright? I love you so very much, sunshine. Brightest fucking part of my life."

I kiss the top of her head before leaving her to another moment in silence. Maybe she can convince herself that she's as perfect as I think she is.

When I walk into the backyard, Ellie is being held by Violet, and Ethan is running around with Sage, so I know someone's got an eye on them. Most likely Slasher. When Ellie sees me, she reaches her arms out and lunges toward me, and I carefully take her from Violet's arms.

"Thank you for looking after her."

"Is Alice okay?"

"She's going to be. If possible, I think she needs a girl's night, some time with women to support her."

"Oh yeah, absolutely. That can be arranged," Violet agrees immediately, glancing back to our house.

I see Alice stepping into our backyard and feel a sense of relief. Ethan goes barrelling toward her, hugging her around the legs tightly. She has to know that our children and I love her immensely.

I watch her for a moment as she cradles Ethan in her arms, giving him a kiss on his cheek. I feel a sense of worry come over me at holding Ethan because she really shouldn't be lifting heavy objects, but they also need this moment, so I know better than to step in.

Plus, he really only is about sixty pounds which really isn't that much weight, I just get nervous about her hurting herself.

Ellie begins to cry and wants to be put down even though she definitely can't walk yet. I set her down the picnic blanket with a bunch of children's toys, so she can crawl around and not have to be in my arms anymore.

She's such an independent baby, but she can't really do much besides crawl around right now, so it's quite funny to see her get so frustrated over things that she physically can't do.

I mean, yes, it also gives me a small pang in my chest every time I see her cry, but it's not like I can do anything about it. I can't speed up her development, and she's going to figure it out.

Ellie's going to be a strong girl, that I know. Slasher, with his youngest son Hayden, sits down on the blanket beside me and lets Hayden play with the toys that lay across the blanket.

"How are you?" I ask him, watching our children begin to play gently with one another.

"Good, glad that we're finally getting to hang out. Thank you for hosting," he sounds different than normal, but I'm not sure he wants to get into it right now.

"For sure. Alice and I knew it was going to be a lot, but we're happy to do it. But it's your turn next time," I tease, observing his body language.

"Are you sure you're doing okay, Slasher?" I continue, starting to get concerned.

"I always feel weird when it comes to big gatherings like this. It's just such a good group of people, and then I look back on my life, and I see all the shitty things that I've done. Some of them I should feel guilty about, but it makes me feel like I don't belong here."

He stares out at the group of people. Children run around, and people laugh and hug. Poison and Bullet are chowing down on hamburgers.

"All of us here, at least the men here, have really fucked up and terrible things in our lives. I was in a war. I'm not clean of blood on my hands. But I also think that the intention behind our actions also matters. In my case, I was protecting the United States of America and that's where my family lives, so I was protecting my family.

"I will never regret that intention, even if I regret the actions that I did to succeed in that intention. It doesn't make the actions you did right, but it doesn't make you a bad person. Because you really aren't and you deserve to be here."

He gives me a small grin and slaps me on the shoulder.

So, I'm guessing that I helped him. He gets up off the ground, taking Hayden's hand, and they carefully walk over to Iris. Slasher wraps her in a massive hug, and I have the urge to get to my Old Lady.

I turn to see her already standing behind me. She lays her hands on my left shoulder and crouches down to lay her head on my right shoulder.

"Help a friend, baby?" she asks me gently, watching as Ethan goes right up to his sister and they smile at each other.

"Yes, I did, and feel good about it. Now, you come here, sunshine."

Alice chuckles as she moves around me and places herself in between my legs, just as I had asked her to. We watch our two children in silence for a while, soaking in the good weather and the intimate moment among the crowd.

She leans her back against my chest, and I wrap one arm around her waist to hold her close and use my other to prop us up. Hazel and Tank come over, and Hazel begins to play with our children as they sit down on the blanket.

"You two are so fucking cute!" Hazel exclaims, tickling Ethan on the stomach.

The swearing makes the whole thing better. Because Ethan cannot contain his laughter when someone says "fucking." He loves the word and knows how to use it wisely.

"So, when are you two getting married?" Tank asks directly.

Alice and I, after having Ethan, talked about getting married. Her being an Old Lady is practically marriage already, but it's not the legal document, and we really didn't get a party. Those are two things we would get out of being married.

But, we were and still are content with not being married. We know we belong to one another, and that's all we need. Not to say that we wouldn't love to get married, we just don't need to.

Then, we decided that it might be beneficial for Ethan to be married just for future financial reasons and to make his life easier reasons. As soon as we started planning, Alice got pregnant with Ellie, and we knew we had to spend our money wisely.

Turns out it was a good thing that we didn't try to get married while Alice was pregnant because of how difficult and stressful the pregnancy already was.

Now, it would be a perfect time for Alice and I to get married, so we've been getting questions.

Alice and I aren't quite sure what to do yet. We already feel like we're married, and we don't really want to do the whole vows and walking down the aisle thing. It just feels like a lot when we've been together for five years, and neither of us is interested.

I think if we were to get married, it would be a party after we went to the city hall and signed whatever documents that we would need to.

We already have a prenup because when we were first thinking of getting married, that's what we did because we figured we would get the legal stuff over with sooner. I gave her everything anyway because

I've never leaving her unless I die.

We just don't know if we really want to do that or if it's just another party that we're going to have to plan and spend money on. Money isn't the issue, but we want to use our money for other things.

We're going to figure it out eventually, we just have to really talk about what we want to do. Because there's no benefit to being married besides tax reasons because we are partners already.

We already know that we love each other more than anything else on the face of this planet, and we feel like her Old Lady status is already enough for us.

That shows everyone we love each other, and that we're dedicated to each other. Being married won't change that except it's legality. I have no idea where we're going to end up.