Accepting Owen (Emilia's Perspective)

Chapter Twenty-Three

"What the hell is going on with you?" I asked after a long period of silence between us. We were almost to the Illinois State line, but I hadn't figured out what he was trying to tell me. It seemed he was struggling, but I couldn't discern why.

He sighed in the driver's seat, shifting his body slightly. "Dad's sick," he finally answered.

I stared at his face in shock. "What do you mean? With what?"

"Mom said he's forgetting things. He got lost on the way to her favorite restaurant a couple of months ago. She said he was so angry he almost hit her again."

"Forgetting? What?" I couldn't understand what he was saying for some reason. The words made sense, but my dad never got sick. I'd never even seen him with a cold. He was the fiercest person I'd ever met.

"The doctors haven't gotten the results back from the last tests yet," he said slowly, realizing I wasn't keeping up. "There's something wrong with his brain. He should hear back from them Monday."

I sat back in the seat and stared out the window at the horizon the sun was just starting to dip below. "Do they think it's a tumor?" My voice didn't sound like the one I was used to hearing from my own mouth.

"They don't know yet, Sis." He shook his head, as if clearing bad thoughts away. "He mentioned me marrying Octavia before she's an adult."

"She's fourteen!" I shouted. "You can't marry her right now. She's a little kid!"

"I know," he said.

I watched the muscles in his jaw as he gritted his teeth. "Why? Why would you have to marry her now?"

"Not now, I don't think. Just... earlier."

"I still don't get it," I huffed.

"I really don't get it either. Dad wants her to be with me when I take over."

"So, if he does have a tumor, he expects you to marry her before he dies? What if it's a huge tumor and he only has months, or weeks? You can't marry a child, EJ."

"I. Know," he said forcefully. "I've been so panicked trying to sort this all out."

"Fuck, I guess that's a pretty good reason to be depressed. Would you do it? Would you marry her now?"

"I don't know, I dont know. It's all so confusing. What am I supposed to do? God, I just want her to be happy. I want all of us to be happy. Dad's been building this up our entire lives. Octavia and I are supposed to do some grand thing with the world. You're telling me she's going to struggle as it is, because we all love her so much. Imagine if she's still a high school kid..."

I reached over to squeeze his hand. "Whatever happens, it will all be okay. We will work through it."

"How can you say that when you were yelling at me a minute ago?" His eyes looked sad when he turned to me.

"I wasn't yelling at you. I was just shocked. I can't imagine. I mean, you couldn't have sex with her now. That would be gross."

"I know. I don't want to marry her now. I mean I do, but not right now. She could never be happy with me. It's creepy. I'm terrified, Em. What the fuck am I supposed to do?"

"Just breathe. We'll figure it out. Could you even legally be married?"

"Dad said legally... there are some loopholes. Things become a lot clearer if we could wait till she's sixteen. But she'd still be a junior in school. She'd still be just a kid."

"Sixteen is a hell of a lot better than fourteen. Fourteen is barely a teenager. At sixteen, she could drive. She'd be closer to being an adult. It's still early, and probably would be weird for awhile. But you do love her-"

"No, I love the idea of her. Like you said. I need to find a way to... paint a realistic picture of her in my head. That's why I asked you to look her up."

"Okay, so then let me help you. Let me tell you a different story. One that's not the fairy tale you've been told all along. She's... let's say seventeen when you marry her. You meet her, talk to her for a little bit. You make her know she's safe and can be comfortable with you. Tell her you aren't going to take advantage of her, and that even though getting married is already decided, everything else can go at her pace.

"Let her be in control sometimes. Then, you just figure it out. She might fight like hell, but that'll show you how strong she is. She might cry for days and not want to talk to you, and that's okay. It make take you years to get her to feel comfortable with you. That's all okay. She will love you. You are smart, strong, respectful. And you can tell how much you love her just by how scared you are right now.

"You have not stopped talking about how concerned you are for her feelings and her emotions this entire time. I haven't once heard you say you're afraid for how you will feel. You might feel uncomfortable, too, ya know? You probably will feel nervous to be around her. It'll take some time to get used to each other and fall into each other's rhythm."

"You talk a lot, you know that?" He said, trying to ease the tension in the car.

I pinched his arm. "Alright, smart ass! I'm just trying to be helpful. I wish Owen was here. He's so good with this emotional stuff."

"Are you happy with him? After all the stuff that's happened this week, are you still glad he's your husband?"

Immediately, I wanted to say yes, but i stopped myself. I hadn't even thought of that. Was I happy? Was I still glad? I considered the way it felt to sit in his lap on the couch before we'd been married. We had instantly clicked, and it was amazing, but did I still feel the same way since he was going to have a permanent connection to a woman from past?

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "I am happy. I believe that we'll work through the things that have come up. We're just starting. Things are hard right now, but we told each other we'd be honest and fight for it. I think as long as we do that, everything will come out okay."

"He seems like a good guy. Are you nervous about it, the woman and the baby?"

"Absolutely," I mumbled. "He asked me to trust him, though, because he hasn't given me any reason not to. He asked me to give him a chance to prove he's worth trusting. I think that's fair."

"I'm glad you decided to. I'm glad you're here. As cool as he is, I'm kind of happy he didn't come. I'm excited to spend my time with you. Maybe it'll be like the old days when we both still lived with Mom and Dad."

"I hope not." I laughed at memories of the havoc we wreaked on our parents over the years. "I don't want to get in trouble again. I'm too old for that!"

~ I just wrote this in 30 minutes, sorry for any editing issues.