Build And Break novel Chapter 58

"Go ahead, Morris. She is your wife."

Angela's eyes glared at Jack at his final word and the accompanying wink she got. An encouraging wink was that?

"Did I interrupt your conversation with your father or are you glad I did?" Steven questioned Angela after Jack walked away from them.

"Honestly, this is one of those days where I don't know anything I'm feeling. My head is full of so many things." She was so uncertain of any of her feelings, she was even unsure why she had admitted that to him.

Steven took the place where Jack was leaning to the tree. "I'm guessing our night together is somewhere among there too."

"It is." Again, another admission she maybe should have kept to herself. And at the reminder of that thought, a shiver ran up her spine. And she couldn't decipher if it was from excitement or otherwise.

She tried to force her mind away but was faced with her most recent thought looming on top of the mess in her head. The thought of what Jack and John had told her about Steven that was sending her mind in overdrive with trying to puzzle the pieces of information of what she knew about Steven. And when she couldn't possibly think any further, she had to ask him for the truth.

"Steve?" Angela cut the silence.

"Hm."

"After we divorced, is it true you've... missed me?"

"That's a... surprising question. Is this maybe your way of asking me if I've had other women after divorcing you?" His lips lopsided with a hint of arrogance.

Angela remained silent while she waited for his next words with ample curiously.

"Did you, Angela? Did you have other men after me?"

Those words surely weren't in the boundaries of what she expected to hear. "You can't answer with a question."

"Yours isn't an answer either. And I'll only answer yours if you answer my question first."

"On second thought, no, don't answer that. I have another more important question. I know this may not be the best time and place for this but I have to ask you. I've been wanting to ask you for a while now and I've thought about a hundred ways how to say this and I still haven't found the right way around this. So I'm just going to spit it out." He took a deep breath as if for courage. "Will you allow me to give Daniel my name? May I officially make him a Morris? I know it is sort of my right since I'm his father and all but I feel I have to ask you first. I want him to be my son. I want to be his father. As it should have been from the beginning." At the end of his speech, Steve smiled wide at finally getting the words out.

"But he doesn't even know who you are yet."

"I've missed my son's birth, his first word and first step. I've missed a lot of things. And I want to make up for the time I lost with him, the time we both lost with each other. I want to be his father, Angela."

"Do you really?" Angela had to ask.

"Truly. Completely. I want to be a good father, no, a great father. The best one. And I can assure you that my son is already the top priority in my life. I will take care of him for all of his life. That's a promise. And you know I'm a man of my word."

With the briefest, slightest nod, Angela agreed to his statement.

Steven took Angela's left hand, raised it between their bodies. His thumb grazed over the gold band on her ring finger. "I will care for you too, Angela. I can be the only man you'll ever have... If you'll allow me." His free hand went to her cheek, caressed her skin. His piercing eyes held her gaze. He raised her hand he held to his lips, kissed the gold ring. "Marry me, Angela."