Pawnshops and Carousels
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: Hey there everyone. We've got the next chapter here, and it's also super cute. and then we have super cool happening next chapter too. So don't forget to review, and I'll see you guys next Sunday.
Chapter 17
Les: Even after a shooting in our parking lot we're still open. Nothing can shut American Jewellery and Loan down! Seth and Sabrina are off, of course, I wouldn't expect anything else. Had they tried to come to work I would have sent them home. Sabrina is not going to jail, but her crazy Ex Eric is. They ruled the shooting an accident, that the fight for the weapon had been unintentional and an act of desperation. He'll be going away for a very long time but both of them will be expected to testify at Eric's court hearing at some point. Seth wouldn't be leaving Sabrina alone for a long while after this, all of us could tell. That boy is going to hover over her until the day she dies. Here's hoping she doesn't get sick of him and dump him for smothering her.
When I wake up, I have Seth's arms so tightly wrapped around me and, I swear, I'm surprised I'm still breathing. I shift in his grasp and he nose nuzzles into my neck. Okay, so he's at least partially conscious.
"Babe?" I whisper and get a bit of a groan from him. I jostle my shoulder and whisper his name a little louder.
"You okay?" comes back at me, even though his eyes haven't opened, and I smile.
"You're choking me," I whisper and his grip immediately loosens but he doesn't let go.
"Sorry babe," he says to me as he rolls onto his back. I roll over so I can drape myself over his chest. He hasn't let me go since the incident and I don't even care. I'm just glad we're both alive, I'm not getting arrested and that Seth is still here.
I press a kiss to the bared skin of his chest and then smile as a smile widens on his lips. "Mmmm, you know I like that," he says to me which is all the convincing I need to press another. I have a hand wandering down his side, heading for his hip, with the intent to cross over once I get to the pelvic region but he has a hold of that hand before I can get there and then he's rolling over again to pin me under him, to kiss my lips solidly, to ravish me fully.
My hands rest against his jaw, hold his face softly and it hits me again. Yesterday could have had such a different ending. It could have been me who had been shot, or worse, him.
What would I have done if Eric had shot him? How guilty would I have felt? What if Eric had killed him? How would I have lived?
Before I know it, despite his inviting and warm kisses, I've started crying, shakingly so.
At first he doesn't quite realize it, but the second he does we've stopped kissing and now his hands are cradling my face.
"Baby… no… baby, what's wrong?" he asks. Those blue eyes stare down into my eyes, filled with such deep concern and I can't bear to even look at him. I cover my face with my hands, but Seth isn't about to let me cover my face so he pulls them away.
"I keep thinking about… he could have… he could…" I hiccup and he kisses me softly to quiet me.
"I wasn't going to let him hurt you," he whispers but that is not my problem.
"No. I don't care about that. He could have killed you, Seth. He could have killed you."
Seth takes that in, his eyes blinking at me like he doesn't understand what I've said. "Reenie…" he starts off using his I'm being patient with your stupidity voice. "Reenie… that's not the… he had a fucking gun to your head you're worried about me? Seriously?"
"You tackled a guy with a loaded gun to my head," I shoot back. "Yeah I was fucking worried about you."
I sit up pushing him off of me and reach for one of his discarded shirts. I pull it over me so he can't be distracted by my bare breasts, which do distract him quite often.
"Okay… not to be mean… but I'm not the one that makes stupid decisions all the time," he says as he watches me get out of our bed to head for the kitchen. He follows me for our morning ritual of coffee, cuddles and news.
"Excuse me, what does that mean?" I ask.
"It means what you think it means. You make more stupid decisions than me. Prime example. The fact that you got into a serious relationship with that junkie asshole."
"Okay, now wait a second, when I met him. he was super nice and up until I broke up with him he had never hit me before… he just threatened to… or punched walls," I answer primly and Seth scoffs at me.
"Oh yeah, what a great choice you made there Reenie," he sighs like I just proved his point.
"Oh yeah? What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Yes you. You and your make Ashley quit marketing campaign, how did that work for you?"
"It got you to move in didn't it?" he asks.
"Seth, you could have asked me to move in like a normal boyfriend and I would have said yes, the billboard was unnecessary and you didn't do it to get me to move in with you, you did it hurt your sister. The moving in thing was a bonus and you know it!" I snap and he laughs.
"Oh yeah, fine, you wanna play hard ball, what about that carousel?"
"I love that carousel! What about you and your inability to keep your dick in your pants. None of this would have happened if you had just stayed faithful."
And there that is, those words are now hanging like a cloud between us. Not only have I made him feel bad but I've managed to make it sound like I blame him for everything, and that my getting beat up by my ex was his fault. Which was not what we were going for.
We're no longer playfully arguing anymore either, that is clear as day. He looks hurt and upset and he won't look at me anymore. I open to my mouth to apologize because I've clearly gone too far but he beats me to it.
"I never would have cheated on you if you hadn't thrown the ring back at me, Reenie," he says in a soft voice.
"I'm not the one who threw our promise rings in the garbage."
"Because you told me you didn't want to be engaged anymore."
"Not before you ended our relationship!"
"I was obviously bluffing!"
"Were you though? You were so mad about that stupid engagement ring, going on about how I was playing at being high and mighty when you knew it wasn't about the money!"
"Really? It wasn't about the money? A ring from my dad's shop which would have been more affordable for us wasn't good enough, but a 20-thousand-dollar ring from Tiffany's would have been?"
"No! I didn't want that ring! I picked out a five thousand dollar one, remember, just as affordable as the three and half thousand one you got from your dad's shop!" I cry. "And no! It was not about the money. I wanted our marriage to begin all fresh and new and not with a ring someone had sell or pawn because someone had divorced them or died or they fell on hard times. I wanted a ring that was mine and only mine, I didn't want it carrying bad memories."
"Oh," he says. Yeah. Just oh. The bastard. "I guess I never thought of it…"
"No you didn't. It's like the second I asked for something I wanted, something special just for me you lost your damn mind. Like I wasn't worth it to you. Like the money was more important… like that was all I cared about... like that was all you cared about."
"Is that what you think?" he asks me and I nod. He takes that in with a deep sigh and then says: "Okay, I'm going to take you somewhere… we're going to settle this once and for all… today."
Seth: I'm going to do it. I said I wasn't going to save it for a different time, a better time, but I'm going to. I'm going to take her to my office and show her what I did all those years ago. I'm going to tell her what I should have told her when I saw her in that cafeteria a week after we officially broke up. I'm scared and I'm nervous. But we're going to AJL and I'm going to prove to her that I loved her then, I love her now and I was always love her for forever.
I hold her hand tightly in mine as I lead her towards my back office. I ignore Ashley's jab about how I had called in sick and looked perfectly fine. I then shove Sabrina into the room and shut the door behind us.
I lock the door for good measure. Once I let go of her hand, I leave her by my desk and I walk over to the safe. Kneeling down in front of it I finally began to tell the tale.
"So many years ago, what feels like eons ago, my baby wanted a ring."
I can almost feel her smirk on her lips, but I don't turn around. "My baby wanted a ring, and it couldn't come out of my dad's store. So I took my baby to a ring store, and she saw this ring, this huge massive rock and she tried to tell me that she didn't want it, that she wanted this little chip of a diamond that was more in our price range, but I knew, I knew she deserved more then that. So, I didn't buy the ring my girl wanted, and we argued and we argued and then… you know… I did something stupid."
"You cheated on her," she whispers and I pause. Yeah that was exactly what I did. I pull open the safe door and pick up the ring box I hid in the back.
"Yeah. I did. But what my baby didn't know was that… when we broke up. I was only one down payment away from giving her what she wanted."
I stand up, I stand up to stare at her, and I find that staring into those beautiful, misting, blinking green eyes takes my breath away.
"Seth… Seth what are you talking about?"
"This," I tell her, showing her the light blue ring box in my hands. "You see… I had this whole vision. I was gonna get down on one knee," I say actually getting down on one knee in front of her, causing her to take a step away from me in surprise her hands flying to her face to cover her mouth. "And I was gonna show her that I can still surprise her… and I was gonna watch her eyes light up when she saw that I got the ring she really wanted."
I flip open the ring box to the Marquise cut diamond set in a rose gold band with emeralds around it sitting inside. Sabrina gasps, her hand flies to her mouth as she just looks at it. And the way her eyes light up, it's exactly the way I thought they would.
"Just like that," I breathe out. "Then… then I was gonna propose to her and marry her and live happily ever after… except… you know… I kind of messed that up."
For a while we're silent. She stands in front of me staring at the ring and I find, though I should probably stand, I don't.
"Are you… are you proposing… right now?"
I think about it for a second. I mean, am I? I could be. I figure now isn't the time to lie, or cater to my ego, so I tell her the truth.
"I mean, if I thought I could get away with it, yeah… I would. In a heartbeat, but I know we're a long way away from that…"
Sabrina blinks her eyes. She stares at me and then down to the ring again. When she turns her eyes back to mine, she's wearing an unreadable expression. "Propose then."
For a second my heart stops. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. You said you would if you thought I'd say yes, so go ahead. Propose."
I laugh at her from where I'm kneeling. "Don't say shit like that Reenie, just… just don't. Cause I actually will propose and when you say no it's gonna kill me."
"But what if I say yes?"
"Say yes…" I echo. "You'd… you'd marry…?"
"If you asked like a normal person…. So, hurry up and ask."
I don't want to do it here, in my office at work. I want to give her something romantic and wonderful, you know the proposal she deserved. But I also know that if I don't ask her now, she could easily change her mind and then I'd have to wait months, maybe years, to try and do this again.
It was a no brainer.
"Sabrina DeRose, will you marry me?"
She has the ring snatched out of the box before I can even finish asking and I don't even care cause she's squealing: "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," while she jumps up and down.
I get up off my knees and pull her into my arms. She's crying happy tears as she kisses me over and over. My heart hurts, it's swelling with happiness, I'm afraid it's going to burst. I tip my forehead to rest it against her trying to contain my excitement.
I kiss her deeply, crushing her to me. It may have taken seven years but I've finally fixed this, I'm finally going to end up with the girl I belong with. Though, I'm a little worried that she only agreed to get the ring. I plan to ask her but she beats me to it.
"You ready for another proposal?" she asks against my lips.
"Uh… maybe, depends what it is?"
"Me. You. Vegas. Let's get married. Tonight. Or tomorrow morning. I don't care but let's do it ASAP."
REALLY?!
Okay… if she's serious… this isn't about the ring at all. This is wresting back that happily ever after his stupidity robbed from them. Holy shit. This was a fucking dream come true. It was another no brainer.
"I'll book the tickets," I whisper and she smiles again.
This is happening. I'm finally going to marry Sabrina De Rose.
