[[Thank you so much for the reviews! C: After this chapter will be the last! I'm still reading the Furuba manga and loving it so I'll probably end up writing another Furuba fic after this one. :p Probably another Ayame-centric fic because I find him so interesting to write about. As for pairing, I haven't decided. Ayame/Mine, Ayame/Yuki, Ayame/Ritsu? Hmm, Any requests, suggestions?]]

When I arrived back at Shigure's house, I slipped the engagement ring off my finger and into the pocket of my jeans. It felt wrong, something that beautiful and expensive being hidden in a pair of old pants. But I didn't know how I would possibly tell Shigure, Yuki, and Kyo what had happened. Just last night, Ayame confessed to raping me, and in not even twenty-four hours, I had agreed to marry him? They would be so, so disappointed. Outraged.

And really, I couldn't blame them. I had no idea what I was doing. I should have said no, I should have said I needed more time to think. I had been prepared to do just that, but when he actually spoke the question, the only word that formed on my lips was 'yes'.

Was this what Mom was guiding me toward? I knew she wanted me to give Ayame another chance, I knew that as certain as the sky was blue, but marriage? I couldn't be sure but I didn't want to bother her at the graveyard again so instead, here I was. Back at Shigure's. Walking through the front door with the ring stabbing the inside of my pocket.

"Miss Honda, where have you been?" Yuki immediately asked as I walked in. He was sitting at the living room table. Books and papers lying about atop it. "When we woke up this morning, you were gone. We were worried sick."

"O-oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to make you worry. I thought Hatori was going to call Shigure and tell him-"

"He did call, he said you two went out for breakfast," Shigure then chimed in, making his way into the same room. "Oh, Hatori. A pervert in disguise. I always knew it! He found out that you were open to having sex with older men, and he made his move. Oh, yes, he didn't even wait a single day!"

"Shut up, you stupid dog," Yuki mumbled. "We know that's not what happened. This isn't one of your ridiculous novels."

"Ridiculous? So hurtful, Yuki! So hurtful!"

I took these moments of banter to sit down across from Yuki, trying to think of what to tell them. "Hatori and I did go out to breakfast, and then I decided to stop by Uo's-" I started but then I stopped. Another lie? Really? No. I had to stop this. I missed my old honesty too much to continue the way I had been lately. "Well, actually. Hatori and I didn't go out to breakfast at all."

"What?"

I told myself to rip it off like a band-aid. "I went to his office and found out that I'm pregnant, and then I went to see Ayame, and I told him, and he proposed, and I said 'yes'." After spitting this out at record speed, I bowed my head. Unable to look either in the eyes.

But when I heard nothing but silence, I was forced to look up again. I didn't know at what point but Kyo had appeared in the doorway. And judging from his face, he too heard everything. Each of them was staring at me like I had sprouted three heads.

"I'm sorry, I really am, I know you must be so disappointed in me," I whispered. "But you need to understand. Besides the r-rape thing, well, Ayame always treated me really nicely! He was always complimenting me and encouraging me, a-and he even helped me with my schoolwork sometimes, and whenever I had a nightmare, he would make me tell him what it was and would comfort me instead of just telling me to forget it and go back to sleep and-"

Before I could finish, Kyo was the first to speak. "'Besides the rape thing'? Do you even hear yourself right now?!"

"K-kyo..."

"No! No, I can't believe this crap! Ya really think that little of yourself?!" Eyes white and slanted, fists clenched and turning just as white at his sides. "Damn it, I give up! I thought after all this crap, after you finally saw what an ass that guy is...I thought...but you know, what, never mind...look, just forget it! Do whatever ya want, but don't bother to send me an invitation! Right now, you disgust me just as much as he does!"

With that, he stormed out of the room. I looked down to my lap and started crying all over again. Yuki and Shigure sat down on either side of me, putting their hands on my shoulders. "I'm sorry," I sobbed. "I know, I'm an idiot, but I love him, and I'm having his baby, and I just, I don't know what's the right thing to do anymore."

Yuki and Shigure seemed just as out of answers as I was. After a few minutes of just hearing me cry, Yuki said, "So...besides the...rape thing, Ayame never hurt you in any way, right?"

"R-right...he was always nothing but kind to me, I promise..."

"He never spoke badly to you? Never hit you?"

"No, of course not! He would never!"

Yuki looked conflicted, and so Shigure took over the questioning. But instead of asking me whether or not Ayame did this or that to me, he said, "Well, where's the ring? Aya did buy you a lovely ring, didn't he?"

Yuki's eyes widened. "Shigure, what are you-"

"Yuki, if this is what Tohru wants and has decided is right for her, then I'm going to support her," the former dog replied. Offering me a soft smile, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Tohru, you've handled all of this with more strength than probably any of us would have been capable of. And you're not an idiot. You have insight beyond your years, and you're a better judge of character than anyone I've ever met. If you believe in Aya, then all of us should too."

Even though his words made my heart swell with gladness, the tears in my eyes kept coming. Maybe even more than before. "Shigure...thank you..."

"Don't mention it, just show me the ring already, I can't wait to see what he picked out!" He laughed.

I smiled and pulled the ring out of my pocket. Replacing it back on my finger and extending it toward Shigure. As he 'oohed' and 'ahed', Yuki removed his hand from my shoulder. I looked over to him. He looked so sad.

"Um, Yuki? D-do you...do you want to see it?"

"I don't know."

"Yuki. I promise...if he ever hurts me again in any way, I won't keep it a secret, not even for an hour," I said, putting my finger under his chin to turn his face toward me. His doubtful purple eyes stared into mine and I didn't blink. "I'll tell all of you as soon as it happens, and I will leave him and never look back. I promise you."

Yuki hesitated but eventually, he looked away and nodded. I placed my hand on the table and he stole a glance at it. "Well, I suppose one thing can be said for my brother. He has beautiful taste. In jewelry...and in women."

We shared a smile.

The next few months were even crazier than the two weeks that preceded them, but crazy in a good way. Ayame and I decided to get married in June. I would be just a little over two months by that point, so I probably wouldn't be showing too much, and even though two months was a very short time to plan an entire wedding, Ayame maintained that he was up for the challenge.

He did most of the planning while I finished up my junior year of school. I would come home to Shigure's every evening after class to find him waiting for me with some decision or other. "Irises and roses for the bouquets, or sunflowers and daffodils?" "Silver and yellow for the color scheme, or lilac and aquamarine?" "Church or outdoors, and if outdoors, beach or forest or garden?"

The decisions went on and on. I never knew there were so many things to consider when planning a wedding, but I didn't mind. Not at all. I actually loved it. Every day at school, I looked forward to coming home to Ayame and discussing floral arrangements and caterers and bridesmaids' dresses.

We weren't living together yet, we decided that I would move in with him after the wedding, but it almost felt like we were. Sometimes. Usually Shigure or Yuki was around, somewhere in the house, while Ayame and I planned the wedding. Almost like they were chaperoning. I knew Ayame thought it was silly and probably insulting, but if that's what it took to make things somewhat normal between all of us again, he decided to put up with it.

In fact, I'm only guessing that he didn't like it because he never said a word about it. Things had been awkward at first between Ayame and Shigure, and Ayame and Yuki. The former warmed to each other far more quickly than the latter, which was expected. Shigure and Ayame were laughing together again after only a couple hours of weirdness, while it took Yuki a good three weeks before he started acting normal around his brother again. Though 'normal' for Yuki, in regards to Ayame, was almost just as cold.

Kyo had remained almost entirely out of sight ever since he told me that I disgusted him. He refused to join us for breakfast or dinner, and whenever I went up to his room to talk, he was gone. He and Ayame hadn't been in the same room since the dinner that would go down in history as the Sohmas' worst ever.

Anyway, aside from Shigure and Yuki always being somewhere nearby, those evenings together almost felt like a trial run for our impending married life. I would come home, and Ayame would already have something cooking on the stove. We would sit and have tea and talk excitedly about the wedding and the baby, and then we would eat dinner together (sometimes alone, if Shigure was busy writing and Yuki had to stay late at a student council meeting), and then we would retire to my room to watch TV ("keep the door open!" requested Shigure whenever he was around to do so), and at least a dozen times we fell asleep together while doing so.

We had started kissing, holding hands, and even cuddling again. Somehow, despite everything, things felt normal and good, and happy, like they had before. But there was still the enormous elephant in the room. My growing stomach showed clear evidence that our relationship was no longer the chaste romance it had once been, and yet...we never spoke of sex. Ever.

If we had been in my room and a make-out session became even slightly heated, one of us would always stop it and excuse themselves. Either Ayame took it as his cue that it was time to head back to his own place, or I would pull away and complain of fatigue, caused by all the pregnancy hormones coursing through my body. Which couldn't be further from the truth.

The pregnancy hormones were having the exact opposite effect on me. Sure, I did feel more tired at school sometimes, but when I was around Ayame, sleeping was seldom on my mind. It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but there were more than a few times when I would be sitting there with him, listening to him ramble on about the benefits of having a live band play at the wedding rather than a DJ, or something of that nature, and I would have to move from the seat next to him over to the armchair in the corner just to keep myself from pouncing on him.

I mean, isn't there something remarkably sexy about a man that knows the difference between an A-line wedding gown and a sheath wedding gown? No? Maybe it's just me. But even sexier than all that was when he talked about the baby.

He was so excited to be a father, it was almost ridiculous. You'd think we had been trying to get pregnant for years, the way Ayame acted about the baby. After the initial shock wore off, he was nothing but ecstatic about the little one's impending arrival. And although we usually met at Shigure's, under supervision and all that, there were a few times when we went out on the weekends to shop for the wedding and baby. It was one of those times that almost broke my willpower.

We had been in one of those large baby retailers, I think it was called Baby World or Baby Universe, something like that. It had everything we could hope for, and Ayame was like a kid in a candy store. And I don't know, but watching him flip out over the latest stroller technology and fill our shopping cart with countless books (I couldn't even read all the titles but I know that "What to Expect When You're Expecting" must have been in there, and I saw at least three thick books on baby names) and spend almost a half hour pondering over paint choices for the nursery...I don't know, maybe some people would have found his overzealousness annoying, but I found it alluring beyond reason.

By the time we got to the crib aisle, I was hot-but-still-not-bothered by Ayame's enthusiastic attitude. I didn't even look at the cribs. Instead I just watched the former snake as he looked at the cribs. It was much more fun that way.

"Hmmm, a portable crib perhaps?" He really is a beautiful man, isn't he? "Just in case we change our minds about whether the baby will sleep in our room or its own, you know." Just look at those sparkling green eyes and that porcelain skin and that silky, shimmering hair! "Even if we change our minds from night to night! Hahaha!" Is it possible that his face has not a single flaw? "I jest, I jest, though...perhaps I'm actually onto something here!" And his body too. Sure, you've only seen it properly once but you remember how surprisingly muscular he was, don't you, Tohru? "Then again, I'm not sure that a portable crib would be the best choice if we want something sturdy and unarguably safe." And that thick, enormous-

"What do you think, Tohru-kun?"

I snapped out of my thoughts. Blushing darkly, my eyes dazed. "H-huh? What?"

"Portable crib, yes or no?"

"Um...well..."

"My thoughts exactly! It's a maybe," he said, nodding to himself. "All of these cribs, portable or not, are quite expensive though; I probably could just make one myself! You may be surprised, and will surely be impressed, to learn this about me: I took wood shop in high school, and-"

And as soon as he said that, a weird vision popped into my head. I saw him working on the crib outside in the back lot of his apartment building. Where we had built the snowman, but now it was all clear, it was sunny and bright. So much so, in fact, that as I arrived on the scene, he had to take his sweaty white wifebeater off for some relief from the sun. Revealing the perfect glistening chest to match that perfect face.

The crib was nearly finished. Its wood just needed to be painted now. I came by with some lemonade to cool my fiancé down but instead of taking it, he took the tray and set it aside. Pulling me close to him and kissing me with overwhelming passion. Before I could think, he had turned me around, pushed me against the crib, my clit pressing against its hardness as his own had broken my wetness from behind-

"Does that sound good, Tohru?" the real Ayame asked.

"Y-yes, it feels very good..."

"Feels?" He tilted his head at me but I barely registered this, or his preceding words. I was too far gone. "Are you all right? You look a bit ruddy." He leaned forward and put his hand on my cheek, which felt like a candle had been lit inside it.

"I-I need you to take me."

"What? Take you home?"

"Sure...sure, take me home, Ayame."

"All right, let me just pay for-"

As he took his hand off my cheek and replaced it on the shopping cart, I put mine over his. Turning his attention back toward me again. "No. Just take me home. Please. I'll come back tomorrow and pick up all these things."

He blinked, taken aback, but nodded. "Well, all right, so be it for me to question the wishes of a pregnant woman!" With that, he linked his arm with mine and led me back out to his car.

As we drove home, he continued to question whether I was feeling all right. What I was feeling. Nauseous? Dizzy? I didn't know what to tell him. I wasn't sure how he would feel if I came right out and said that I was feeling aroused, impassioned, lustful. Besides that, I didn't even know if those words could ever come out of my mouth. It embarrassed me just to think about saying them.

And by the time we actually arrived at Shigure's, my desire had been dampened. By fear that struck me once again. Here we were. Parked outside of my home. All the lights were out inside, it appeared that Ayame and I could have the place to ourselves for once. All I had to do was tell him what I wanted. Assure him that I was ready. He might hesitate, but in the end, he would say yes, of course he would say yes. It was my call.

"We should be getting you to bed now, shouldn't we, princess?" he asked. Probably looking over at me with concern as I stared out the window at the house. My cheeks felt as hot as ever, and I didn't turn to meet his gaze.

Random flashes of that night returned to me like they were playing from an old home movie. My mom had told me to only look back on it one time at the graveyard and never again. And I hadn't, I hadn't thought about, at least not in detail, for weeks now. But as we sat there, my heart pounding, my hormones racing, my mind flooding...

"Tohru?" Ayame reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. I flinched away from his touch.

"N-no, it's okay, Ayame. I can put myself to bed. You don't have to worry about it, okay? You've been taking really good care of me, but I'm fine. I promise. I'm just feeling a little sleepy, that's all." I finally turned back to him with the brightest smile I could muster and leaned over to kiss his cheek. "Don't worry about me, okay?"

The worry didn't leave his eyes. "Are you sure? I would be glad to-"

"I'm sure," I said with a small nod. "I just need to be alone right now. It has nothing to do with you, I just sometimes need to get some rest by myself, you know?" Before he could answer, I gave him a proper kiss on the lips and smiled before getting out of the car and making my way into the house.

I wondered if he believed me or if he could see it in my eyes every time I thought about that night in some form or another. But as much as I missed my honesty, I didn't feel like I could talk to him about this. Not yet.

When I reached my room, I immediately got undressed, laid on my bed, and began fingering myself urgently. I just wondered when my own hands wouldn't be enough anymore. When my fantasies would beg me too insistently to become realities. When I would have to face the fact that Ayame was going to be my husband, and we were going to have a lifetime of sex ahead of us.

But how and when could I ever push past the past?

Another month came and went after that. I had several more spells of debilitating lustfulness but nothing ever came of them. I always held back at the last minute. And it's not like Ayame ever made any advances on me himself. I think he was just as afraid as I was.

But soon enough came the day of the wedding. Two weeks after I got out for summer break, I was standing in the bridal suite of the cathedral Ayame and I had chosen, in front of a humongous mirror, hoping I didn't look too humongous myself in my dress.

Ayame had designed and made it for me, of course. It was strapless, flowing, and cinched gently in the middle with a halo of glittering silver gems. He really did have wonderful taste.

But as I stared at myself, my heart pounded against the soft fabric against my ribcage. This was really happening. I was getting married. I was getting married?! And...what was I going to do about the honeymoon and all the expectations that went along with it?

"Tohru?" I turned around instantly at the sound of the familiar voice. In the doorway stood Kyo. He was dressed in the same suit I saw him wear at the Sohmas' dinner party, and he was looking at the ground. Dark blush lines covered both his cheeks entirely.

"Kyo? I thought...I thought you weren't going to come," I whispered. My eyes instantly filling with joyful tears. "I'm so happy to see you!"

"Yeah, yeah. Don't start cryin' or anythin', okay? You don't wanna ruin your makeup," he mumbled, shuffling his feet. "But yeah...I'm here. Because...before you get married, there's something I need to tell you."