Chapter 37

"Blue, stay boy." Delilah ordered in a gentle, firm voice, continuing to pet him and sipping more of her coffee. "Now, are you ready to sit down and have an adult conversation about this? Because if not, you can waltz your ass right out the door and don't let it hit you where the lord split you." She handed Jon a mug of coffee and accepted a soft kiss from him as well, not caring that it was right in front of her brother.

"What happened to your neck, Del? You look like you got fucking mauled."

"By my husband, and it was fantastic, what's your point?"

Jon snorted into his coffee at her smartass remarks and simply sat at the table with Blue coming to him for attention.

Sami didn't know what to think about this, wondering what Jon Good had done to his sister. Where was the Delilah he knew? She was nowhere to be found here and it broke his heart. "What happened to you, Del? How did you go from avoiding this man and keeping him at arm's length to marrying him? D-Did he drug you or something?"

"You're seriously standing in our house asking me an asinine question like that? You wanna know what happened? Fine, I'll tell you." Jon already knew the truth, so she didn't feel the least bit bad about coming clean to her brother. "This isn't a new thing, Sami. I've loved Jon for years and I kept my feelings to myself because of you. I didn't want to hurt you and I didn't want to jeopardize your friendship with Jon. So, I kept everything bottled up about him for your sake. When he left to go to the WWE, you saw how much it tore me up inside. I threw myself into wrestling and made it my entire life. I tried having other relationships and none of them worked out because they weren't who I wanted. They weren't Jon." Delilah had to get through to him somehow, someway, hoping her words somehow reached him. "And yes, 10 years ago, he was a womanizer and fucked everything on two legs that gave him the slightest bit of attention, but that was a DECADE ago. People change." Delilah looked back at her husband with love in her watery eyes and he brought her hand up to kiss the back of it. "He's changed and it's not fair to judge him based on his past. That's not right and you know it."

Sami did know it, but it was still a hard to pill to swallow as he looked back and forth between them. Jon also had some 'love marks' and he wasn't asking the other man about them because Moxley would not be as 'nice' as his sister was. "You spent all those years repressing shit for someone like him? You think he's really changed? He'll be the first to tell you he just got out of 'prison', of course he changed, he couldn't pull that shit with the WWE!"

"He's right, you know," Jon admitted calmly, sipping his coffee, and leaning against the counter, shrugging when Delilah gave him an exasperated look. "Babe, you already know I couldn't, that place had rules, regs, and a million cameras." But she also knew he loved her and HAD changed.

In some ways, not for the best.

"See? He thinks it's funny!"

"Well, if I think anything else, I might break your arms, Sami."

"And what happens if this goes south, Del? Have you thought about that? If you spent ten years repressing and being a bitch about men in general, how do you think your life is gonna be after him?" Sami shuddered, not wanting to imagine that possibility. So, it turned out his sister didn't have a stick up her backside; she had unrequited love, which was worse.

"You really believe I haven't thought about every angle of this? If this goes south and we end up divorced, I'll deal with it." Delilah stood up from the table, folding her arms in front of her chest while standing toe to toe with her brother. "Again, that's not your business. It's nobody's business except mine. I'm not a little girl anymore that you need to protect. I'm a grown ass woman capable of making my own decisions in life. I'm happy, Samuel. For the first time in my life, I know what it's like to be truly happy and it's with him. When he walked into that gym over two months ago and I saw him again for the first time in 8 years…everything came rushing to the surface I suppressed while he was in WWE."

Sniffling, she walked over to grab a tissue from the box on the table and dabbed her eyes. "And once again, because of YOU, my brother, I didn't act on my feelings, I tried to hide it and fought it off. And it didn't work this time, it was too strong. I refused to make myself miserable all for the sake of your friendship with him all over again. So, when he invited me out here to stay with him for the Double or Nothing pay-per-view event for AEW, I declined. Then my hotel reservation got fucked to hell and he was there for me, offering me a place to stay because every other hotel in Vegas was booked for that weekend. One thing led to another and he confessed how he felt about me…and I couldn't fight it off anymore." Partially because Jon had started pursuing her, but Sami didn't need to know that. "At first, all I thought he wanted was a roll in the hay with me, but that was until he asked me to marry him and I said yes, THEN had sex with him. So, you see, he put a damn ring on my finger, and a tattooed band, before he slept with me." It was a twisted version of what really happened, but that would be taken to the grave.

Sami would never find out the truth of how they really came to be married and she hoped to hell Jon went along with it.

Jon would go along with whatever she wanted to, but he had to turn his face away at something she had said, just because it was both an 'ow' and very unfair. Much like holding his whoring phase against him ten years down the road was wrong, so was basically blaming Sami for her not acting on her feelings. That was by HER choice, not Sami's. Harsh toke there for the brother, and since Jon was, supposedly, the man's best friend, so he felt that one on behalf of the guy. All the rest was a mashup of what had really happened, but he was fine with it, now busy making them all bagels while Sami digested everything she had just laid on him.

"Cream cheese or salmon spread?"

"Cream cheese." She took Sami's hands in hers, mindful of her still bandaged finger that was healing from her tattoo ring. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like it's your fault I wasn't with Jon back then. It was my choice and I made it because of you. Because I didn't want to lose the only family I have left. And back then…it just wasn't the right time, not with how Jon was and I was too immature to really understand what I was feeling. I was too young, naïve, and stupid and we were all trying to make it in the business. You're not to blame for the decisions I made, even if they were because of you, Sami. But things change and he's not who he used to be, just like I'm not who I used to be. Hell, you're not who you used to be either. You've changed too."

Jon was having both; he liked the salmon spread and it was good protein, which he desperately needed today. He had a feeling today was going to be a lazy day, especially since yesterday he had done that strenuous bike ride through the desert, then he had done his equally demanding, strenuous wife. He was nice and made Sami a bagel, remembering Sami liked them weird with butter only, so he did that, and coffee, sliding the plate and mug out onto the counter. That was his peace offering; he had gotten jacked by the man and felt bad if he insulted him anymore since Delilah had obviously just broken him.

Sami realized he was at a crossroads. He could keep on pushing and raging and, in the end, he'd lose Delilah. He was on the fence about Jon and that probably wouldn't change for a while, not until he was convinced the man really had changed. This just seemed so damn sudden and out of character for Delilah.

Sighing, he took the coffee and glanced at Jon. "Sorry about…hitting you."

"Nah, you're not."

"Not really."

They toasted each other with their cups.

It did Delilah's heart good to watch the two men in her life actually toast each other. Maybe that was all it took from Sami. Maybe that was all he needed was to jack Jon twice in the face. This was not their first fight and it probably wouldn't be their last. Delilah sat down at the table while they took over the counter, eating her bagel with regular cream cheese and had gotten herself a fresh mug of coffee. The first one had gone cold and she added her creamer before settling down, ignoring the soreness between her legs. No sex for a day or two, Jon had done a number on her with zero complaints and now she needed some time to heal from the pounding.

"I'm gonna take Blue outside to potty. Don't kill each other now." She winked at them on her way out the sliding screen door with Blue at her side, sipping more of her coffee while watching the big boy run amok in the backyard.

"I'll fucking slit your throat and paint my floors with your blood if you EVER come up into my house like that again." Jon promised in a deadly tone as soon as she was out in the yard, where she couldn't hear them.

"Eat shit. I can't believe you fucking married my sister. What is wrong with you? You always said she had a stick in her ass and-" Sami would have smashed his coffee cup over Jon's head at the suddenly wicked, perverted expression on the man's face, not even WANTING to know. If they had to fake it until they made it to keep Delilah happy, fine, whatever, but this dickhead was NOT his friend and never would be again.

Jon had removed the stick and replaced it with his dick. Sami seemed to get that, too, because he didn't say another word. They just drank their coffee and ate their bagels in silence, leaving Delilah outside thinking they were resolving issues and they were, by not talking and agreeing to disagree. They'd either fight it out or figure it out, in their own time, because they were men.

Delilah didn't mean to hurt her brother, her family, but Sami wasn't the only family she had now. Jon was her family. They were married and, if push came to shove, she would choose her husband over anyone, including her brother. She loved Jon too much to lose him and Sami had struck a nerve with her earlier by asking what if this didn't work out. It was a fair question, but one she didn't want to think about. It would crush her if this didn't work out and she had no idea Jon had put in a contingency plan, just in case. The prenuptial agreement that hopefully she'd never have to see because he would not tell her about it unless they ended. This place, this house, the cars, and even Blue all belonged to Jon and somehow, it still felt like home to her, far more than Cincinnati did.

Sipping her coffee, Delilah looked down at the beautiful ring Jon bought her with a smile and watched the sun start to rise, with Blue coming over to sit next to her. "I'm okay, boy, I promise."

Now, as long as she didn't try leaving and divorcing him, Jon had every intention of sharing all his toys with his wife because he had paid attention in school and knew sharing was caring. Sami's question had been a fair one, even Jon could see that. It was a NORMAL and CONCERNED one, and Jon did not appreciate it being asked either, because once the honeymoon phase for her was over, she might start asking those questions herself. Sami had a way, and they had just established this, of making Delilah question herself and then repress things for the sake of keeping peace. After all the hard work he had gone through of breaking those tendencies down and shoving past those boundaries, Jon would be really pissed if Sami's visit set things back to square one.

On the bright side, he and Sami ate their food and drank their coffee without heckling each other, so that was progress, right?

Once she finished her coffee and the sun was in the sky, Delilah headed back inside with Blue and went straight for the kitchen to grab him a treat. "That's my good boy." She dropped a kiss on top of his head as he took the treat from her hand gently, heading off to go eat it in peace. Washing and rinsing her hands before drying them off, Delilah moved to the table to wrap her arms around Jon's neck, hugging him close. It was her way of letting him know she was on his side and she had also placed an icepack in his hand for his nose. "I don't know if you got a hotel room, but you're more than welcome to stay here with us until we have to go back on the road on Tuesday, Sami. There's a guest room with your name on it." It was now Saturday morning, so they had three days before they had to head back to work.

It was almost like Jon didn't have to do ANYTHING; she was going to torture her poor brother better than he could! However, he also knew she wasn't doing it to be mean or hurtful. Jon was still a little spiteful, his chest was in that aching phase because Sami was a scrappy bastard.

Sami was aware he was probably amusing Jon because he was struggling to not run through a million facial expressions all at once. He could not believe she had actually extended that invitation after this morning and even in such a short amount of time, it had been a hellacious morning. "I uh, yeah." He answered finally, knowing after all those text messages and voicemails, he shouldn't be snubbing the olive branch sent his way. Also, it'd give him a bit of time to observe how Jon and Delilah interacted; he got she loved the brute, but he wasn't convinced by Moxley.

"Great! We'll have a cookout. I already have drumsticks thawing in the fridge and we can add some burgers to it." She moved to her brother, hugging him the same way she did Jon and kissed his cheek. "Come on, I'll show you to the room with your name on it and Jon, can you grab some ground beef out of the freezer?" He nodded while she took her brother's hand, leading him down the corridor on the first floor to one of two guest rooms. The other one was upstairs, along with their bedroom. She flipped the light on and showed him the standard bedroom with all neutral colors, nothing outlandish. "You have your own bathroom. This is the only guest room with one." There were three bathrooms, two downstairs and one upstairs, which belonged to her and Jon.