Epilogue Creighton #3
Hoping to stall, I gave him an appreciative look, skimming my hand down his front.
He was still dressed in business pants, a button-down shirt, and a tie.
All of it had been tailored so it molded to his body, accentuating just how lean, but built, he was.
Creighton did work out, and I knew he lifted weights, but he did it more as an activity to spend with Levi.
It looked good on him. For some reason he had also put on a baseball cap with the brim pulled low.
I think he pulled it out when we were in public or traveling, like we had earlier on the subway.
As if that could camouflage his hotness. I scoffed at that in my head.
That was my favorite look on him, and I might’ve salivated a little bit at the sight of his square jawline. The guy was blessed, and sometimes it wasn’t fair, but with the looks, I wasn’t going to complain because I was the one that got to touch him.
I flipped his tie over his shoulder. “I like you like this. Though, I like your usual outfit too. Jeans and a Henley or sweatshirt. Joggers if you want to be comfortable or look like an athlete. Plus this.” I tapped his hat.
He grabbed my finger before I could tap it again and pulled me against him. He was trying to scrutinize me underneath the brim. “Quokka story. Enough stalling. It was a favor.”
Right. Right. I restrained from rolling my eyes. “Okay. It’s stupid. I’m almost embarrassed about it, but—” I took a deep breath. “Okay. Here goes. I know you started calling me a quokka because that day we watched a documentary about them.”
“You remember that?” He pulled me to sit on his lap, his hand falling to my thigh.
I nodded. “I was ten.”
“You weren’t feeling good.”
I rested further against his chest. I reached down for his hand and began tracing his fingers.
“You’d already left the house for the streets.
Miss Marcie didn’t approve of what you were doing so you didn’t come around that much anymore.
But I’d been sick and feeling horrible that day, and you came. ”
He brushed some of my hair from my forehead, still watching me with those dead eyes, but his touch was tender. “You were a no-show at school. I got notified, so I went to the house to see if you were okay. No one was there to take care of you.”
“Miss Marcie had to leave me alone because she had some meetings at one of the other schools all day.”
“I know. I messaged her, said I could stay with you.” He smoothed some of my hair back, tugging it behind my ear. “She’d never let me do that for another kid. Not that I would’ve asked, but she knew it was different with you.”
“When you saw how sick I was, you went and collected all of the stuffed animals everyone had in the house, which doesn’t seem sanitary now. I’m surprised I didn’t get even more sick, but you dumped all of them in my bed and crawled in with me.”
His mouth strained. “I was on top of the covers, and the door was open.”
“I know. You had someone bring an iPad to the house. You let me use it that whole time I was sick, but that day, we watched all of these animal videos. I loved the one about the quokkas. The smile they make. They’re adorable.
And then I read all about them, and I used to think how cute they were, and you started calling me Quokka, and I thought it was the best ever. ”
“What changed?”
I grew tense because this was the part that was embarrassing.
I began idly drawing a circle on the back of his hand.
“I—some of the girls at school found out about it, and they only cared because it was your nickname for me. They began to tease me with all the bad things about quokkas. That I was stupid to wish I had a quokka as a pet because they were illegal to have and that meant I needed to go to Australia to have one. That they only looked cute, but they were really a rodent. I don’t think that’s true.
I looked it up later. They’re marsupials.
They said other stuff. I couldn’t touch one because I’d make it sick and I’d kill it.
I had the touch of death. They teased me about that stuff, but it was all the time, and after a while, it got in my head. It went on for a full year.”
“When did they say this stuff?”
“In class so you wouldn’t have heard about it. I knew you had older kids on your payroll by then, but none in my class. I always sorta worried what you would do if you ever found out they were saying that stuff to me.”
“You were bullied.” He tilted my head up.
“I was being teased.” I relented at his look. “But yes, it was hurtful enough. I got those girls back eventually. We played volleyball the next year in gym, and I made sure to spike the ball at every one of them. They were horrible.”
He cupped the side of my face, moved his thumb over my cheek. “I’m sorry they did that to you.”
“Yeah. Well.” I wanted to shrug it off, but I couldn’t. They’d poisoned that endearment for me.
“Wolverines are ugly.”
“What?” I laughed, confused. “Random much?”
“Hmmm. And they’re sometimes called a skunk bear because they give off a bad smell when threatened.”
“Uh. What are you doing?”
“And they cheat, in my opinion. They’re polyamorous. I am not a cheater.”
“No . . .” Where was he going with this?
He reached for my free hand and held it up, playing with my fingers as I’d been fiddling with his.
“They’re weasels too. Glorified weasels.
Their scientific name means ‘the glutton,’ which is appropriate because even if they’re only twenty-two pounds, they’re willing to fend off wolves or a bear for its meal. The name fits, right?”
My laugh came easier. I felt lighter in my chest. “Again. What are you doing?”
“Ah. There it is. Made you smile.”
I fell silent. He said that with such seriousness.
“That day you were sick, you laughed the rest of the afternoon. That’s not nothing.
You hadn’t smiled in seven days. You smiled that day.
You laughed that day. Even if it’s a silly animal like a quokka that did that, I don’t care.
Those little girls were cruel. I wish I had known because I would’ve done something about—”
I groaned, sinking my whole weight against him. He was so earnest and being nice and looking so good, and my resistance crumbled. “You suck. You know that?”
“You’ll tell me the next time someone hurts you?”
I straightened away from him.
“Eight?”
“I don’t like that you were hurt and you didn’t tell me. I can guess the reason you held back, but, Blake, I want to know.” He tipped my head up to meet him. “I am working on the compromise between us, but you are everything to me. Knowing you were hurting and never told me, that destroys me.”
He was being so serious right now.
My heart almost couldn’t take it.
Tears welled up. I confessed, “I don’t understand why you love me so much.”
He went still.
I couldn’t look at him. “You did everything for me, and I just don’t get it. I’m not worth it—”
He growled, low and savagely from the bottom of his throat. “Don’t even fucking finish that statement.”
Pressing my forehead to his chest, I whispered the next words because I needed to get them out of me.
I just had to. They wrung themselves from my throat.
“Somedays I feel like I’m no one. Then I look at you and I know that I’m everything to you, and I .
. . I still don’t understand it. There’s a level of responsibility I need to take for what you’ve done because of me, but then I stop and think about what you would say to that.
What you have said to me. I know you said that only you’re responsible for your actions.
And I get that. I do, but it’s hard to feel it.
You know? Then there’s the whole other layer underneath it all, that you have conquered cities for me, and I—” The words caught in my chest. Alongside the love, the pain, and the disbelief. “I don’t deserve it.”
I tipped my head to look at him. His eyes were so black, but there was emotion reflecting back at me. Real emotion. Pain. Love.
My heart surged. “Creighton?”
He blinked. The emotions were still there, but they were less heated.
“I know it’ll take you a while to accept that you’re worth everything.
I know that, but it’s the other way around, Blake.
I’m not worth feeling that love for you, but I do, and the way I see it, as long as you’re willing to let me love you, I’m going to show it.
And you are wrong. You are worth every life I’ve taken.
You are worth every life I’ve saved. I love you. Please start accepting that.”
I pressed my lips to his. “I will. I’ll start accepting it.”
“Promise?”
I nodded. “Promise.”
Some of his tension left him. He slid a hand up my back, to the back of my neck, and into my hair, where he cupped my head.
He tilted my head back so he could meet my eyes better.
“I’ve not asked about your talk with Walden tonight.
I’m growing. See. You’re having a marked effect on me.
That should make you smile.” He waited, so serious.
I smiled, feeling raw.
His thumb touched the corner of my mouth. “There it is. I like seeing it.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You’re really not going to ask?”
He shook his head and leaned in again. “Nope. You didn’t kill him, so I won’t be going to war again so soon. But besides your smile, you know what else I love about you?” He dropped his forehead to rest against mine. “I love when you’re naked.”
A heated shiver went down my spine. “Have I told you recently that I love you?”
“You have, but you can say it again. I like hearing it.”
I reached up on my tiptoes for him and pulled his head down to meet me. “Well, I do.”
He evaded my lips. “I want you to say it.”
I was a girl on a mission, so I ignored him and latched my mouth to his.
He sighed against my mouth, “I love you, my little Quokka.”
“Yeah, yeah. I love you too, my psychopathic wolverine.”