Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Bexley
I ’d cooked dinner.
Those words might not mean much to most people who could actually cook, but for me, they were huge.
Tony had spent all afternoon teaching me how to make meatloaf. It’d only taken three trips to the store and two failed attempts, and now I was staring at something that looked good—made by my own hands. Tomorrow he was teaching me how to make something else, seeing as how the school was closed for one more day, and I was excited about it.
I couldn’t go all out with candles and a beautiful table, but I’d managed to make a makeshift platform out of some of the old wooden panels from the walls that still needed to be taken away, and it looked cute.
All it needed now was Logan.
“Sorry, buds,” I told Doyle and Prince as they stared at me. “I need him to see the whole thing, so you can’t have any. If he sees pieces missing, it’ll ruin the visual effect of my culinary masterpiece.”
The vet had warned us that Prince might react to Doyle being near the kittens, but he seemed warier of them than she was of him. Every time he heard them crying out, he’d start whining and hide behind me. The big scary dog had met his match.
Prince had adapted to having a vagina and babies like nothing had changed, and for her, I guess, nothing had. Unlike me, she’d known what bits she had and the fact she was baking her little minions inside of her.
The kittens were tiny, and I’d made the mistake of reading up about cats abandoning their babies if they smelled like humans, so I was scared to touch them. I’d even bought gloves at the store today—a dozen pairs, to be precise—so that when I cleaned them out, I didn’t accidentally leave my scent in a place that could trigger rejection in Prince.
Basically, I was out of my comfort zone. Inheriting Doyle from Pops had been a life lesson in itself, but kittens? I had no freaking clue!
Almost like they knew I was thinking about them, the mewling started up again, accompanied by Doyle’s whining. Prince had only been away from them for about two minutes, but she quickly waddled back to them and lay down.
“Maybe they were cold?” I asked my dog, who had his face in the corner of the room we were in, with his ass pointing at the rest of it. Hearing my voice, he turned his head toward me. “You know, you don’t have to hide from them. They won’t be able to terrorize you for a while.”
With a dirty look over his shoulder, he turned back to the corner, leaving me talking to his ass.
“Hey, I don’t know what you’re so scared about. It’s not like your parents saw your tit drawings on the walls. Speaking of that, do you know why you have nipples?”
Sue me, I was bored.
Just then, the front door opened, and Doyle’s stance changed from nose in the corner to a canine sneer as he waited for Logan to come into the room .
“I don’t know why you don’t like him, dude,” I sighed, getting up from where I was lying on a comforter on the floor. “You’re going to have to get over that shit at some point.”
“Because your Pops told him what happened when we were younger,” Logan replied as he came in, bending down to kiss me almost immediately. “I’m sure he probably waved one of my t-shirts under his nose and repeated the word kill.”
I laughed on the outside, but on the inside, I had to admit that’s probably what’d happened. The low growl that came from Doyle made me frown, though.
“Is there some sort of doggy therapy camp he can go to?”
“Not a clue,” he replied as he waved at Doyle regardless and then moved over to where Prince was sitting, waiting for his attention, her babies squealing at the loss of her boobies.
The night she had them had reset their relationship, and now she went to him instead of me most of the time.
Squatting down in front of her, he gave her some chin scratches. “How are you doing, pretty momma? How are our babies?”
“Judging by the crying because she sat up to see you and took away their food, I’m thinking hangry.”
Huffing out a laugh, he picked up the mini version of her mama, gray all over with a white chest and white paws. “Hey, Miracle. Are you being good? They’re not stealing all your food, are they?”
Our trip to the vet had revealed that all four kittens were girls, so now in the house, we were four females ahead of the two males in it. Not that Logan or Doyle cared at all, far from it.
And just in case it needed to be pointed out—Logan didn’t have the same concerns over Prince rejecting her babies if they smelled like us. He said she was too smart for that, which was just as well, seeing how he carried Miracle around with him as much as possible.
He was also the one who picked them all up and carried them upstairs to sleep in our room in case Prince or the babies needed anything last night. Doyle wasn’t left out either because his bed had been brought up and put in the corner, too.
“I’m thinking she’s holding her own on the titties. She got knocked onto her back today during the feeding frenzy—”
“What the hell?” he barked, glaring at the three oblivious babies who were now blindly wiggling their little bodies.
“—but Prince sorted her out—”
“Of course she did. She’s a good momma.”
Rolling my eyes, I continued, “And she fed for longer than the other three and even fell asleep during it.”
With her cradled in one hand, he ran the tip of his pinky finger down her back, making her look even tinier than she already was. “I bought some scales and a box of Rubbermaid containers at the store on my way home so we can weigh them like the vet suggested. If she doesn’t put on weight like she should be, we’ve got the kitten formula for her.”
Ah yes, the kitten formula. Last night, Logan had begged the vet to give us some, so we were prepared. The price of it made my eyes water, but Logan asked if we could have a second container instead of being worried about it. He’d also paid an extortionate amount for the bottle and nipple we’d need, and after he dropped us back home, he’d gone out and bought what the vet had recommended to sterilize it between each use.
He was a mean kitten feeding machine.
Knowing he was itching to weigh them but didn’t want to put her down for even a second while he put it all together, I got up and went out to find the bag and brought it back through. Then, pre-empting the request, I went back to pick up the roll of paper towels and brought it back.
“Just in case the container is cold,” I explained, waving them in the air.
Chewing his lip, he considered this. “I hadn’t thought of that. Should we warm the container? Maybe I should heat up a towel, and we can put that inside it instead? ”
Opening the box with the scales in it, I only just held back the eye roll. It wasn’t a cheap one he’d bought, it was a professional one.
Seeing my expression and reading it correctly, his cheeks turned pink as he shrugged. “I didn’t want to get an unreliable set that gave us the wrong readings.”
“And the fact you bought Rubbermaid containers?”
“They’ve got a thing on them saying they’re award-winning, that means they’re safer.”
“I don’t think they make them with kittens in mind, though, Logan. More like food and liquid.”
When he didn’t reply, I looked up to see him rubbing Doyle with the tip of his toe. There was something different about him tonight. He looked more at peace since Prince had the babies and was putting himself out there to break my dog down now, too. But he also had tension in his shoulders, and judging by the lines on his forehead, he’d frowned a lot today. Either that or he’d aged, like a reverse Benjamin Button .
Setting it all up for him, I grabbed a pen and an old receipt out of my purse before I waved him over. “What happened?” I asked conversationally as we put Miracle in the container, and I wrote the reading down. “You’ve got a crease like a wedgie between your eyebrows.”
Giving Miracle a small kiss on her head, he took her back to Prince and picked up Smudge, who was mostly white, but already had a black smudge under her nose, on the tips of both ears, and the end of her tail.
As he crouched down to put her onto the scales, he exhaled loudly. “I can’t talk about it right now, but I want to let you know how good it felt to leave, knowing I was coming back to you and these guys and Doyle.” My mouth dropped open at the unexpected revelation. “It’s been a shitty, shitty day, but y’all made it tolerable for me.”
“Uhh…”
At my lack of answer, the side of his mouth lifted in a smile, and his eyes looked clearer when he lifted them to look at me. “Shocked you, haven’t I?”
Nodding mutely, I checked the screen, wrote down Smudge’s weight, and then watched as he gave her a snuggle and kiss and swapped her out for Peanut. She was a peanut butter colored kitten who was the largest of the litter before doing it all over again with Adele, the most vocal of the lot.
I needed to get what I wanted to say back out, but I was a pussy—no pun intended.
“Life’s felt brighter for me ever since you moved in, like I can breathe again. I never thought I’d be so grateful for shitty plumbing,” I rambled as quickly as I could. “So, in order of their weights, Peanut’s a chunky monkey, Adele’s right behind him, Smudge is a bit more petite, and your favorite child is a lightweight in comparison to her sisters.”
Seeing what I was doing and not drawing attention to it, he tucked them in with the blanket he’d picked them up at the vet's office and then held his arms out for Prince, who didn’t even hesitate to walk up to him to be picked up.
It was surreal given their relationship up until only twenty-four hours ago.
“Did you give her the special food the vet gave her? I looked it up online, and there are better ones with more vitamins and nutrition in them that you can get, so I ordered some for her. They also had these little kitten collars, so you can identify them more easily—” I looked at the kittens incredulously. They were all different colors, why would we need help identifying them? “—so I added those. I know we’re a few weeks off them weaning as well, but—”
“Let me guess,” I cut in drily. “You got something for that, too.”
Smiling wryly over his shoulder at me, he went back to watching the babies. “It helps to be prepared. Imagine how shitty it would be if they needed something immediately, and we couldn’t get it. ”
“We definitely don’t have that problem.”
“Exactly.” He frowned down at them suddenly. “But what if they need it before it arrives? Maybe I should—”
Groaning, I thumped my forehead with the back of my hand. “You should just relax and have your damn dinner. I’ve been watching them all day, and they seem to be doing just fine, even your little drama queen.”
He crawled across the floor to where I’d set up the makeshift table giving one last longing look at them.
“What’s for dinner?”
“Meatloaf, green beans, and potatoes,” I called over my shoulder as I went to go and get it all out of the kitchen. “The tomato ketchup sauce that should’ve come with it made me feel sick even thinking about it, so I used a tin of chopped tomatoes instead and made a—” I cut off as I cleared the doorway. The guy wasn’t just pale, he looked freaking gray. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“Not yet,” he mumbled under his breath before pasting what looked like a psycho’s version of a smile on his face. “I can’t wait to try it.”
“Shut up,” I growled, placing the plate down in front of him. His weird smile turned to confusion. “Now, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s just that it looks… Well, edible?”
I had to agree. Nothing was burned, the meat hadn’t just collapsed into a pile of ground beef, it’d cooked all the way through, and it smelled good instead of like crap.
Still, he waited for me to put the first forkful in my mouth, watching my reaction the whole time.
I couldn’t remember what Tony had added to it, but I was grateful that he’d left me step-by-step instructions on how to do it again. In fact, step-by-step wasn’t the best way to describe them. More like a dummies guide, to a dummies guide, to a dummies guide of making the meatloaf.
“Damn, it’s good. ”
His hand only shook slightly as he put his own in his mouth, but all of the panic changed the minute he tasted it properly.
“Well shit, maybe he’s a miracle worker? This might be the best meatloaf I’ve ever had.” He shoved another forkful in. “Don’t tell Mom.”
Snickering, I enjoyed my own food. Even the potatoes were cooked and not hard in the middle. I couldn’t tell you where I went wrong with cooking, it was like it had a vendetta against me whenever I did it, but I followed every step and the timings I was told to when I tried to do it on my own. Maybe I could get Tony to help me cure the problem?
Through it, he spoke about how hectic his day had been, describing what it was like working with the guys from Palmerstown P.D. I remembered Kapono from high school and the issues the two of them had with each other, so the two of them having to work together was hilarious.
After dinner, I put the leftovers away—a new novelty for me, having leftovers that were edible and not just because the food was too disgusting to consume—and we cleaned up the kitchen.
“I bought Doyle another huge bone with extra marrow in the middle. It was in the bag with the other stuff I brought home,” he said as he tossed down the dishcloth. “I’m going to give it to him and see if he likes me after it.”
Following behind him, I watched him walk over to Doyle, who didn’t even blink as he unwrapped it in front of him.
“I don’t think he needs you to go to those lengths to prove it isn’t poisoned,” I pointed out, enjoying the show he was putting on.
“I dunno. If he brought me food, I’d assume he’d poisoned it. It’s all about gaining his trust.”
“This something you read online, too?”
His back was to me, so he didn’t see the sarcastic smile I added. Instead, he nodded and put the wrapper on the floor beside him before holding it out to Doyle for him to sniff. He took his time doing it, like he was torturing Logan for even deigning to get close to him, but eventually, he lifted his head and stuck his nose on it, taking loud whiffs of the bone.
But he didn’t take it. Oh no, Pops had raised him to be the ultimate asshole. Instead, he put his head back down and closed his eyes like he was going back to sleep.
“Damn,” he sighed, standing up with it still in his hand. “Guess I’ll just put it in the trash if you don’t want it. Maybe I’ll find another little boy who needs a bone to chew on?”
He only got one step away from him when Doyle started growling and sat up straight, still in his bed.
Shooting me a smug grin, Logan looked back at him. “You want it?”
Doyle’s head tilted to the side like he was thinking about it, but then he got out of his bed and jumped over to stand next to Logan, butting his head against him and making a quiet whining noise.
“I see you, but you haven’t said if you want it,” Logan pressed, watching the dog expectantly.
Doyle sat down and raised a paw, something I didn’t even know he could do.
“Well, would you look at that,” I breathed wide-eyed. “The little shit head has tricks and hid them from me.”
Shaking the paw, Logan said, “Say please.”
My new name for Doyle was going to be the bone whore, because he barked and sat up on his hind legs.
“Well, hell. I didn’t expect that,” he snickered, crouching down again. “Okay, you can have it, but I want a kiss.”
“I think you’re pressing your luck,” I warned, watching the dog warily. They didn’t go from an enemy to your best friend in seconds, it took t—
That little pecker head did precisely what he asked, bumping him under the chin and then licking him from jaw to forehead.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t jealous of him—especially with dog saliva all over his face—but I was pissed that he’d never done that for me. I’d been trying to get him to obey commands like sit and shake a paw and speak for weeks, and all he’d ever done was turn his ass toward me.
Scratching him on top of the head, Logan held the bone out for him and then got up and walked back toward me, smiling widely. Of course, he had to stop to watch the kittens for a moment, but then he crossed over to where I was and bent in to kiss me.
Pressing my hand against his face, I pushed it gently away. “Dude, no. You need to wash your face first. Remember when we caught him eating something in the garden and couldn’t figure out what it was? Well, I caught him sniffing the litter tray today, too, and I’m not one hundred percent certain he didn’t go truffle snuffling in it if you get my drift.”
Realizing the truffles would be cat poop, he scrunched his face and moved quickly to the bathroom. “Why didn’t you tell me that shit before I let him do it, Bex. Jesus, what if he’d touched my mouth?”
“I’d hope you wouldn’t be the kind of person who’d let a dog tongue you. But just in case it needs to be said—don’t let him tongue you,” I called over my shoulder to his back. Just as the door to the bathroom began to close, I added, “And use soap. Lots of soap.”
It would be nice when the furniture arrived to have a place to sit and eat downstairs, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be sad not to have the excuse to curl up in bed with him, watching a movie instead of sitting on a couch doing it.
At that moment, I had my head on Logan’s chest as we watched Son In Law , and the hand of his arm under me was brushing up and down my arm. The rhythmic thud of his heart was almost like a lullaby, and when he laughed, and I felt it vibrate on my cheek, it made the moment feel even more intimate. Lucky for me, the movie was freaking hilarious, so I got to feel it a lot .
“Can you imagine if I did that when we were younger? Your dad would’ve killed me.”
“Pops would’ve helped him,” I snickered. “I remember when he saw my tattoo for the first time. Saying he lost his shit is putting it nicely.”
He rolled into me, turning me onto my back as he looked down at me.
“What exactly is the tattoo?”
“It’s a design that I saw and liked,” I winced. “I thought I was cool getting one at the base of my spine until I heard someone call them tramp stamps.”
“But what is it?” he asked again, prodding me with his finger at the same time.
“Well, if my family ever asks, it’s the ancient Egyptian symbol for strength. If you ever go to a tattoo place, though, you’ll probably find it under the ‘bullshit tribal’ category of their tattoos. You know, the ones that are quick, cheap, and easy to get done.”
“What did your Pops do when he saw it?”
“Well,” I wriggled slightly to get more comfortable.
Telling stories about Pops hurt, and it was hard to do, but at the same time, I needed to talk about him, and Logan knew that, so he often asked questions like this. Talking about him kept him alive, and my heart was never going to let him go.
“He’d come to visit me, not long after he got Doyle when he was a baby, and I bent over to pick up a bag when we came from the store. My tank top lifted at the back, and he saw the tattoo. He asked if my parents knew about it, and when I said they didn’t, he very casually asked where I’d gotten it done as we put the groceries away.”
Logan was already laughing without me telling him what happened. “He went and gave the guy shit, didn’t he?”
“Worse than that—he went and threatened to get him shut down. He told the guy that if he ever saw me again, he was to lock his doorm and to turn and walk the other way if he saw me walking down the street. He even had the audacity to tell the guy that it was shittily done, and that if he was going to give tacky tattoos, he could at least do them well.”
Laughing even harder, Logan motioned at me to turn onto my stomach. When I was in place, he lifted the back of the t-shirt that I’d stolen and inspected it.
“You know, he might actually be right. The outside of it’s uneven, and the shading is weird.”
“That’s the perk of it being on my back, I can’t see how bad it is,” I chuckled. “But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel embarrassed now when I feel my top lift up at the back and know that people can see it.”
“You should get Ellis or Mace to fix it,” he suggested, still tracing the design with his finger. “I doubt they have the old Egyptian symbol for strength in their books,” he snickered, “and the work they did for me was pretty killer.”
Turning my head to see the arm with my favorite tattoos on it, I thought about it.
“The problem is, I’m kind of a pussy. I’ve got a scar here,” I lifted my hand to show him, “where two of my teeth broke the skin when I bit down on it during the tattoo. I don’t know if they’d ever let me live it down if I did that while they were working on me.”
“I’m fairly certain Ava would kill Mace if he upset you in any way. Just bring both of us with you.”
That wasn’t a bad idea. I could bite his hand!
Liking the idea more now, I asked, “What would I get done?”
“Given how dark and thick the design is, it might take some work to cover it up. What about a book or something like that?”
Picturing it in my mind, I wrinkled my nose. “That would look weird like my ass was a bookshelf or something. What about a butterfly?”
The hard pinch to my butt cheek was unexpected and made me squeal.
“You know, one of my favorite memories from when we were little was when you spent the night and Mom read us the Jungle Book . I remember thinking it sounded weird, but when I looked at you and saw how into you were, I started paying closer attention. There was a scene in it where they come across the elephants—”
“I love that scene,” I said softly. It was my favorite scene from the book, but I think it had something to do with the original cartoon movie of it.
“I know. You said it back then, and then you started telling us about how smart they were and explained how an elephant herd operated. After that, you made me watch the movie twice before we went to bed. Every time I see one, all I can hear is the song from the scene while I try to figure out how they can suck things up like water with their trunk and not drown.”
“Remember when we tried to pick up peanuts with our noses?” I chuckled, thinking back to something I hadn’t allowed myself to think about for a long time. Memories that went back over two decades that’d hurt to remember for so long.
“Oh shit, I forgot about that. You had to go and get it removed at the hospital because you snorted it so hard, it got stuck.”
I had. I’d inhaled to get it to stay in place instead of just trying to scrunch my lip against my nose. The damn peanut had gone so far inside that we couldn’t get it out. Every time I tried to pick it out, I just pushed it higher until I freaked out that it was going to get stuck behind my eye.
“That was so embarrassing. Pops was blowing up my other nostril and tried to make a grabber out of a bobby pin to pick it out, and it was too painful to take it out again, so I had to go to the ER with a bobby pin and a peanut up there.”
Logan had been doodling on my back with his finger, but he rolled onto his side and burst out laughing. “I had no idea.”
Yeah, there was a reason for that.
“Pops didn’t want my parents to know he’d made it worse, so he was the one who took me instead of them. The doctor who treated me knew him, so he wasn’t surprised by it at all. Afterward we went home, and Pops told them he hadn’t wanted to worry them about it because Mom had just had her appendix removed and was still in bed recovering from it.”
His body was moving the bed with his laughter. “Do they know now?”
“Yeah,” I snorted. “He told them about my tattoo, and in self-defense, I dropped the peanut story to get back at him.”
I was still smiling at the memories by the time Logan stopped laughing, but what he suggested next would have tipped me from liking him to all the way in love with him if I hadn’t already been there.
“Your grandpa reminded me of an elephant. Majestic, strong, never forgot a thing, protective of the people around him, capable of doing anything, and he was someone that people stopped to appreciate. Mixing that with The Jungle Book , I think an elephant would be a great cover-up for your fake Egyptian symbol.”
I stayed quiet while the worlds settled into my bones, but my mind remained active.
I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to tell him how much I’d missed him. I wanted to put the incident behind us like it never happened.
I wanted to tell Pops he was right and I was wrong. I wanted to share my happiness with him. I wanted more time with him, to make more memories, and ask him which ones were his favorite.
I wanted something that was impossible, and I wanted something that was possible.
I could look forward and make new memories. By getting a tattoo like the one he’d suggested, I could keep Pops with me, as well as keeping old memories alive as well. Wouldn’t that be what Pops would want me to do?
“I want that,” I croaked, then cleared my throat. “I don’t want a cartoon, I want a black line drawing of one facing whoever took the photo I pick. Like it’s about to charge at them, suspended in time watching the person in front of them. ”
His hand landed gently on my back and began to sweep up and down it. His reply was brief, but it was everything. “Then that’s what you’ll get. We’ll find the perfect photograph and make sure you have Pops with you.”
Raising my eyes from where I’d been staring at his throat, I took in the soft expression on his face. He was reading me, always making sure I was okay.
“It’s more than that. It’s my memories from the past, ones that I wish had been recorded so people could watch them and enjoy them, too. A lot of people forget what made them who they are today, and that was one of the moments that made me who I am today.”
Smiling at me, he tapped me on the nose. “Well, we’ve got a recording of you booping me on the nose and knocking on top of my head to share out to whoever you want to.”
Cringing, I pushed my head deeper into the pillow. “I’d prefer it to be non-embarrassing ones.”
“You think going to the ER with a peanut and bobby pin up your nose isn’t embarrassing?”
Bursting out laughing, I pressed the nostril the peanut had been up. “I swear I can still feel it twenty-one years later. I thought if I inhaled, it would go into my brain and get stuck there.”
Pulling me into him, he kissed the top of my head. “We’ve got a lot of history, baby, and I love every single memory, except for—”
I moved quickly to put my hand over his mouth to stop him from finishing the sentence, not realizing how close my hand was to his face until I heard the slap and felt the sting in my palm. Yanking my hand away again, I stared wide-eyed at where he was now rubbing.
“Oops, I didn’t mean to do that. I was just trying to get you to shut up.”
“Ever considered just saying shut up instead of hitting a police officer?”
Oh, shit, I’d assaulted a law enforcement officer. That was illegal. Wait, could I be tried for assaulting one if it happened while we were in bed and was a total accident ? Could my defense be: “ Because he was going to say something stupid, your honor, and I didn’t want to hear it ”?
A good defense is a counter-argument, right? So that’s what I was going to do. “I’m certain if I explained how many times we’d hashed out that one blip—”
“Blip? It lasted seven years and took you away from your family,” he snapped. “A blip is a week, not seven years of weeks.”
“I was away at college for, like, five of those years, Logan.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t come home unless I was away, or you could hide being here from me.”
“Still,” I huffed, rolling my eyes, “five years needs to be deducted because I wouldn’t have lived here during it anyway.”
“Fine,” he growled, throwing a hand in the air, “the blip lasted two years. Happy?”
Holding a finger up, I shook it at him. “Ah, but that can be disputed, too.”
“Did we suddenly end up in a trial?” he mumbled, looking confused by our situation.
“Well, yes!” I wanted to avoid getting a record for hitting a police officer. “The position I just got at the school wouldn’t have been vacant after I graduated, so I probably would have moved anyway to get a job. I couldn’t be home for those two years because I wouldn’t have employment and money to survive. Ergo, I wouldn’t have been here for the remaining two years of the seven year term.”
Logan was staring at me, but when I finished my argument, he blinked and said nothing.
“So, you see?” I pressed, proud of myself for my reasoning skills. “Man, I should’ve been a lawyer. I’m totally awesome at it.”
“Did—“ he started, tilting his head and still looking dazed. “Did you just say ergo ?”
“Well, yeah? I’m legalizing the shit out of this case. ”
“Legalizing the shit out of the case? What case are we even disputing?”
“The fact that I wouldn’t have even been able to live in Piersville for those seven years I was away.” As his eyebrows went from confused to making a butt between them with his frown, I jumped up onto my knees and pointed at him. “Ah ha, you can’t handle the truth!”
Groaning, he dropped his head back and covered his face with his hands. “Now you’re quoting movies.”
“No,” I said slowly, “I’m pointing out that you can’t handle the truth about me not being able to live here. Yes, I had a reason to stay away, but I also couldn’t afford to live without my job. My family has a furniture business, but my heart’s in teaching, and that’s where I chose to go.”
Dropping his hands, he glared at me. “Yeah, but you could’ve found a job closer than Boston.”
“I’ll give you that,” I agreed. “But, bruh, I’ve let go of it, and it’s time you did the same.”
“So is the case over?” he asked, still glaring at me.
Shrugging, I dropped down onto a hip and smiled at him. “Yup, and I won it.”
With a growl, he launched himself at me and started tickling me. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to get shit with spiders on it for the house.”
He could tickle me all he wanted, I wasn’t going to laugh. He just broke out a serious war. “If you do that, I’ll get those solar-powered butterflies and stick them everywhere so you can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake.”
The smile he’d been watching me with faded, making me feel smug. Well, that was until he said softly, “I know what’s real—how I feel about you. How I’ve felt about you for as long as I can remember.” I wasn’t expecting it, so I didn’t know how to reply. “I used to wake up every morning, excited about seeing you. When school finished, I’d drag my heels leaving if we weren’t doing something together after it because it meant I wouldn’t see you until the next day. I used to bug my parents constantly to arrange something with yours at the weekends and during the school breaks. Then things changed—” he’d told me recently about his dream and why he’d changed, so I understood this “—and I still wanted them, even though I tried not to.”
Feeling tears starting to build, I licked my dry lips and decided to give him some beauty back. “I did the same with my family, even getting Pops to make plans with your grandpa so that it didn’t look so obvious. Whenever I came home from college and Boston, I’d stare at your house, the police department, your parents’ house… so that I could see you. I’d make sure you weren’t home when I came, but I also wanted your plans to change so you were.”
“I wish you’d come home for a different reason, baby.” He looked around the room to show what he meant, but I already knew.
“Me, too,” I rasped, feeling the tears trailing down the sides of my face. “Coming home to say goodbye and then the funeral… was just so hard. I didn’t see how I could stay when he wasn’t here for me to see every day. I didn’t want to be here without him.”
Lying down and pulling me on top of him, he stroked my hair. “I know, baby. But I like to think that he’s arranged everything that’s happened for you.”
Wiping my face on his chest and laughing at the groan it got from him, I thought about what he’d said. “You’re probably right about all of that. The pieces just seem to have slotted together for most of it—”
“Don’t tempt fate on that,” he warned, tapping me on the ass. “If you put that out there, bad shit will happen.”
“I said most of it, not all of it.”
“Still, we don’t want to tempt bad fate.”
“Technically, you walking into an apartment swamped with sewage was bad fate,” I pointed out, screwing my face up at the thought of it. “Jesus, that’s nasty. ”
“It was,” he murmured. “All I could picture was the bacteria crawling everywhere and then wondering how old the shit was that was in my living room.”
I went to sit up excitedly, but his arms tightened, preventing me from moving and making clear he was happy with me where I was. “Oh my God, I wanted to talk to you about this when I first read it—it’s the kind of thing we used to discuss. But, did you read about that fatberg they found in a sewer in London? They said it went back to Victorian times, and it was full of poop, fat, condoms, diapers, tampons, and all sorts of nasty shit. Hell, they even found watches and rings in it.”
His eyes were dancing when I looked at him. I wasn’t lying, we’d have searched the internet like crazy people when we were younger if they’d found it then.
Apparently things hadn’t changed there either.
“I saw it on the news, and there’s a video online from the camera they used to search the drain. I think there’s a chunk of it in a museum, too.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed, plans starting to form for us. “We need to go and see it. Can’t we?”
Bursting out laughing, all of the melancholy feelings from only minutes before lifted. I’d never be totally free from them, but I could live with them still being there. If you miss someone you’ve lost, your heart doesn’t heal, and those feelings are proof that the person was part of you. So, yeah, I could live with them.
But I could also live for moments like these with Logan Richards.
“Some couple’s dreams include romantic destinations, climbing a mountain, or visiting a volcano. Ours is to go and see Victorian fat and poop.”
“It’s good to stand out in the crowd,” I snickered, tracing my finger up and down his sides and smiling when I skimmed over his sensitive spot, getting a grunt and shudder out of him.
“That we do, baby. We’ll do normal things, but we’ll also do stuff that not a lot of couples would want to do, but they’re the definition of who we’ve always been.”
Staring across his stomach at the mattress, I realized he was right. “I like that.”
The feeling that grew inside me was also unique. I wanted— No, I needed to taste him. It was like everything depended on it, and I didn’t know why.
My gag reflex truly was shit. If I went to the dentist, they usually had to give me something to relax my muscles so that it didn’t happen and he could check my teeth. When I got strep throat or tonsillitis, it was a nightmare when the doctor put the tongue depressor in to take a closer look. I even loved bananas, but I had to cut them into tiny pieces to eat them.
But I needed to do this. I was desperate to taste him.
Surprising both of us, I sat up quickly and moved between his thighs.
“What are you doing, bab— Oh, shit,” he groaned when I pushed my hand under the waistband of his shorts and closed my fingers around him. When he was soft, it wasn’t an issue, but I knew that they’d only just touch each other when he was hard. Yeah, I was fucking lucky.
Using my other hand so that I didn’t have to let him go, I tugged down the shorts until they were just under his balls.
I could do this. I’d read enough about it in books and magazines to know what I had to do to make it fantastic for him. I just had to have control over my throat and breathing.
So, leaning in, I swiped my tongue over the head, smiling when I heard the deep groan that came out of him.
“You don’t have to do this, Bex. I know you— Aw, shit,” he growled as I sucked on the very tip of it, flicking my tongue across the hole in the top.
This wasn’t the part I had issues with. That happened when it got to about an inch down my tongue. I don’t know why, but it was an automatic response. But, no blowjob would be complete with just the tip in your mouth, so I needed to do more.
I’d spent years working on getting my toothbrush back there to clean my tongue and could do it now, so maybe if I pretended it was that—without the bristles—I’d be able to do it?
Closing my eyes, I imagined I was brushing my teeth and very slowly moved farther down him. I wasn’t going to do magic tricks with my tongue until I knew how far I could take it, so all I did was suck and then breathe over it, making sure he was always feeling something from me.
“I don’t know what to do with my hands,” he rasped as they thudded on the mattress. “I want to put them in your hair, but if I do that, I just know I’ll lose control and push you down.”
Yeah, probably best not to do that, seeing as how I was getting that familiar blow job foe—the warning of an incoming wretch in my throat, signaling I’d taken a bit too much for now.
Sucking hard as I pulled back up to the top, I let my breath out to relax my throat and tried again. This time I was able to take a little bit more, so I went about repeating the motion as I held onto the base of him, determined to at least make it down his length to my where my hand was with my eyes shut.
The fact I couldn’t see anything was why I jerked when his finger touched my lips, tracing over the top one. “Look at me.”
The tone of his voice, like he needed me to do this, made me do just that. He didn’t look like a guy getting a blowjob, he was looking at me tenderly because he understood what it was taking for me to do this for him, and it meant everything to him.
“If it gets too much, stop, Bex. We’ve got all the time in the world to work on this, and I’m looking forward to every second.”
I’d just pulled up to the tip again when he said it, and I was so moved by what he’d said that my mouth opened, and I lost his penis from it. “I want all of those seconds with you.”
Smiling gently, he traced his finger over my bottom lip this time. “Ditto, baby, so we’re going to take them and make them beautiful. ”
Ah, to hell with it .
Swooping down, I sucked hard as I slid my mouth farther down him, determined I was going to meet my hand and blow his mind. Unfortunately, my gag reflex had other ideas as it kicked in just then.
The noise that came out of him was a mixture between a laugh and an agonized groan. “Is it wrong to let you know how good that felt?”
Maybe to him it did.
Remembering the advice I’d read online about how to stop yourself gagging, I turned my thumb in towards my palm and wrapped my fingers around it, squeezing the ever-loving shit out of it.
This had to work.
Moving the hand that was holding him all the way to the base, I pressed down harder…
And fucking gagged again.
I was determined, but each time I got to where the dangly bit in my throat was, the gag hit me, and tears were starting to roll down my face from the force of it. A new sense of determination hit me as I sucked and flicked the head, but then he reared up, knocking me away from his cock, and moved until I was lying on my back with him between my legs this time.
“What are you doing? I was in the z— Oh, my God!” It was my turn to groan it as he pulled my panties to the side and latched onto my clit without even needing to search for it.
I faintly registered the noise of tearing material but didn’t think anything of it as he plunged his tongue inside me. Someone could knock the walls down, and I wouldn’t care at that moment.
Swapping his finger for his tongue, he gently pushed it inside me as he moved back up to my clit, flicking and sucking it until I was on the edge. I was also taking notes on how he moved his mouth and hand. We might have different parts, but if it felt this good on me, maybe it’d feel right on him, too ?
As I came, I reached down and grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling his face into me as I cried out. I wasn’t intending to smother him, I just didn’t want him to pull away. Plus, his hair was so soft that I couldn’t help it.
With two fingers still inside me, he gently rubbed against a spot that had me clamping my legs together without volition, trapping his hand in place as he kissed and licked his way up to my breasts, stopping when my t-shirt was above them.
“Every day with you is even better than anything I’d ever imagined they’d be, and I imagined a lot. Never in my life did I think I’d get all of my hopes and dreams, but here you are lying under me.”
Those words .
With the little cognitive functions I had given how hard I’d just come and the fact his fingers were pushing me back up the cliff, I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him into me. Eyes locked, he removed his hand from me and used it to move his cock into place, then slid slowly inside me.
“Your hopes and dreams were the same as mine,” I whispered, making him jerk slightly. “The problem was, I felt empty because that’s all they were. We can dream and hope for things we’ll never have, but few people get to live them out in real life. I get to do that every day, and I’m so full of happiness that it’s hard to breathe sometimes.”
At that moment, I was also full of him, and I didn’t ever want him to stop what he was doing.
As he pulled his hips back, dragging his length over areas and nerves that made me moan, he nodded his head. “This is us,” he told me as he pushed agonizingly slowly back inside. “All of you from your head to your toes, inside and out,”—he ground down into me—“is mine.”
Reaching down, I grabbed his ass with my hands, pushing him impossibly deeper inside. “The same goes for you. ”
His lips tipped up on one side in a smile. “Don’t you know, baby, I’ve always been yours.”
Then, kissing me, he went about blowing my mind. Sex with Logan was always great, but what’d happened and come to light tonight made it even better, like we had a deeper connection.
And, when I fell asleep afterward, one leg over his hips and tucked under his arm, I did it knowing that I’d lost one of the most important people in my life to get back one I’d lost seven years ago. It wasn’t fair, it wouldn’t ever be fair, but I’d found my place in the world.
I’d also found my future, and that’s what every day was working toward now.
Our future’s together.
And, just in case you were wondering—I didn’t give us food poisoning, either.