Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Two rules to live by:
Watch how you speak to me.
Drink your water.
—Jasper’s secret thoughts
JASPER
I snuck home in the middle of the night, shivering at the cold.
I was still in sweats and a t-shirt and had no shoes on, but I had to go home to get her the presents I’d been planning to anonymously give her.
There would be no anonymity now.
I wanted her to know what I was giving her.
I also wanted her to know that I paid attention.
After sneaking into my house, I walked to the thermostat and kicked the heat up higher—sixty was just too cold for what we were experiencing right now—and headed for the small tree I’d put up.
It wasn’t much.
Just a little one I’d bought at the Dollar Store for Sophia and her kids.
But that was where I’d stored all the gifts for everyone, including the four that I’d gotten for Calliope, that I thankfully no longer had to hide.
After tucking everything under my arms to carry outside, the lights flickered and went out.
I waited to see if they would come back on, but sure enough, my generator started up a few minutes later.
I hesitated, not sure that I wanted to take everything over to Calli’s place if I would have to turn around and bring it all back.
I’d just stepped out of my house with the presents when she texted.
Calli:
Where are you?
I felt something in the vicinity of my heart start to react at her instant reach out.
I headed back outside and across the lawn to her house.
When I got to her door, I walked inside and called out, “Calli?”
While I waited for her reply, I tucked the presents underneath her tree.
“Here.”
I looked to the side to see her munching on a frosted sugar cookie.
“Geez, do you ever stop eating?”
She snorted and said around a bite of cookie, “Not really. If it’s there, I eat it.”
I caught up the blanket from the back of the chair—one she must’ve had wrapped around herself at some point because it was still warm with her body heat—and wrapped it back around her shoulders. Once it was tightly around her, I picked her up and tossed her over my shoulder.
She squeaked, and I felt crumbs leak down the gap in my pants.
“You just spit crumbs down my back,” I pointed out. “I think there’s a crumb in my crack.”
She reached her hand in my pants, tickling my ass as she did.
“Hey!” I jostled her.
She giggled and laughed, reaching so far into my pants that she was practically tickling my taint.
My very sore taint.
“You go much farther and touch my taint, and I’m going to drop you,” I told her bluntly, though I’d never drop her no matter what. “My taint is raw as shit right now.”
She snorted out a laugh, pushing her hand down farther to loosen the leg of my underwear so she could free the crumbs that were most definitely there.
“No crumbs.”
“Sure,” I said as I carried her out the door and to my place.
My feet were downright freezing by the time I made it into my house.
Once I set her on her feet, she took a look around. “Nice.”
I looked around with her.
My house was decorated by my sister, and you could tell.
I had fluffy pillows that “contrasted beautifully with the deep green of my couch” according to my sister. I had the biggest couch we could fit in the space that was so soft and fluffy that no male would’ve chosen it on his own.
The walls were a creamy beige, and the floor was hardwood and “blonde.”
My sister had decorated it from top to bottom, and I’d let her do it all because I hadn’t cared.
“My sister,” I answered for her. “She hated that I was staying on a futon. She bought all the furniture. Picked out the paint. Redid my floors. Updated my kitchen.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I guess this’ll be what mine looks like when I finally find the time to decorate.”
She hadn’t decorated yet, and still hadn’t put together the couch, so I didn’t see that happening for her anytime soon.
“You could always just move in here and sell your place, and then we can enjoy my decorated house together.”
She choked. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t think the world is ready for that.”
“We’ve been dancing around this for years,” I pointed out.
“And there are no rules here. We do what we want, and what we feel comfortable with. If your immediate disagreement with the suggestion was because you weren’t ready, that’s fine.
But if your disagreement is because you think it’s too soon because it’s socially unacceptable, then that’s their problem. Not ours.”
She looked at me with deep consideration in her eyes before she said, “We fight like cats and dogs. I’m a slob and you’re…” She took a long look around my house. “Not. I don’t think you’re really thinking through what you’re saying.”
My lips twitched. “The reason my place isn’t messy is because I use the same cleaning lady as Apollo and Dru. She cleans my place once a week, which was today while we were dealing with your arrest.”
She shook her head. “Was that seriously today?”
I looked at my watch to see that it was well past three in the morning. “Well, yesterday at this point. It’s three.”
She sighed. “That’s probably why I’m so tired.”
My grin was soft as I said, “Let’s go to bed.”
She followed along with me and said, “Just to sleep, right?”
I snorted. “For now.”
She got to the bedroom before me, and I walked in behind her, pulling the huge comforter that I rarely ever used off the bed and letting it fall to the foot of the bed.
“You don’t sleep with that, I’m guessing?”
“Nope,” I said. “It’s suffocating.”
“But you do sleep with a blanket, at least. Right?”
“Right,” I said as I went to the closet where I got the much lighter blanket and explained.
“My cleaning lady likes everything to look pretty. That’s why she puts all the ugly ass throw pillows Sophia bought me on the bed.
Along with the comforter and the top sheets.
I use this blanket and the normal pillows.
But no matter where I hide this damn comforter, she always seems to find it.
So I just let her do what she wants now. ”
“Dru complains constantly about how Rose puts her bathmat back against the counter. But she always moves it back because the counters are always so cold and she hates when her bare skin touches them. Dru moves them back. Rose moves them back.” Calli giggled as she put a knee into the bed, baring her creamy, smooth thigh to my gaze.
My erection instantly unfurled to life, and I shook my head at myself.
All it takes is some leg from Calli and I’m ready to go.
Jesus, I sure wasn’t a teenager anymore, but my body was acting like it.
I didn’t make a move, though, when I crawled into the bed beside her.
The lights were on in the living room, and they were casting an annoying glow into the bedroom, but Calli was crawling across the bed into my arms, and I couldn’t scrounge up the energy any longer to get up and turn them off.
It’d been a really long day.
I was exhausted, and I had this warm, sweet weight pressed against me that made me never want to move again.
Then she curled her arms around my neck, which brought the blanket she had wrapped around herself up higher, blocking my view of the light.
I reached blindly for the blanket at the end of the bed and covered us both with it before pulling her impossibly closer.
“Merry Christmas, Calamity.”
She squeezed my neck as hard as she could, which was admittedly not very much. “You’re such a jerk.”
“Your jerk,” I teased.
She melted into me. “Maybe I’ll consider moving in with you when you stop calling me Calamity.”
My hand smoothed down to her ass to pull her hips closer to mine. “Maybe I like teasing you because you get so feisty.”
“Or maybe you’re a sicko that finds annoying people and making them want to murder you fun,” she countered back.
I hummed in response, my eyes already growing heavy.
“Merry Christmas, Jas,” she whispered right before darkness pulled me all the way under.
I had a solid hour of sleep, which I noticed on the ceiling with my alarm clock illuminating the numbers, when I was woken by a deafening explosion.
I was out of bed and at the window in the next second, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.
“What is it?” Calli asked from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder to find her sitting up in the bed, blankets still cocooning her face, looking worried.
I stepped to the side so that she could see what I’d seen.
“My house is on fire!”