Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Taco Tuesday sends a terrible message to our children. They need to know that tacos are acceptable any day of the week.
—Calli to Jasper
CALLIOPE
I watched in horror as my house burned down to the ground for forty-five minutes.
Jasper stayed outside, bundled completely up, as it burned.
I stayed inside seeing as the only clothes I had on my body were a pair of panties and a camisole that barely covered me.
I could’ve put something of Jasper’s on, but honestly, I didn’t want to see it from closer up.
Jasper wasn’t the only one outside, either.
There were several other men neighbors who were also outside, watching right along with him.
The fire department was approximately four and a half miles away, and they’d been trying to get to my house for the entire duration that it took for my house to burn.
They were currently stuck halfway, unable to get up a hill with the biggest truck they had filled with water.
Since they couldn’t tap into the fire hydrants due to the extreme cold—what were the odds that my house would burn down when the cold kept the firefighters from doing something like tapping into a hydrant?—they’d done the next best thing.
Only, that truck hadn’t been able to make it.
We did have several police officers watching the house burn as well, as well as the fire chief in his personal vehicle who lived, surprisingly, right down the road from us.
He was the only reason we knew that the firefighters wouldn’t be making it.
The only thing that saved Jasper’s house and the one on the other side of me was the snow and ice.
The fire had burned so hot that it’d melted the snow and ice that was nearest my house, and had kept it from getting out of control.
Jasper walked over to the fire chief that’d been checking out my truck for some reason—it’d also burned down completely—and spoke with him several minutes before turning around and coming my way.
He waited for me to back up before he pushed the door to his carport open and came inside.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Jasper asked once he’d breached his house.
“The bad,” I said simply.
He pulled off his gloves, then cupped my face with his cold hands.
A violent shiver shot through me, but I didn’t make him stop.
“Your house is unsalvageable.”
That I knew.
“Everything is a total loss,” he continued.
I looked over at the large man and shook my head. “I think that I’m capable of figuring that out on my own, Jas.”
“But there’s still good news,” he said.
I sighed, not seeing how there could ever be good news when your house had completely burned down with all your worldly possessions in it.
“The good news is, your truck was what started it.”
That stupid truck.
I couldn’t believe we’d paid that exorbitant fee to get it towed here last night and it’d caught my freakin’ house on fire.
I looked at him in shock. “Could you repeat that?”
But he didn’t need to.
I’d heard completely fine.
“And there is still more good news,” he continued.
I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “What?”
“Now, you have no reason not to move to Forney for that job,” he pointed out.
“You’re going to get a pretty good penny back from the insurance for the house.
You’ll be able to pay off the mortgage that’s left.
Oh, and once I’m done with that dealership, they’ll be paying you a hefty sum for constantly ignoring your concerns.
Apparently, the reason your gas was always going low was because there’s a small leak in the fuel line.
It’s been leaking onto the driveway, and into the bushes by your house.
But since it’s been so cold over the last week, it’s just been building up on top of the frozen solid ice, for at least three of those days.
The car sparked at some point, and the whole truck went up in flames.
Then the side of the house where all that gas had leaked.
The big bang and whoosh we heard that woke us up was the gas igniting. ”
“I don’t…” I hesitated. “But I don’t want to move to Forney.”
He was already talking again, pulling me up into his arms and walking me backward so that I could sit on the counter.
He made sure to tuck the ends of the blanket in close to my body before he leaned both of his hands on either side of my knees and said, “You’ll live with me. We’ll rent you an apartment in Forney.”
He had it all planned out.
But still…
“We’re so new, Jas,” I pointed out. “What if you find out that you hate me?”
“I don’t think anything you could do could make me hate you,” he admitted. “And I think you know that. You’re just scared right now, and that’s okay.”
My phone rang, and I absently picked it up and stared at the screen. “My sister.”
“You didn’t call her?” he asked, quirking his brow at me.
I shook my head. “Why would I call her? It was too early in the morning, on Christmas for that matter, for me to call and tell her that. It’s not like I was inside it or anything. I was over here, with you.”
He pulled the phone from my hand and answered it with, “She’s okay.”
There was some high-pitched screeching on the other end, but I pushed away and walked back to the window, staring at the wreckage.
Yeah, my house was definitely unsalvageable.
There would be nothing salvaged from the mess that was left. No clothes. No momentos. No nothing.
The one good thing I could say about it all was that I’d left my purse in Jasper’s truck last night, which luckily had been parked behind mine and only received minimal damage.
“What’s with that look on your face?” Jasper came up to lean on the doorjamb beside me, not facing the smoldering remains of my house, but me.
I turned from the peeling paint on his front bumper to him. “I was looking at your truck.”
“What about it?”
“I left my purse in it last night,” I said. “I was just thinking that was lucky.”
“Very lucky,” he conceded. “Though, Apollo could’ve had some forgeries for you in an hour. It’s much easier to actually do real identities than fake.”
I turned so that I could bury my face in his chest.
He wrapped his arms around me, still fully dressed in his outer clothes that smelled like smoke.
He pressed his mouth to the top of my head and murmured, “Your sister heard about the fire from Doc, who heard about it from one of his buddies. They recognized me. They didn’t know it was your house that’d burned down until I told her just now.”
I sighed. “This is such a mess.”
“Convenient.” He sounded slightly upbeat. “I mean, now you have no choice but to move in with me.”
“I could move in with my sister,” I pointed out.
“But then you’d have eight thousand kids in your bed every night because neither one of those dumbasses knows how to tell their kids to sleep in their own bed.”
He did have a point.
My sister had been bitching about how the kids liked to sleep with them, and she barely got any alone time with Doc. When I’d pointed out that she was the reason that they stayed in bed with her, she hadn’t wanted to hear it. But she did like to continue to complain.
And the kids were all for sharing the love and slept with Kent and Anders just as much as they slept with Doc.
“It’d be kind of weird to have you sleeping over at my sister’s house.” I giggled.
His hand came up to sift into my hair. “And I’d be there. Every night. It’d be really awkward.”
I snorted. “I don’t think you and me being together will smooth over well, but if you can weather the storm, so can I.”
“They’ll hate that you’re with me,” he agreed. “They’ll be all ‘she’s a club princess and you’re a piece of shit.’”
The way he said it was kind of nasally and whiny, which had me giggling all over again.
“I guess I’ll just have to agree to disagree with you.” I looked up at him.
He looked down at me, the beanie still snugly on his head, pulled down far enough that his hair was all tucked underneath it. It gave me a great view of his face.
One-half smooth and unblemished. The other scarred and unforgiving.
I kissed him on the scarred half.
“Why do you do that?”
I tilted my head slightly. “Do what?”
“Only kiss me on the scarred side,” he said. “You always touch me on the scarred side, too. You smack me all the time on the scarred forearm. Yet you barely ever touch me on the unblemished side.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just where I gravitate to.”
“The ugly side?” He looked disgusted.
“You don’t have an ugly side,” I told him honestly.
“I like all of you. No, I love all of you. I love your scars. I love your scowls. I love that line that appears on this side, but not on that one.” I touched him between his eyes.
“And I especially love the way your lips feel when they’re running over my flesh. ”
He swallowed hard. “You love me?”
I hesitated, wondering if it was too soon to tell him that yes, I was desperately in love with him.
But then I caught a beam on my house collapse, which started a chain reaction to where all that was left standing fell into a cloud of sparks and dust.
Life was too short.
I needed him to know how I felt.
“I’ve stupidly been in love with you since the very first time I laid eyes on you.”
His eyes went hot. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“Well, I can’t say the same,” he admitted.
“You were too young when we first met. But it’s been increasingly harder to stay away from you since I met you.
Each year that passed, I fell just a little bit deeper.
” He chuckled as he cupped my cheeks with both of his hands.
One scarred. One not. “And look at me now, so damn in love with you that I had to trick you into moving in next to me.”
I blinked at him. “You what?”
His lips kicked up at the corner, but the smile was lopsided. His scarred side didn’t work quite as well as the other.
But, despite the blemished skin, I could still make out just the slightest of indents.
One day, when we were old and gray, I hoped to see those same dimples on my children’s faces.
“Doc mentioned you were looking for a place. And I knew the place next to me was up for sale.” He shrugged.
“I helped them move and everything just so I could get them out of their house faster. And when Searcy showed you this place, I made sure to stay inside so that you didn’t know that I was your neighbor.
” He cleared his throat. “She didn’t even know that I was your neighbor. She thought I just lived nearby.”
I sighed. “I was pissed at first, you know.”
“I know.” He snorted. “You made very sure to let me know.”
“I was pissed because it was hard enough staying away from you when we were in the same places. If we were next-door neighbors, I knew that you would figure it out.”
“I didn’t figure out a thing until last night,” he admitted.
The knock on the door next to our faces had both of us looking sideways.
The police officer who’d been working the scene waved, smiling apologetically for interrupting us.
Jasper pushed open the door for him and said, “Hey, man.”
“Hey.” The officer nodded at Jasper. “We’re heading out. Nothing we can do here now. The firetruck turned around, but since nothing is left to burn…”
“Appreciate it, Gable.” Jasper offered him his hand.
“You’re welcome.” He turned his gaze to me. “Sorry for your…loss?”
I grinned. “No one was harmed. I’ll be okay.”
He nodded and went to turn around, but stopped and turned back.
“So, the weirdest thing happened. I was outside walking the perimeter and found two plastic boxes filled with cookies right outside where the kitchen was.” He pointed at the porch right next to Jasper’s bike.
“I picked them up and put them there. They look unharmed.”
I couldn’t stop it.
I threw my head back and laughed.
“We have to go,” I said as I allowed my hands to smooth into Jasper’s hair and tug.
“The roads are still bad,” he tried.
“The roads became passable an hour ago and you know it.” I chuckled. “Get up here and fuck me.”
He settled between my thighs and grasped his cock with his scarred hand, giving it a rough two pumps before a bead of precum wept from the tip.
I licked my lips at the sight, but didn’t get a chance to swipe it off with my finger.
He was already notching his cock at my entrance and pushing inside, slowly filling me to the absolute brim.
His hands smoothed up the length of my belly, latching onto me just below my rib cage, before he roughly yanked me back onto him.
He growled, causing my toes to curl.
Damn, this man and the sounds he made.
“Fuck, you feel so tight,” he rasped. “Are you okay?”
I pushed myself back against him, urging him on without uttering a word.
He understood the assignment and started to roughly fuck me, his hands tightening like vises on my waist.
I dropped down to my elbows, then my shoulders where I buried my face into the mattress.
The sheets smelled like him, and that only turned me on more.
Woodsy.
Pine and Dial soap.
I clawed at the sheets, desperate for something to hold on to when he began to pick up the pace.
My entire body clenched, ready to fall over but not quite there.
But before I could worry about a thing, he was snaking one hand around my hip to my front, where he pressed just above my clit.
That was all it took.
Just one light touch, and I was taking a leap off the edge, diving in deep into the most overwhelming orgasm I’d had yet.
I wasn’t sure it was possible for sex to get any better.
He was literally rocking my world, one orgasm at a time.
The loud grunt that followed my cry of pleasure that tore from my lips was enough to let me know that he’d followed directly in my footsteps.
His hips slammed against my ass, and he stayed planted until his release rushed out of him and filled me.
I gasped into the sheet underneath my face, finding myself somehow buried between a mountain of pillows.
He collapsed beside me but took me with him, pulling me onto my side and stayed planted deep.
His hands went around my body, holding on tight, as we both breathed deeply.
“So, so late.” He kissed my bare shoulder.
I giggled. “She’ll never know what we were doing.”