Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
TYLER
“Home sweet home!” I announce, tugging Sophie into my house and abandoning our bags in favor of pressing her against the wall and kissing the absolute shit out of her.
It’s been the best twenty-four hours of my entire fucking life.
After I surprised her in San Francisco, we spent the night together in her hotel, wrapped around each other, waking up every few hours to find each other in the dark, bodies moving together as if we couldn’t bear to be even inches apart.
And honestly, I couldn’t.
When we finally woke up in the morning and had strawberry pancakes on the terrace of her suite, we talked about spending a few days in California, doing touristy things during the day and then very sexy hotel things at night.
But we realized pretty quickly that home was the only place either of us really wanted to be.
“Home,” she says against my lips, her own curving up into a smile. “I like the sound of that.”
“Me too,” I say with a grin, trailing my lips over her jaw and down her neck, breathing her in and tasting her sweet skin, and fucking god, I just love her so much.
Sophie winds her arms around my waist, tilting her head to give me better access. “You know I’m not going home, right? I live here now.”
My heart takes flight at her words, the idea of living with her forever, me and her in the same place for the rest of our days, everything I ever could have wanted.
But I rein it in for the moment, because I’ve got a long game to play.
Taking a small step back, I raise an eyebrow at her. “You think so?”
Sophie shrugs, eyes sparkling. “I mean, most of my stuff is here, and your kitchen is already filled with my snacks. Your DVD collection is aces, your grilled cheese making prowess is unmatched, and you bought me a hundred thousand tiny cans of Dr Pepper that now live in your garage. You provide me with sustenance, and you fuck like a god. Your closet situation leaves something to be desired, but that’s a fixable problem, and you’re a quarterback, which makes you a champion problem solver. Why would I ever want to leave?”
I wasn’t planning on doing this today, but I couldn’t have scripted a better conversational lead-in if I was literally writing it myself.
My moment has arrived, and I’m a flexible sort of guy, so I decide to go with it.
Pressing one hand to the wall beside her head, I lean down and kiss her neck.
“I can think of exactly one reason why you would, actually, want to leave.”
When I stand back, Sophie is giving me her What the fuck is this asshole up to?
look, and I have to bite back a snicker.
“Okay well, obviously you aren’t telling me you don’t want to live with me, because you are so obsessed with me, if I even so much as tried to leave you would haul me back and lock me in the house until I promised never to do it again.
” She grins, twisting one of her curls around her finger.
“I love that for me, actually, and would really like to get straight to the part where we live together happily ever after, so why don’t you go ahead and tell me about the one reason I would want to leave so I can tell you you’re wrong, and we can get on with the business of living. ”
Laughing, and absolutely delighted with her, I wrap my arms around her in a tight hug, kissing the top of her head. “It’s probably better if I show you.”
“Why is my front door purple?” Sophie asks as I park at the curb outside her house.
I lift her hand, kissing the back of it. “Because you told me you wanted a purple door,” is all I say before I open the door and hop out, walking around to open hers. Leaning in, I unbuckle her seatbelt and tug her out of the car.
“When did I say that?” she asks, looking back at the door.
Grinning, I step forward and kiss her. “The night of our sixteenth birthday.”
Her expression turns confused, which makes me grin even wider as I grab her hand, leading her up the front walk. Taking a key from my pocket, I unlock the door and push it open, stepping back so she can walk in ahead of me.
The second we’re inside, Sophie freezes, her eyes roving the newly renovated space, cataloguing, I’m sure, the light green walls and the big squashy furniture.
The gleaming wood floors and the colorful area rugs and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with DVDs of our favorite movies and books we both love and little mementos of our friendship and our life together.
The big wooden coffee table perfect for holding snacks and the giant dining room table big enough to hold all the people we love.
“Oh my god,” she says in awe, walking over to one of the living room walls covered in picture frames of all shapes, sizes, and colors, hung in a cheerful sort of chaos.
In each frame is a birthday night picture from over the years, all eighteen of them no longer water damaged and broken, plus one empty space for the one from yesterday, right at its center. “You fixed them all.”
I shrug, coming up behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist. “I found a guy who could restore water damaged pictures. I could have just had them reprinted, but I liked the idea of you having the original ones I gave you. I hope you don’t mind that I hung them here instead of in the bedroom.
It felt right to have them downstairs where everyone could see. ”
Sophie leans her head back against my shoulder. “I always wanted them to be downstairs, but that felt weird since Sarah was living here with me. It’s nice to see them in their rightful place. And I like that you didn’t line them all up like soldiers and put them in matching frames.”
I kiss the side of her head. “Nothing about you says matching frames and a symmetrical gallery wall. You are color and light and chaotic frame-to-wall placement.”
She laughs, turning her head to kiss my jaw. “You know me so well.”
“I do,” I murmur, lips grazing her temple, wondering if my heart will just give out from the amount of love it holds for her. “I really, really do.”
We stand there together for a few minutes, eyes trained on the pictures, before Sophie starts studying the rest of the room. I can tell the second she sees the fireplace because her breath catches, her hand coming up to press against her chest as she turns in my arms. “Holy fucking shit, Tyler.”
Smiling, I flick her bracelets and link my finger with hers. “You like it?” I ask.
She turns to study it, taking in the soaring stone, the carved wooden mantle littered with picture frames and a vase of riotous blooms. And she laughs. “Yeah, Tyler, I like it. How did you know I would?”
I scoff, squeezing my finger with hers. “First of all, I know every damn thing about you, Sophie Sullivan, and don’t you ever forget it.
Second of all, the night we turned sixteen, we had a very serious conversation about our dream houses.
You said home stuff bored you—nothing new under the sun,” I say with a grin, because the fact that I’ve known her through all her ages and stages, and the things about her that have never, ever changed, settles me right down to my soul.
She is part of me. Every complex, brilliant, beautiful inch of her.
“But you also told me there were a few things you thought would make the perfect house. A purple door. A big stone fireplace with a carved wooden mantle. Furniture comfortable enough to sink into for days and color literally everywhere. An office where you could do all your genius work. A closet…”
“The size of a bedroom,” she finishes with a grin. “With a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and pink carpet on the floor. Are you telling me somewhere in this house is a closet the size of a bedroom?”
I grin, closing the rest of the distance between us and sliding my free arm around her waist, dropping a kiss on her nose. “With a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and a pink carpet on the floor.”
“Okay,” she says, looking around the room. “So, when you said you were going to take charge of my renovations because I didn’t want to deal with it, what you really meant was…”
She trails off, and I finish the sentence for her. “I was going to make us a home we could live in together with all the things you wanted most.”
“Things I told you I wanted approximately eleven years ago and then never mentioned again.”
I tug her closer to me, laying my lips on hers.
“Eleven years or eleven thousand years, I never would have forgotten. I remember everything you’ve ever told me.
Everything about you. You’ve been my best friend for my entire life, Soph.
My favorite person in the world. Every detail of you is burned into my brain, and all I’ve ever wanted is to make you happy.
To give you all the things you want most. To know you—your mind and your heart and all the amazing things that make you, you.
That was true before I fell in love with you, it’s even more true today, and it will be true as long as my heart is beating in my chest and there is air in my lungs.
I wanted to handle your house because it was something I could do for you.
Then I realized I was in love with you—the deep, always, forever kind of love—and it became something I could do for us. ”
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a key, pressing it into her palm and closing her fingers around it, keeping her hand in mine.
“I changed the locks and made us each a key. My house belonged to me, and before the flood, this house was yours. I thought I could make your post-flood house into something that could be ours. Live here with me, Soph. Or in my house if you hate everything I did here, or on the dark side of the damn moon. I don’t care where I live, as long as I get to be there with you.
The only home I want is the one I get to have with you. ”
“Goddammit,” she mutters, pressing her forehead to mine. “Why are you perfect?”
I bring my hands up to cup her face. “I honestly don’t know, but I really am quite something.”
She bursts out laughing, her arms wrapping around my waist and her head resting on my chest. “So, I get the gallery wall and the fireplace I love and the office and closet I’ve always wanted. What do you get?”
Holding her tightly to me, I kiss the top of her head, her hair tickling my chin. “I get you.”
She steps back, her eyes saying You are so full of shit right now.
Grinning, I shrug. “There’s a kickass gym in the basement, and I had a soda fountain installed in the kitchen just like my dad, although I added Dr Pepper to it, so that’s kind of for you too.
I put a sixty-inch range with ten burners in the kitchen so I can cook a million things at once, and I had four showerheads and a giant shower bench installed in the primary bathroom.
Although, that’s also kind of for you,” I say with a lascivious wink that makes her laugh, but I’m not laughing because I’ve imagined fucking her in that shower approximately eight hundred times since the shower heads went in, and I would really like to make that a reality as soon as humanly possible.
“So, what do you say, Soph? Wanna live here with me?”
She studies me, adorable glint in her eye. “What about Sarah? She lives here too.”
I shake my head. “Not anymore. She’s moving into my house. Unless you hate this one and want to stay in mine. You get first dibs.”
“You’re giving her your house?”
I shrug. “I don’t need it anymore, and selling it is a huge pain.
Whenever she decides she doesn’t want to live there anymore, I’ll deal with selling it, but in the meantime, Maya gets her house back, Sarah gets a house of her own, and I get to shack up with the hottest woman alive.
So, what do you say, Soph?” I step forward, bringing my hands to either side of her neck and sweeping my thumbs over her jaw.
“I love you,” I say quietly, as serious as I’ve ever been.
“You are the love of my life, the best person I know, and my favorite person in the world. Be here with me, Sophie. Let’s make this home together and live in it forever, just you and me. ”
Sophie rises up on her tiptoes and lays her lips on mine. The kiss is slow and deep, the love that pours out of her making my heart lift and sing. When she pulls back, she grins, pressing a kiss to my jaw. “Forevs, Harry.”
Grinning back, I flick her bracelets and link my finger with hers. “Forevs, Sal.”