31. CHAPTER 31
Locke
Someone’s banging on my front door.
I register it from the level below consciousness first and finally open one eye. The ceiling of my bedroom, which is familiar.
The gray winter light coming through the curtains.
Livia’s arm across my chest.
I close my eyes and relish this feeling of completeness.
The banging continues.
Livia stirs and makes a sound against my shoulder that is not a word but is somewhere in the vicinity of What is that and make it stop.
I identify with the sentiment completely.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand. Eight forty-seven a.m.
We were supposed to be somewhere at nine.
I lie there considering whether I have to really answer the door and come up empty. The banging has settled into a patient rhythm now—not urgent, not going away.
“Will you just go let him in,” Livia murmurs.
I lean over and press a kiss to her temple. “Fine.”
I extract myself from under her arm and pull a pair of sweats from my drawer, all so I can get to the door before Arch wakes up the entire neighborhood.
The house is a rental in a quiet area about fifteen minutes from the performance facility. Nothing overly luxurious, but it has three bedrooms and a yard with actual trees. It’s not the land I’ve been looking at east of the city where I’d like to build, but it will do for the time being.
I pull open the front door.
Arch is on the porch in a jacket and a grin, a coffee carrier in one hand with three cups in it. He looks at my face, at the sweatpants, at the hour, and his grin widens which I find deeply irritating.
“You forgot,” he says.
“I didn’t forget.”
“You absolutely forgot.”
“I was informed of the time and I was managing it.”
“You were asleep.”
“I was horizontal and aware.”
He holds up the coffee. “I brought three.”
“Thoughtful,” I say and step back to give him room to enter.
He moves past me and I follow him into the kitchen where he sets the carrier on the counter and starts opening cabinets with the ease of a friend who knows he’s welcome to rifle through my belongings.
“Mugs?” he says.
“Second cabinet.”
He finds them and starts to transfer the coffee.
I watch this happen and think about the fact that a teammate is in my kitchen making himself at home and I am not calculating the equation I always do, the one about proximity and exposure and the specific cost of letting people have access to your space.
I watch him look for the sugar. “Third drawer,” I say.
“Got it.” He finds it, turns around, and leans against the counter. Looks at me with those easy eyes. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Livia?”
“Also fine.”
He nods like this is the answer he expected and is satisfied with it.
“Rome’s meeting us there,” he says. “Boss is already there, which means he’s either been there since it opened or he slept there.”
“Neither would surprise me.”
“Neither would surprise me either.” He picks up his mug. “But hurry up… we got ten minutes.”
I take one of the other mugs and go back down the hallway.
Livia is awake.
She’s on her back with the duvet pulled up and her hair spread across the pillow with her phone in her hand as she scrolls. She looks up when I come in.
I hoist the mug.
She sits up enough to take it, wraps both hands around it, looks at me over the rim. “Arch?”
“Arch. He’s in the kitchen.”
She takes a drink. “Does he know I’m here?”
“He brought three coffees.”
She chuckles with amusement. “He brought three.”
“Apparently he’s a thoughtful person.”
She smiles. “He is, actually.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. The morning light does beautiful things to Livia’s eyes, and I could stare at them forever.
She chuckles.
I tilt my head. “What?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head slightly. “You just look—” She stops.
“What?”
“Comfortable,” she says. “Effortlessly at ease. In your own house, with your teammate in your kitchen, a woman in your bed.” She sips, smiling at me over the lip of her cup. “It looks good on you.”
The thing about Livia is that she says simple things like that and doesn’t make them into huge moments. She just observes and moves on, leaving me with the feeling of being seen and understood. It’s taking some getting used to, but I wouldn’t ever change it.
“You don’t have to come,” I say hesitantly, but I really want her to. “If you’d rather—”
“I want to come.”
“It’s going to be loud. Boss is already there.”
“I like Boss.”
“Everyone likes Boss. That’s not evidence of good judgment.”
She sets her coffee on the nightstand and pushes the duvet back and swings her legs over the side of the bed. I watch as she gets dressed and have no complaints whatsoever.
She stands but I grab her hand, pulling her toward me.
“Hey,” she says softly, moving into me to settle between my legs.
“Hey.”
“We’re okay,” she says quietly. Confidently. The way she states things when she wants to make sure they’ve landed in the right place.
“Yeah,” I murmur.
“Good.”
She squeezes my hand once and lets go before heading into the kitchen. I sit on the edge of the bed with my coffee and listen to Arch open another one of my cabinets in the kitchen. No telling what he’s looking for now.
I think about the parking lot. The karaoke stage. The specific feeling of standing in front of all those people and saying the most exposed thing I’ve ever said out loud and having the room come back at me the way it did.
I think about what it cost to do that, how it cost considerably less than I thought it would.
I think about Van in the corridor after the Seattle game, telling me the only thing worse than it being hard is looking back from the other side knowing you didn’t go all the way.
Well, I went all the way.
I’m looking at the view from this side and it is… I search for the right word and realize I don’t need one that’s complicated.
It’s good.
Life is just fucking good.
“Locke.” Livia’s head appears around the doorframe. “Arch is eating your cereal.”
“Figures.”
“He says you have the wrong kind.”
“Tell him he’s in my house.”
She grins and disappears back into the hallway, and I hear her say something to Arch, hear his responding laugh.
I sit on the edge of my bed for another minute with my coffee and the gray morning light and I inhale a deep, satisfying breath.
Life is just fucking good.