42. Reed
“It’s all yours.”
“I can’t.” She groaned and put her hand over her stomach. “I’m so full.”
He made a face at her refusal but went ahead and picked up the plate with the remains of a slice of chocolate cake that sat on the room service tray between them on the bed. She leaned her head back against the headboard, and briefly closed her eyes as she sighed, probably hoping he would finish off the dessert since they had definitely overordered in the haze of their celebratory mood.
And even though she had made his day—hell, his life—it was still her day, so it was only right that she had the last bite. He scooped it up and brought it to her lips, and the sensation made her eyes fly open. He nudged it closer to her lips and she pressed them shut, shaking her head and voicing her disapproval by way of a muffled mmm mmm. He kept pushing, though, until she erupted into laughter, giving him the opening he needed to push the final bite into her mouth, but not without scattering the dark brown crumbs across her shirt and leaving a smear of frosting on her upper lip.
“Reed,” she cried, laughing through the scowl she tried to maintain.
He couldn’t keep himself from laughing at her as he set the plate back down on the tray and watched her lick the last traces of frosting off her lips. “Now you’re done.”
He hoisted the tray off the bed and set it on the nightstand, then leaned back against the headboard with her. A smile crept onto her face and she reached across the empty space between them to cover his hand with hers.
“This is the best day I’ve had in a long time.”
He smiled back at her admission which was equally true for him. The last time he’d laughed like this was also the last time they had shared a bed.
“I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to pick up the phone just to say hi or text you because something reminded me of you,” she admitted.
“Like what?” He turned his body towards her. “I want to know everything I missed.”
She looked far off, biting her bottom lip as she tried to remember. “Oh, I’ve got a good one,” she said softly. “I was on a tour of this one firm, and in their cafe area, they had this coffee machine.” She held out her free hand to illustrate the shape. “It was at least three times the size of King and Associates’ machine with so many buttons and options. It was ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head as she started to crack herself up a little bit. “I could just imagine your head kind of exploding if you saw it, never mind tried to operate it,” she finished, her giggle turning into a laugh.
“I’d have walked out of the interview for that reason alone.”
“I should have because it ended up telling me all I needed to know about the place.”
“How so?”
“It was just over the top,” she said, crinkling her nose in disgust at the memory. “Pretentious. Simple things should be simple.”
He let out a laugh as she used his words. Words she always teased him for saying, but he stood by that sentiment. “You know, there’s something I always wondered that I guess I can finally ask now that you made your decision.”
She tilted her head curiously at him.
“How do they convince all of you top grads to join these big firms where you just become another cog in the machine?”
She smiled as she considered his question. “I guess it’s like carrying a Louis Vuitton bag or driving a Range Rover. It’s a status symbol. I get it. I bought into that dream for a while.”
“But why use your intelligence and hard work to prop up someone else’s name when you could be making your own?” he pressed.
“That’s not what drives everyone. Also, the salaries are absurd,” she admitted. “Like way too much considering what they’re actually doing, which isn’t much at all.”
“Well they have to deal with the cost of apartments up there,” he supposed. “Now that’s absurd.”
“Is that what you think?” she teased.
“That’s what I know,” he shot back with a certainty that caused her to give him a look. His smile faded a little, and he started to backpedal. “I mean, that’s what they say, right?”
“Reed…did you?”
“I looked into it,” he admitted.
“But you’ve got the assistant district attorney position here.”
“I do, but I had to see,” he answered honestly. “I didn’t stand a chance up there, though.”
He gave her a lopsided grin, unbothered by the “failure,” but her lip trembled and eyes became glassy. She looked down at their hands, and the space between them that shouldn’t be there now or ever again.
“They don’t deserve you,” she whispered.
He watched with rapt attention as she drew her legs up and raised herself onto her knees. She let go of his hand and placed her hands on the sides of her skirt, inching it up her thighs so that she could climb onto his lap. Her knees came to rest on each side of his thighs, but before she could lower herself onto him, his arms were over her shoulders and around her back, pulling her closer. Their lips met for the first time in months, desperately trying to reclaim what they had left behind that January morning. She moaned into his mouth. Her core and then neck went slack causing her face to fall away from his while her hands clung desperately to his sides to anchor her. They had made it back together and were picking up right where they left off. He knew that they would be all right, and now he wanted her to feel it.
“I missed you,” she breathed out as she ran her hands up his side and over his chest.
“I missed you, too. You have no idea,” he whispered into her ear between placing kisses along her cheek and down her neck as his hands slid down over her chest and began undoing the buttons that ran down the front of her shirt.
* * *
Reed traced his thumb back and forth along the smooth curve of her cheekbone, her beautiful face aglow by the lights from the nearby high-rises shining through the window of the hotel room. It felt like the middle of the night as dark as it was, but a quick glance at the alarm clock behind her showed that it was just a little past ten.
“So when you make partner, is your face going to be all over King, Hendricks, and Associates billboards along the highway?” he teased.
“Never,” she huffed out. She covered his hand with hers and clasped it, bringing it to her lips for a quick kiss before resting it in the sliver of space between their naked bodies on the still made bed. “When you become D.A., am I going to see your face on the news every night? Holding press conferences about all of your cases?”
“Not if I can help it,” he scoffed, which was kind of ironic considering neither of them seemed to be very shy, at least not with each other.
“It won’t be the same going back to work without you,” she said with a small pout.
“I’m still gonna see you.”
“Yeah, but I’ll miss working with you. We work well together.”
“We do a lot of things well together,” he reminded her in a husky whisper, punctuating it with a kiss to illustrate his point.
“Mmm, yeah, we do.” She said, basking in the afterglow of one of the many things they did so well. “But you could, you know, come back to Al’s if you wanted to. He’ll always have a spot for you, and I wouldn’t mind.”
“No, that’s your dream, not mine. I’m happy with where we ended up.”
“It was meant to be,” she whispered. “You said that.”
He nodded, remembering the night just a few months ago that he thought they had it all figured out. Turns out they did, but they just had to work at it a little longer and harder. “It is, but we don’t have to dive right in,” he cautioned. “You can get settled, make sure this is still what you want.”
“Yeah, we could try, but I doubt we’d be any good at sticking to that.” She clasped his hand tighter and gazed into his eyes. “I’m in, Reed. I’m not looking to get married and have kids anytime soon, but you’re my partner. I want to take all of this on together.”
He nodded and pulled their clasped hands to his lips, returning the kiss she had left there earlier. “Then we want the same thing.”