“Avery suspects something.”

I was at Sailor’s Grave.

I’d finished a shift at the bakery about an hour before, and Liam had dinner break built into his schedule. He’d asked me to come by and spend some time with him before I picked up Owen from daycare.

“That sounds a little dire. Are we overthrowing a government?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m just saying.”

The fact was, I was worried she had more than just slight suspicion. When I’d loaded up a box of sweets to go, she’d made that more than clear.

“Hot date?”

I swung around. I hadn’t heard Avery come out of the back. At last, her morning sickness was easing, and she was almost back to normal. Though the less sick she was, the more obvious it was that her increased attitude was definitely hormones.

She’d been able to put Daz in his place as long as I’d known her, but now the temper flares were almost scary. Well, to anyone except Daz himself, who seemed to think they were cute. The other night, she’d threatened to change the locks so he couldn’t get in, and he’d said she was adorable. He’d actually had to chase her down outside the farmhouse before she got in the car to the hardware store.

“What?”

She pointed at the box in my hand. “You stopped taking anything home with you a long time ago.”

I had. Right around the time all my fat pants stopped fitting. I’d only been working with her a few months. That’d been eye-opening. So I stuck with the goods she stocked up the farmhouse with and left the bakery alone.

“I was going to swing by Sailor’s Grave,” I told her. “Drop off a couple things while I was there.”

That sounded innocuous enough. Since even after being open for about two years, Avery still had a hard and fast policy that Disciples didn’t pay. It wasn’t uncommon. Disciples—including me—didn’t pay to get cars serviced at Savage Restorations, tattoos at Sailor’s Grave except for tips for the artists, or anything at the strip club, Candy Shop—which also extended to all the ladies on their male revue nights.

“Hanging out with Liam?” she pushed.

“Just stopping in before I go get Owen,” I evaded.

“You know, it’s okay if you’re getting close with him. It’s a good thing. Daz would think so, too.”

So, yeah. Suspicious. And that suspicion might not stay to just her for long.

I remembered what it was like when you had someone to come home to. For Joel and I, there hadn’t been secrets—except for gifts. We’d share everything, even about people the other one hardly knew. It was just about being a part of the other person’s life.

If Avery thought—correctly or not—that I was starting something with Liam, I’d have a hard time thinking she would keep that from Daz.

Hence my anxiety spiking since I left to head over here.

“Maybe it’s time to tell him,” Liam said, more than a hint of impatience there.

I wish I could say he was being unfair with that. As it was, it’d been three and a half weeks since I’d gone to his apartment that night. Three and a half weeks of us being together when we could actually find the time. When asking for a babysitter for date night or just having Liam over a lot wasn’t an option without giving things away, a lot of our time together was moments like this. Stolen bits of time where we were able to talk for a bit, texts, and sometimes a call after Owen was in bed.

It wasn’t enough—for either of us. Liam was letting onto his frustration more and more, and I couldn’t say I didn’t feel the same. It just didn’t outweigh my nerves about going to Daz and telling him what was happening.

“Lee,” I started, but he shook his head.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to rush you. I just hate not being able to see you. Makes me cranky.” He smiled a little as he said the last. “Besides.” He changed gears before I could say anything. “I have something I want to show you now anyway.”

He hopped to his feet, offering a hand to help me to mine. He gave it a firm squeeze before he released it. Sketch was at his station, working on a piece on a burly looking guy that could fit in with the Disciples. Walking around with my hand in Liam’s wasn’t a good call. Me coming by for his dinner—even if I was waiting to eat with Owen—was already pushing things.

I followed him through the shop, into the back hallway. When he led me to the studio, I was intrigued, if a little confused. I was lucky I could manage to color in the lines when Owen and I broke out the coloring books. I had no business being anywhere near a bunch of professional art supplies—I should barely be around the kiddie corner Sketch had put in there.

“Owen’s paintings from the afternoon I watched him are still here,” Liam said as he held the door for me.

I’d forgotten about those. In fact, I’d dismissed them when he first mentioned it that afternoon. When he’d said they needed to dry, I assumed that meant Owen had gone for his usual painting style of loading more paint on than the paper could hold. I thought Liam saying they needed time to dry was just a clever distraction.

“You kept them this whole time?”

He shrugged. “My mom never threw out our projects. No joke, she’s got fucking boxes of stuff in the garage. I wouldn’t want to throw out something he made for you. Though I did have to reinforce them with cardboard, or they’d have just dissolved in a pile of mess.”

He pointed to one end of the kid’s area, where a handful of big pieces of paper covered in smeared messes of color stood. The paint actually stood out off the flat surface from how heavy-handed Owen had been with it.

“How did you get them to dry?”

“We have an oven for setting dyes and stuff. I might have experimented with that until I got them to harden.”

All that so I could keep something Owen had made for fun. “I usually don’t get to keep them,” I admitted. “I can only keep ones that he does in crayon that don’t need to dry out.”

I moved in close, glad we were alone in here if only for a few minutes. Going up on my toes, I kissed him. “Thank you.”

He looked a little smug as I pulled away. “If that’s what I get just for drying out some wet paper, I’m interested to see what this will get me.”

“What what will get you?”

“The real reason I took so long to give you Owen’s paintings back,” he not-really-at-all explained, turning his back to me and walking over to a corner of the room. Shifting a couple canvases around, he pulled out one and walked it back to me. It was square, each side measuring around two feet if I had to guess. He carried it so the back was facing me, and I was more than curious at that point.

“What is it?”

In answer, he turned the painting around. On the canvas was an image very similar to my tattoo. A gypsy, but her features were different than the one he’d drawn for me before. They were different because they were mine. My likeness was in profile, and in front of gypsy-me was Owen, looking up to my eyes, our faces close enough that our noses almost touched.

I thought the tattoo he’d drawn for me was the most perfect thing anyone could design for me. I was wrong. This painting took that title by a mile.

“Lee,” I whispered, lost for words.

“You like it?”

I shook my head. I didn’t like it. “Like” was a pathetic word for what looking at that made me feel.

“It’s incredible.”

“Perfect?” he tried to tease, but I was too awed for it to hit the mark.

I moved toward him, taking the painting in a delicate hold, and setting it with care onto the counter. Then, I was on him.

I kissed him with everything I had, hoping it made him feel even a little of what that image did to me. I wanted him to feel as cherished as I did, knowing that he’d put that work into making something so beautiful for me.

In the back of my mind, I remembered that doing this here was risky, but I couldn’t care.

My voice was breathy when I pulled back to say, “It’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen, except Owen himself.”

He cupped my cheek, and the humbled expression he gave me told me I’d managed to succeed at least somehow with the kiss and those words. “Gypsy.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a hardship to paint that. You and Owen, the love you have for him, it’s beautiful. Even that day, when I didn’t think there was a prayer of it happening, I couldn’t help but want a piece of that. Now, I’ve got a chance. I want you to understand what that means to me.”

Looking at what he’d created, the care and passion that went into it, I couldn’t question that, even if the breadth of what he was implying scared me.

“We’ve got a long way to go before all of that, I know it,” he kept going. “I just want you to understand where I’m at.”

I nodded, lost for words.

I didn’t need them, not with Liam. He knew what he’d said was hard for me to hear, even as I wanted to savor each word. So he let me off the hook, kissing me again, if only because we still had the chance at privacy.

“I’m glad you like it, gypsy.”

I more than liked it.

I was starting to think I felt that way about a lot of things.