six months later
I pulled into X’s driveway like a bat out of hell. I couldn’t help it. The car he’d lent me was a zippy little thing, with super tight handling around corners. Which was why he never rode with me. The tires squealed right before I flung it into park and I giggled happily, as I always did. This red little number didn’t require even the littlest bit of duct tape, and I didn’t have to kick the door to close it.
The house was dark, but I could see lights of the living room lighting up the backyard, which meant X was still up, waiting for me. I found it disarmingly sweet that he worried about me the way he did. If he had it his way, he’d eat his every meal at the diner I still worked at, just to keep an eye on me during my shifts. But I told him unless he wanted to live on anti-diarrhea medicines, he’d be better off eating his cardboard frozen pizzas instead.
The argument always led back to him telling me to quit. A topic that he’d never win. It didn’t matter to me that my monthly—hell, my yearly—income was pocket change to him. My income paid for our groceries, and that was something I was damned proud of.
Our groceries. It gave me shivers a little, still, even though I’d officially lived with Xavier for a whole month. Unofficially, I’d shared his bed nearly every night of the last six months. The our thing was still new, but like a shirt worn over time, it was something I was getting used to—something I coveted. I didn’t want anything more than I wanted to keep this domesticated shit up with X.
A shadow crossed in front of the window, and I knew he’d heard me pull in rather obnoxiously into the driveway. I flipped the visor down and checked my makeup, slicking on some more lipstick and finger combing my hair. Just because I’d worked a double didn’t mean I wanted to look like I had. That was another new thing for me—wanting to look good for him. He was so effortlessly good-looking all the damn time.
Xavier, first thing in the morning, his hair all messy and his smile sleepy? Good Lord, swooooon.
At breakfast, stuffing his face with cereal—the sugary shit his mother would have a coronary over? I wanted to toss the whole bowl and have him take me right on the counter.
Right before a workout, when he was all clean and his sweats hung in that hot way right off his hips? I was sure I could give him a more powerful workout.
Right after a workout, when that sweat dripped off him and his chest heaved with exertion? Surely, he could squeeze in one more workout. With me. If you know what I’m sayin’.
Sex, that’s what I’m saying. Sex. That man made me feel like a bunny intent on procreating. When I told X that once, he laughed at me. “Bunnies are prey animals,” I’d told him. “They must reproduce in mass numbers if they’re going to survive.”
He’d merely given me a raised eyebrow. “I hardly think you’re prey—for anyone. And I don’t think we’re ready to procreate.”
My answering cringe had probably answered that for him. “I can only just care for myself. I couldn’t care for a human baby us.”
X had only smiled at that, but the talk of babies had scared me enough that I’d briefly debated doubling up on my birth control—which, I know, would’ve been stupid and pointless.
I slid out of the car and took care in shutting the door. X had intended on it being a gift, but it was such a preposterous idea, really. He’d researched cars for weeks before purchasing this one. I’d refused to allow him to put it in my name. Even though he’d all but forced me to finally, officially move in, I still held onto this fear that one day he’d wake up and wonder what the hell he was doing with me. Doc Watkins would verbally throat punch me for thinking that way, but X was the very best person I knew that it often felt like this whole life was a hallucination. One day, he’d pinch me and I’d wake up in my garbage dump of an apartment, peeing in a cup my parole officer handed me.
I walked in through the back door—my preferred entrance ever since I’d broke in the first time, and the television was on—the late night news. I didn’t know why X watched that shit—all the car accidents only made him more anxious.
Peeking down the hall, I didn’t see him anywhere. The television was so loud that I knew I needed to shut it off, but the remote was missing in action.
“Police have arrested a nineteen-year-old male on a charge of criminal homicide in connection with Thursday’s double shooting, believed to be a botched drug deal turned deadly. Anne-Marie is in West Englewood with the story.”
The screen panned to a blonde with hair that swung around her chin. “Thanks, Katherine. I’m here tonight on the 100 block of North Elm, where police responded to a report of a shooting on Thursday around two-thirty in the morning. Details are still forthcoming, but we can confirm that the victims are Chatham residents Dale Marshall and John Flint.”
My purse fell to the ground with a thud, my keys clanging on the wood floor. A photo of a surprisingly ungreasy looking Dale filled the screen. Relief filled me as soon as the shock left me, giving me barely any space to actually breathe around the sudden shift of emotions. I gripped the back of the couch as my eyes burned into Dale’s photo.
“Police were investigating Dale Marshall as the only named suspect in the disappearance of Ronald McNulty, a known associate of Mr. Marshall, who was twice-convicted in various drug trafficking crimes. With Mr. Marshall now deceased, that case may remain unsolved.”
I’d known, since Dale had dropped by my apartment, that it was only a matter of time before he came looking for me again, inquiring about Ron’s whereabouts. Moving in with X had solved the issue of Dale knowing where I was, but only temporarily.
But now that asshole would never find me. The reality was still setting in when I heard X come up behind me, and pick up my purse.
“Hey,” he said quietly as I continued to stare at the screen—the story had already moved onto the weekend’s weather, but my mind was a scattered mess and I still stared blindly at the screen. It wasn’t until he touched me that I blinked and turned into him.
“You okay?” His arm came around my waist and his eyes look concerned.
“I’m … fucking fantastic.” A smile split my lips. “Ronald’s old crony, Dale? He’s dead. As dead as dead gets.” I pushed my bangs away from my face, tension leaving my body so fast that I wasn’t sure what would keep holding me together. “He’s dead. He can’t come sniffing around me anymore.”
“That’s great,” X replied, both arms encircling my waist. “Does that take a load off?”
I nodded. “I kept waiting, you know? For him to show up, for him to figure it out. I didn’t want him to find me here—especially. But now the bastard isn’t going to find me at all.”
“Good.” He sighed and his hands trailed up my arms until he cradled my chin. “Welcome home,” he whispered against my lips before kissing me.
Like always, I melted into his touch. Home wasn’t a place—it was a person. It was my person. It was Xavier.
I hooked my arms around his neck and he lifted me so I was sitting on the back of the couch as he deepened the kiss.
“Mmm,” I hummed against his mouth. “Why did I miss you? I was barely gone.”
“It felt like a long time for me,” he said after pulling back. “No one here to make a mess, to rifle through my stuff, to change the channel every commercial.”
I brushed the hair away from his forehead. “Wow, you really missed me, didn’t you?”
“Mm-hmm.” He dropped another kiss to my lips and this time, I deepened it, gripping the back of his neck in a vice grip and not letting him pull away right away. “I’m quite used to your kind of disruption,” he said when I finally let go. “And now I’m hoping the present I got you is as good—or better than the gift the local news just gave you.”
“Oh.” I clapped my hands together. “You got me a present?”
“I did.”
Wriggling my nose, I asked, “It’s not a car, right? Because I told you, I don’t want your money. I mean, I’ll stay in your super nice house and drive the car you’re lending me, but I don’t want you to toss money at me like this is the Pretty Woman fantasy every nineties girl dreams of.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You’re something else, you know that?” He leaned in for one more kiss and then made me sit in a dining chair. “Wait.” When I opened my mouth, he pressed two fingers against my lips. “I know that talking is as natural as breathing for you, but for once—for me—just … don’t say anything for a minute, okay?”
I nodded resolutely and he left the room.
It didn’t take long for me to grow impatient. But the promise he’d coerced out of me was the only thing keeping me rooted in my seat, even as I heard his steps descend the stairs. His voice was low and quiet, and I resisted turning my head to look out as he passed the hallway entrance to the dining room and went all the way through the living room.
It took me a second to grasp what I was seeing. The ball of yellow in his arms was squirmy, and he was doing his best to hold onto it, but it clearly wanted to be let down. My heart caught in my throat, and I stared at Xavier with all the feeling that hit me like freight train. “A puppy?” I whispered.
At the sound of my voice, the puppy’s head stopped moving to look at me. It cocked its head to the side and took me in with the darkest, most soulful eyes I’d ever seen on any animal. And I fell—hook, line and sinker, in love. With the dog. Because I was already madly, crazily, profoundly in love with the man who held it.
X lowered the puppy to the floor. “It’s a boy,” he said, as the puppy scrambled across the wood floor like it was a race to get to me. I slid, my legs like jelly, to the floor in front of the chair just as the dog jumped onto me. It filled me then—all that love—like an overflow. A puppy. Something I’d wanted forever, but had never actually given voice to. And X had somehow known.
He licked my face over and over, his tail wagging so fast that his whole body shook. My arms wrapped around him instinctively, and I felt the first pinch of a tear in my eye. “A puppy,” I whispered again, but this time it wasn’t a question. His fur was so soft, his ears adorably floppy and too big for his head.
“I went to the Humane Society yesterday. Someone had dropped off a whole handful of these little guys, and when I bent down to pet them, this one launched onto me and wouldn’t leave me the hell alone—he attempted to lick me to death and nudge his head in every spot of my body he could reach. He reminded me so much of you. I had to have him.”
I closed my eyes, so filled with love and so overwhelmed with joy that I could hardly contain it. “Xavier,” I said. “You got me a puppy?”
“I got us a puppy,” he corrected.
That made the tears slide even faster out of my eyes. “He’s ours? That’s even better.”
“Are you okay?”
I was still on the floor, the puppy in my arms. I didn’t care that it practiced gently gnawing on my ears. I was so happy, that everything else was secondary.
“Okay? You got us a puppy.” My voice broke and I laughed. “He’s perfect.”
“That’s narcissistic, since I just got done telling you how much he reminded me of you.”
I lifted my hand so he could pull me to standing, puppy still in my arms. Once I was facing him, I couldn’t get close enough, I could wrap him around me hard enough to show my gratefulness. “You got us a dog.”
“Well, I remembered how you completely balked at the baby idea. But I figured we could make do with a puppy, right?”
“Yes.” I nodded and let go of the puppy with one hand so I could cradle his face. “You know what this means?”
“That one of us is going to have to be a pooper scooper.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I mean, yes. Good thing we still have those shovels, eh? But that’s not where I was going.” He didn’t just get us a dog. He made us a promise. He sealed his feelings for me with this dog—with this responsibility.
“Where were you going?” He took the dog from my arms when he wiggled more, and set him down on the ground.
I wrapped my arms around his middle and squeezed. “You got us a puppy. You can’t leave me now, because then we’re going to have to set up custodial arrangements and our puppy will be so traumatized that we’ll have to send him to Doc Watkins, and you’re going to have to pay for it because your pockets are a hell of a lot deeper than mine, and then the puppy is going to crap all over your floor because you’ll make him eat fancy food and at my house, he’ll get scraps—which he’ll obviously like more.”
He laughed. “You going to take a breath in there? The puppy won’t shit on my floor in retaliation.”
“Just wait.” I raised an eyebrow, and watched over his shoulder as the puppy lifted his leg against a bar stool.
“Lucy, I don’t have to. I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. You, me, and this puppy are going to live a happily ever after, even if that means he shits from the fancy food and prefers you because you’ll spoil him.”
“I love you,” I blurted out. It’d been sitting impatiently inside me, waiting to come out for so long. I didn’t know what I’d been waiting for until that moment—I’d been waiting to feel one-hundred percent sure that this wasn’t a dream. That this was for real. This wasn’t a hallucination; this was X and me—and it was perfect.
His eyes softened in the way that made my heart go soft, too, and he framed my face with his hands. “I love you, Lucy. This is what I want. You’re what I want.” He brushed his thumbs under my eyes. “I’ve never seen you cry.”
I sniffed. “Don’t get used to it. I only cry for puppies.”
“Ah, is that right? Maybe I’ll bring one home every day then.”
I laughed and pushed gently against his chest. “Yeah, right. I can’t imagine you’d be able to handle that. Especially considering little Bourne is pissing all over your custom bar stools.”
“Bourne, huh?”
I shrugged. “I figure it’s appropriate, since that’s the first time you called me out on my shit. But did you hear me? He’s pissing all over the place.”
“I heard you.” Without letting go of my hand, we walked into the kitchen. “The good thing about him being ours means we’ll be equally responsible for cleaning up the mess.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to clean up a mess together,” I quipped as I tossed the paper towels at him.
My heart rolled over in my chest at the way he smiled at me as he ducked down to clean up the piss. “And, as foreign as this sounds, coming from me especially, I hope it’s not the last.”
“I’m sure it won’t be.”
He stood, tossed the soaked paper towels and washed his hands. When he turned to me, I launched myself into his arms. “I’ve got an idea,” I told him in a whisper at his ear. “Let’s go upstairs, make another mess.”
His hands cupped my ass as he hauled me across the room. I squirmed in his hold when his voice went all husky. “I think that’s my favorite kind of mess.”
It was mine, too. But any mess with X was my favorite, really.
THE END