Nick

The party picks up after Zeus and his posse leave and return without costumes, giving us a wide berth, but Kami and I still don’t stay late. Mostly because I can’t stop touching her, and there aren’t enough hours before she has to go to work and I have to go to practice tomorrow and Manning’s spare bedrooms are already occupied.

We climb into my Cherokee in the parking garage after shedding our spider costumes, and she settles a hand on my thigh while I drive us out of downtown and toward her house.

“I didn’t know you don’t like clowns,” she says while we wind through the streets lit with solar-powered streetlamps.

I suppress a shudder. “Gammy went through a clown doll phase when Felicity was just starting all the ventriloquist stuff when we were little. You?”

“I got lost at the arena when we went to see the circus when I was about ten. My mom let me go to the bathroom by myself, and I accidentally found my way into the room where all the clowns were getting into the car. Three of them yelled at me, because I wasn’t supposed to be there, and then two more with the angry faces painted on had to escort me to security, and it was basically the most terrifying fifteen minutes of my life.”

She shivers, and I squeeze her hand.

Ares is right.

I don’t know enough about Kami. “What else?” I ask.

“What else did the clowns do?”

“No, what else scares you? So I know when I have to man up and take care of it.”

That laugh. Fuck, that sweet laugh gets me every time. And she’s so fucking generous with it, like she doesn’t know she could keep it to herself.

“You know those dreams where you’re back in high school and you missed your finals and you can’t remember your locker combination?”

I frown. “No.”

“No? Seriously?”

“I haven’t dreamed about high school since I was in grade school, plotting how to get all the girls in high school.”

She rolls her eyes out loud—swear she does—and I crack a grin in the darkness.

“I sometimes dream I’m driving to the arena for a game, but I keep taking wrong turns,” I confess.

“Close enough.” There’s a smile in her voice, and I’d confess to shitting my pants in a haunted house if it would make her happy.

Even though I never have.

And you can’t prove otherwise.

“Corn scares me too,” she says.

“Corn?”

“I snuck out of bed while my parents were watching…you know, I actually don’t know what they were watching. But I know this freaky half-eaten ghost-zombie thing kept whispering, The corn has ears. It can hear your screams, and it likes it, and we went on a field trip to a farm the next week for school, and I had to be carried out sobbing. I still can’t eat it without feeling like someone just walked over my grave.”

“Christ,” I mutter.

“I also used to sneak out of my parents’ house to go see Muffy all the time,” she says.

“What? No. You were—”

“Head cheerleader, prom queen, and not as sweet and innocent as everyone thought I was. Smiles lie, Murphy. If anyone should know that…”

Her hand glides over my thigh, and my cock twitches, because it always springs to life at the slightest hint of interest from her.

“Does Felicity know?” I ask. Because I want to know Kami better than Felicity does. Better than anyone.

“I don’t know. I didn’t really know her in high school, and didn’t she graduate my freshman year?”

I frown and try to do the math on how fast Felicity went through high school, then give up with a shrug, because I don’t even remember what year I was in when Felicity graduated. I just know she was gone before me. And if my birthday wasn’t six months before Kami’s, we probably would’ve been in the same grade. “Probably.”

“Anyway, it wasn’t like I went every weekend. And she and I didn’t get close until after college. College for me, I mean.”

“Do you need to go home right now?” I ask.

“Why? You have another party to take me to?”

She’s smiling now. I love that I can hear it when she smiles. “No, something else. A surprise.”

“Tell me it’s not thirty of something.”

I bark out a laugh, remember all the boxes on her main floor, and instantly sober. “Ah, no. Not thirty of something.”

“I still can’t believe you had a Sugarbear bobblehead made. Do you have any idea what some of your fans would bid for a collection of thirty insane gifts from you? Not that I don’t appreciate them, I just…don’t have room.”

“And I still have ten more days of presents,” I add. Ten more days of presents…and fourteen days until we play Indianapolis.

She sucks in a breath, and now I can hear her cringing, which instantly soothes any panic that might be rising at the idea of facing the Indies.

She’ll be cheering for me.

We’re going to kick some Indie ass.

“I know,” she sighs.

“The Nick Murphy dolls are super tasteful,” I tease her. “And clothed so the average person doesn’t know they’re anatomically correct.”

“Oh my god,” she mutters.

I rub her hand. “It’ll be okay. We’ll auction them off for charity. Just a little detour. You up for it?”

“Sure.” She leans her head on my shoulder, the sweet scent of her simple shampoo filling my nose, her hair tickling my neck, and why the fuck haven’t we been doing this for years? “But can I tell you something and you can’t be mad at me?” she asks softly.

“I could never get mad at you, but if I pretend to be, will you rub my cock?”

She laughs. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Then I can handle anything you need to tell me.”

“I found Sugarbear a home.”

I slam on the brakes, my heart suddenly in my throat. “The fuck you did.”

“Nick—”

“Maybe I found her a home.” A car veers around us and lays on the horn, but I don’t move. “She’s my cow-dog. She was delivered to my condo. She’s at my parents’ house. You can’t have her.”

“Nick—”

“I’m not a total useless dickhead all the time. And I like my cow-dog. I feed her. I clean up her shit. I’m giving her a fucking home.” I suck in a breath and go on before Kami can say a damn word. “I’ve never had a pet. Not a pet that was mine. And I’ve never wanted one, but I’m tired of hockey being my life. There’s so fucking much more. You can’t give me more and then take it away. I’ll get a fucking permit to raise her at the stadium if I have to. I’m keeping my cow-dog. And you’re either with me, or you can walk your pretty ass home.”

My heart’s pounding in my ears, because fuck, I am not giving up on Kami, but she can’t take my damn cow away.

I love my cow.

“A man has to have a line, and that’s mine,” I tell her.

Silence rings through the car, and fucking shitbombs, I just yelled at Kami.

I just yelled at Kami.

My hands tremble on the wheel, so I grip it tighter. My lungs are shrinking like they did when I was a kid, heading out for recess when I knew that fucking Jeremy Winters would be waiting with his fucking gang of first-graders to shove me around and tell me my parents didn’t love me.

“Are you done?” she asks quietly, and there’s something in her voice that soothes my panic even though I know she’s going to give me hell right back, because I deserve it.

I’m throwing a fit over a cow.

A fucking cow.

A cow I love, but still—when did I start loving a cow?

And why am I being the idiot giving up on Kami over a cow?

Fuck.

“Yes,” I say tightly.

I’m staring straight ahead at the streetlights, at the cleaners and the dentist office and the barbecue joint just ahead at the T in the road, my jaw clenched, nose flaring as I try to get myself under control, when a soft hand cups my cheek.

“I love how much you love Sugarbear,” she whispers. Her lips follow where her hand was, and she strokes down my arm to rub the back of my hand over the wheel. “You’re a much better man than the world will ever know, Nick Murphy.”

I blink three times against an unexpected sting in my eyes while my breath whooshes out of me.

“She gets me,” I say gruffly.

“Every boy needs a dog,” she agrees, and there’s nothing mocking or teasing in her voice at all.

I risk a glance at her, and Christ, what the hell did I ever do to deserve that simple, unquestioning trust shimmering in her eyes?

I was fucking yelling at her, and she just sits there and takes it.

Because she’s Kami.

“I don’t deserve you.” The raw truth of it makes the words burn my throat.

“Nick,” she says softly, “there’s no one I’d rather be with than someone who gets upset over an innocent animal.”

“I’ve been a shithead to lots of innocent animals.”

“And you knew exactly where to go to make sure those animals were taken care of.”

“I took advantage of you.”

“Would you do it again?”

“Jesus, no. I’d leave the animals out of it and stick to cookies and books and newspaper ads.”

She doesn’t say anything, and I drop my head to stare at my crotch. “I know. I’m still a total dick.”

“You’re very dedicated to your causes.”

I’m a shithead. I pick causes like delivering dick cookies to my sister’s ex-boyfriends and donkeys to her husband’s pet monkey. I’m already plotting a new prank to pull on Zeus because of the whole fucking clown thing.

“I don’t like to lose,” I tell her.

She’s quiet again for a long minute while my heart pounds in my ears, and when I glance at her again, worry lines are marring her forehead.

“Is that why you fought so hard to get a second chance with me?” she asks so quietly, so haltingly, that my chest almost cracks in two. “So you wouldn’t lose?”

“No. Kami, I—fuck, I’m going to say this all wrong.”

“Well, you don’t have any better audience willing to give you five chances to get it right than the one sitting right here.”

There’s a note of self-deprecation in her voice that makes me want to hit something. Probably myself, because see again, I don’t deserve her.

But I still reach across the car to grab both her hands. “I’ve been an idiot for a long, long time. When you told me to go jump off a bridge, I was too stupid to realize the reason everything felt wrong was because you were gone and I hadn’t realized what I had. I knew I fucked up, but I’d never—I’ve lost friends before. I’ve never missed them. But you—I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About everything you always did for me that I never said thank you for. You remember at Felicity’s wedding, when Lavoie kicked my ass on that damn unicorn bull ride, and I was going to get back on that thing until I broke his record?”

“I’m pretty sure everyone even three islands over will remember that,” she says mildly.

I squeeze her hands. “Exactly. You talked me off the ledge without making me feel like a spoiled dumbass when we all know that’s exactly what I am.”

“You aren’t a spoiled dumbass. You’re just…a little blind sometimes.”

“You left, and I finally opened my eyes. And it shouldn’t have taken you leaving. I should’ve asked you out for real months ago, but I liked living in my little world where I got to have it all without dealing with Felicity being pissed at me and my mother getting ideas about grandkids and the fear that I’d fuck up and let you down and lose a friend and be the worthless baby shit those fuckhead first-graders told me I was twenty-something years ago. Not if I kept you as just a friend. I don’t want to just have it all now, Kami. I want to earn you. I want to deserve you. And instead I’m sitting here yelling about a cow.”

She’s quiet again.

Probably because she could do so much better than a spoiled hockey player who lives for pranking his teammates and yells about cows.

“But why me?” she asks so softly I have to strain to hear her.

“Because you’re you.” It’s lame, and I know it’s lame.

I should be able to tell her it’s because we have the same favorite color. Or because she understands all my secrets and my dreams. Or because we’ve been through so much together.

But all I really have is this gut-level feeling that her soul and my soul fit like two puzzle pieces, and I’ve just been facing the wrong direction my entire life.

“My life’s brighter with you in it,” I add, and I don’t think I’m making it better. “Fuck, Kami, this is hard. You know people think Ares is dumb because he doesn’t talk? When he does, he’s fucking brilliant. I talk all the time, and all that comes out of my mouth is total shit. You just—you’re my pumpkin pie after a turkey dinner, and here I am, a spoiled asshole, getting seconds and thirds on his turkey dinner and still wanting the whole damn pumpkin pie too. With whipped cream. And cinnamon ice cream. Because if you’re gonna do pumpkin pie, do it fucking right. And you’re the best damn pumpkin pie in the world. With all the toppings. And sprinkles.”

And I need to shut the hell up, because she’s pumpkin pie with sprinkles? Maybe I should get out and walk home and just give her my car instead.

She blinks twice, and damn it, her eyes are going shiny in the darkness. “The pumpkin pie’s the best part,” she whispers.

I slump in my seat, relief flooding my bones. “Exactly,” I whisper back.

Another car honks and whizzes past us. Kami kisses my cheek again. “I’m really your pumpkin pie?”

“With cinnamon ice cream and whipped cream and sprinkles and a cherry.”

Her laugh sounds watery and weak. “I’m honored to be your pumpkin pie.”

“I’d skip the turkey dinner,” I add.

“We need to move,” she whispers as yet another car zooms past us.

I sit back up, the words I love you sitting on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t want her to think I’d say it right now. It feels like a cop-out. Like telling a woman what she wants to hear just to get what I want.

So instead, I’m going to show her.

I’ve always been better with actions than words, even if I might’ve gone overboard with making up for missing her birthday.

“You can’t be mad at me for this,” I tell her as I push on the gas again. My equilibrium is coming back, and with it, my ego. “It might be a little shocking at first, but you’re going to realize I’m right, so just go with it.”

“Do you know what I love about you?” she says quietly.

“Everything?”

“You’re never boring.”

Well, shit.

And here all I was going to do was take her for ice cream, because it sounded good, but now I’ve built it up beyond realistic expectations because I can’t help myself.

Guess she’s getting the triple brownie fudge sundae with extra caramel sauce.

And then we can take it back to her place.

And I’ll lick it off her.

All night long if she’ll let me.

I feel like I’ve finally found her. And now I’m going to do my damnedest to keep her.

No matter what it takes.

“Nick?” she says softly.

“Yeah?”

“Sugarbear really should have other cow friends,” she whispers softly. “And you’ll be able to—”

“One more week,” I grit out. I squeeze her hand, realize I’m probably about to crush her bones, and I let up. “Please? Just give me one more week. I want to fix this on my own.”

We pass under a green stoplight and go another half block before she answers.

“Okay,” she says.

Because she’s Kami.

And she never tells me no.

And fuck if I’m not going to do everything in my power to make sure she never regrets that.

Ever.