“What about your Jag?” she asked.
“Jed is gonna drive it out. He’s lookin’ forward to it. He’ll fly back. We got you your Lexus, so we don’t need it. He can do it in the spring.”
She didn’t move and began again to stare at him.
“Jesus, Liv, what the fuck?” he asked.
When she spoke, her voice had changed. There was something in it he couldn’t read.
“We’re not moving back, are we?” she asked.
She thought they were moving back?
He’d bought that house, she knew that.
Her painting was there.
Whiz was there.
Liv was there and she loved it there.
“You wanted the mountains,” he reminded her. “You wanted to be away from it all.” He swung an arm out. “So we’re here.”
“Your business is in Denver. Your life is there. Your family—”
He cut her off. “You’re here.”
She snapped her mouth shut.
Whiz attacked the rug under the coffee table.
Nick went to his woman and wound his arms around her.
“You like it here?” he asked.
“I love it here,” she answered.
“So we’re stayin’.”
“But—”
“We’re stayin’.”
“Nicky—”
He squeezed her.
She shut up.
“You get the perfect world, you don’t leave it. You love it here. I love you. We live here.”
She pressed her lips together but that didn’t stop her eyes from getting bright with wet.
She unpressed them to ask, “What are you gonna do here?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“What am I gonna do here?”
“We’ll figure that out too.”
“Your family—” she tried again.
“Livvie, we’re in Tennessee, not Timbuktu.”
She shut up again.
Then she quit shutting up. “I love you, Sebring.”
He grinned.
“Back at you, Shade.”
She smiled.
Then she stated, “I’m still calling our dog Punk.”
Whiz whined.
Liv pressed into him and giggled.
Nick listened to her giggle, feeling her body moving against his.
Oh yeah.
They were staying here. He’d die a slow death by hamburger recipes, copious use of salad dressing and Olivia’s driving need to add crumbled Reese’s cups to every dessert she made here. He’d be anywhere and do anything that made Liv giggle, openly happy.
That said, he was not calling his dog Punk.
Livvie
Seven Months Later
Six O’clock in the Morning
Thirty Minutes after Dawn
I sat on Nick’s knee.
“One, two, three…” I whispered into his ear, watching surreptitiously.
“It’s still five, babe,” Nick stated, sounding like he was smiling.
Five.
Yowsa.
Little Sylvie pushing that many out.
I watched her with the swaddle in her arms, holding it second nature, sitting and gabbing with Anya.
I turned my eyes back to the mayhem of our yard. Adults, but mostly kids, everywhere. Kids going crazy because their wedding gift from Nick and me were Nerf guns. Kids going crazy because it was way early and they’d had donuts for breakfast. Kids going crazy because Whiz liked kids (and showed it) but Whiz might like Nerf darts better (and showed that by trying to eat them, something Kat was in charge of making sure he did not do, a job she took very seriously if her stern eyes on our prancing puppy were anything to go by).
“Hanna and Raid gonna stop at three?” I asked.
“According to Hanna, yeah. Raid wants another baby girl,” Nick answered.
“Cassidy and Deacon just the two?” I went on.
“Just the two girls. Like Knight and Anya, gonna stay that way, if you ask Deacon. Though Cassidy wants a boy. I had to guess, she’ll be knocked up soon. Deacon doesn’t say no to his woman very often.”
I knew how that went.
I watched the mayhem, feeling a little bit guilty (but only a little bit) because I’d caused that mayhem, forcing these families to get up early, buying the kids’ everlasting love through Nerf guns and unlimited access to a Labrador mutt puppy, all so I could marry Nick at dawn.
My eyes went back to Sylvie.
One day.
One day it’d be second nature to me too.
I sat in my simple (but elegant) strapless, chiffon wedding gown on Nick’s knee, wondering—even if I’d lived through every second—how I got there.
How I found my way to happy.
It hit me.
I’d gone to a sex club and essentially jumped Nick.
On that thought, it started slow, just with my body shaking, but I didn’t try to hold it back.
I didn’t hold anything back anymore.
I didn’t have to control it.
I was free to be me.
It built to chuckles, sitting on my husband’s lap in my wedding gown on our wedding morning, laughter bubbling inside me.
“Shade,” he called.
I didn’t answer.
“Shade,” he called again, this time on a squeeze.
I kept my gaze to the mayhem and again didn’t answer.
“Baby,” he called, lifting a hand to my chin and turning me to face him.
The instant my eyes hit blue, I corrected, “Sebring.”
That blue lit like the ocean on a cloudless day, bright and sparkling.
And his voice rumbled through me, echoing how I felt at that moment, a way I’d feel for eternity—proud and happy—when he replied.
“Sebring.”