Maybe it was talking about our wedding day, or maybe it was just waking up with him like this, but I couldn’t withhold the words. They burst free from me, and I had no desire to keep them in.
"I love you."
He tensed, then a long exhalation escaped him. "I love you too."
"I miss you."
"I miss you too."
The immediacy of his responses soothed something inside me.
"I choose you, Keira," he whispered, surprising me. "I will always choose you from now on. I won’t pick the drugs over you; I won’t let myself fail you.
"You have all of me. Just like you should have from the start. I let you down, but I won’t do it again, and I sure as hell won’t let Cyan down."
I closed my eyes, the power of his words enhanced all the more by the sleep-ridden huskiness to his voice. "I wanted to—"
"I know." He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I know. I’m jealous of Amara. I’d serve time to have the honor of butchering that bastard."
Squeezing him, I said, "I’d prefer to have you here." Before he could say another word, I told him, "I think we should spend the day at the clubhouse."
"It’ll be busy," he warned me. "There’s going to be a BBQ for the families."
"I know. MaryCat told me. I think… you were right. Cy needs to make friends. She needs to get out of her head, and if she gets into fights, at least we don’t have to worry about her being expelled."
"The school of Mom and Dad," he teased softly, making me grin.
There was nothing I wanted more than to let him kiss me, to take my mind off the night before, to sink into his arms and escape the world for a half hour, but that was what he meant when he said he chose me, and I had to honor that.
Especially when, every night, he’d been eating me out like I was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s on a post-breakup binge with the girls.
So we laid there, and we talked, and it felt good.
We discussed the fact that Cyan’s skills with math were something he’d have to tackle because she was advancing in leaps and bounds, and we talked about the diner and how it was doing better than ever since I’d introduced savory pies that the diners seemed to be adoring. We discussed the clubhouse renovations, and he told me that he hadn’t heard from those bastards that had shown up on our street, and we talked about life.
Just life.
No regrets, not the past, just the present.
And it was beautiful.
Later on, with a buzzing Cyan in the SUV beside me, I drove to the clubhouse with Storm at my back.
It was almost as if last night were a distant memory, but it had happened and there was no escaping it. I knew what had happened to her, and so did Storm, but Cyan was bright and breezy, like the weight off her chest had transferred successfully onto us. I’d take that burden any day of the damn week that was for sure, especially if it helped her in the long run.
When we made it to the clubhouse, I felt awkward. I wouldn’t deny it. But I was so glad MC was there, Maddox in her arms, and both of us sat in the sun under a parasol that someone had stuck in the ground, watching the chaos of the new club.
"It’s different here," MC said after a few minutes.
She’d spent even less time at the clubhouse than I had—which was really saying something.
"Family oriented," I agreed as I took a sip of Bud Light which Storm had given me twenty minutes ago. He’d disappeared, returned with the beer, given me a kiss that made my toes curl, before disappearing again.
"Yeah. You can still spot the clubwhores though."
"They’re dressed better than in Jersey."
"Trashy instead of like hookers."
I snickered and tapped my beer bottle with her glass of juice.
"God, I’d kill for a non-alcoholic beer but they don’t have any," MC admitted. Then, a little defensively, explained, "Beer stimulates milk production. Just FYI."
"Don’t worry, honey. I’m not a Karen. Anyway, I thought with your past you’d be all about the white wine," I teased.
"I am, but Digger’s corrupted me."
"That must be nice. To be corrupted." My nose crinkled. "Storm wouldn’t let me drink alcohol until I turned twenty-one. That tells you how corruptive an influence he’s been on me, doesn’t it?"
She blinked at me. "You’re kidding me, right?"
"No," I said on a soft laugh.
"You mean to tell me that he breaks all the laws under the sun, but with you, he makes you abide by them?"
"Yep."
"I don’t know why I’m shocked," she muttered to herself, laughing the next second. "That man is nuts for you."
Yeah. He was.
I grinned, not unhappy about that fact, and on the brink of telling her so, when someone plunked herself down beside us before I could defend my husband’s twisted morals. Well, they were twisted where he was concerned, strict for me.
I guessed I should have seen before how he kept me on a pedestal.
Talk about myopic.
"Okay, ladies, I know you don’t know me, but I gotta ask… what the hell is it with your Old Man and all the houseplants?"
I blinked at the woman, who had rainbow hair teased up into some kind of bouffant, mixing a modern and a vintage look together, had cat eyes to die for, and the shiniest red mouth I’d ever seen. "Excuse me?"
"Sorry," the woman said sheepishly. "The name’s Darla. Pleasure to meet you both."
I shot her a smile. "I’m Keira. This is MaryCat."
MC murmured, "Pleasure to meet you."
"Likewise." Darla beamed at me, then leaned over the table. "Seriously, Keira, his office is like a jungle."
Arching a brow, I merely asked, "How do you know?"
"My Old Man, he’s Jump… He’s the guy who…?" She pulled a face. "We’re neighbors. I just ain’t had the courage to come and say hey. But Jump was telling me how every time he goes in there, there’s another plant."
"Storm’s a recovering addict," I told her calmly.
It wasn’t my secret to share, but I knew my husband had been getting shit for not attending parties, for not hanging out at the bar. Maybe if she told her Old Man, Jump would spread the word around.
"The houseplants are his way of taking responsibility of something else’s care."
"That’s a thing?"
"Sure is."
I’d made sure to research it the last time we’d discussed it. I’d learned a whole host of things about NA. Sex addiction was trickier, though.
After hours of investigation, I wasn’t surprised he’d come up with something so drastic as the padlock.
It was distinctly medieval in nature, but desperation often led to dramatic overtures.
"Why?"
I told her about what I read online. "They look after the plant for, like, a year, then they graduate to a pet. I guess it’s about looking after someone other than themselves and being selfless."
"You sure he’s not addicted to buying plants?" Darla asked, but before I could reply, she hollered, "Kelly O’Bryan! What in the hell do you think you’re doing? You leave that girl alone."