His eyes darken, and his jaw clenches, but he doesn’t ask anything else about it. “Bath or shower?”
I shake my head. “I need to go back—”
“No. You need to get yourself together and washed up. Then I’m going to put ointment on your burn and bandage your cut. After I clean up the kitchen.”
I open my mouth to argue, when his lips press to mine, kissing me hard to shut me up.
“I don’t want to hear it. No arguing with me. Once all that is done, we’re going to have pizza. Together.”
“Landon… I…”
His hand is in my hair, cupping the back of my head. “I don’t care about the mess. I don’t care about my kitchen or anything else. I care about you. You hear me? You. You are perfect to me and nothing that happened downstairs matters. Got it?”
Tears threaten again, and I do my best to push them back, though I know at least one more must leak out because his thumb is there, beneath my eye, to brush it away.
“Shower or bath?” he asks again, and why didn’t I meet him first? My whole life would have been different if I had met him first. Then I remember my family and what they would have done to him, and my blood runs cold. I’m a mess, and I should go. I bring nothing but trouble and destruction with me, and he and Stella have been through enough.
But I want them anyway. And now that I know what my family is capable of, I’ll protect them from them.
“Shower.”
“Good girl.” He kisses my lips, then my cheeks, then my forehead. He leaves me, starting up his shower before returning and helping me off the counter. “I’m going to get you something clean to wear. Come downstairs when you’re ready, okay?”
“Thank you.”
He smiles softly at me, brushing the tip of his nose with mine, and then he’s gone, leaving the bathroom. How can my heart feel so empty and so full at the same time? I remove my bra and panties, step into the warm but not hot shower—the doctor thinks of everything—and finally feel the sting of my cut and burn.
I don’t know how long I stay in here, and I don’t hear when Landon returns with clothes for me to wear, but he must have because when I get out, there are pajama pants, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt waiting for me.
Not my scarf, I note, and I wonder where he has that stashed.
It brings a smile to my lips, and I go about getting dressed, swimming in his clothes that are ten sizes too big but smell like him. He kept my scarf; I’m claiming at least this T-shirt as mine. Opening the door, I enter his bedroom, unable to help myself as I look around.
It’s a lot of grays and whites, minimal and contemporary, yet cozy somehow. His bed is made pristinely, not an item out of place. And his light gray walls boast framed black and white pictures of buildings—some I recognize, some I don’t. Architecture. The images are gorgeous, captured with an artistic flair, and I wonder if his wife took these.
Stella mentioned she was into photography.
I walk over to his desk, though I know this isn’t his regular office. That’s downstairs and filled with computers and books and things. He has renderings of a house, each a little different, but all big and beautiful. The detail on them is incredible, and I was unaware he could sketch like this.
The doorbell rings from downstairs. “Dad, pizza is here,” Stella calls out, and I hear her door open, her feet pounding down the stairs.
“I got it,” he yells back, and I smile. They’re so normal and yet so not. I love that about them. How real they are to me when the world views them as something else entirely.
I open the door to head downstairs, but Landon is there before I get very far. Only this time I don’t jump. “You okay?”
“Better.”
He smiles, his eyes dancing around my face before giving me a once-over. “I like you in my clothes.”
I like me in his clothes too.
He holds up burn ointment and a Band-Aid.
“They’re fine, Doctor. No need for the extra treatment.”
“Ah, there’s my girl. Always giving me sass. What did I say about arguing with me?”
He takes my hand, applying the Band-Aid first to the cut that’s barely even a cut and definitely not bleeding anymore. Then he goes for the burn, applying some white cream to it, which I’ll admit, feels good. And when he’s done, he kisses my booboo over my Band-Aid, and I fall just a bit harder.
“Hungry?”
Not for pizza. I think my eyes give that away because he leans in and kisses me. He kisses me good and hard, only pulling back when we’re both breathless.
“Pizza. Stella is waiting on us.”
“The kitchen?” I ask.
“All cleaned up and whatever I missed, the cleaning people are coming tomorrow anyway, so we’re good.”
I’m falling so hard for you, Landon Fritz, you won’t be able to get rid of me. That’s how deeply I want to bury myself in your heart.
“Thank you.”
He shakes his head. Plants another kiss, then shifts me so he’s behind me as we walk down the hall. “Can I sneak over tonight?” he husks in my ear before we reach the stairs. I turn back to him and catch him staring at my ass. I give it a little wiggle, and he smirks, swatting it.
Yup. Totally done.
“I’ll leave the front door unlocked for you.”
I get a pinch this time for that, then we join Stella in the now cleaned kitchen. We eat salad—thankfully that was unharmed—and pizza and laugh like nothing happened at all. Like I didn’t ruin dinner and subsequently have a breakdown.
Whether they know it or not, they’re healing places inside me I didn’t realize were still damaged. This. This is what I want. Mine, I think. They’re mine, and I want to keep them. If I didn’t know that already, I sure as hell know it now.
22
I have a huge favor to ask. That’s the text I get shortly before I leave my house to head to the grocery store. Naturally, the sight of Landon’s name on my screen makes my heart leap in my chest because I’m stupid like that. Or at least a glutton for punishment and heartache.
Is this of the sexual variety? If not, I operate purely on a bartering system.
The text goes through, and I grab my keys off the counter in the kitchen. It’s Columbus Day, and school is closed. I woke up early, did some stuff in my garden, shopped a bit online, read for an hour. It’s been heaven.
A heaven I haven’t wanted to rock by calling my family. I’ve been avoiding that. It’s been more than a week since David’s call, and I haven’t found the will to confront them yet. I mean, how do you have that conversation? Their betrayal has been sitting like a boulder on my chest, a minefield in my head. It’s like I’m going through the stages of grief only on a never-ending loop and at light speed. I need to sort out my thoughts a little more before I speak to any of them.
But this week… this perfect week… it’s been sex and heat and sneaking around and fun. So much fun with Landon that I don’t want to disrupt any of that. I don’t want to diminish it with their evil—they’ve taken enough from me already.
How about I barter for sexual favors if you do this one for me first.
Now my interest is piqued. What’s so important?