Page 85 of Avenged

I took a picture of her with my phone, and when I looked down at it, it was still incredibly beautiful, but it didn’t quite do justice to Jersey in the flesh. There was a quality to her that no picture could reveal.

The little girl’s parents eventually pulled her away, and I pulled my girl…my wife…up against my chest and kissed her long and hard. When I looked down, she was smiling, and my soul was completely and absolutely done for, because it was the most relaxed, most happy smile I’d ever seen her give. In my heart, I knew some of that was because of me, and I was damn proud of it. Damn glad. I wondered how long I could keep it there.

We ate dinner, talking nonsense, and I realized, staring at her as she talked and shined and glimmered, that what I’d felt earlier and hadn’t named was love. I loved my wife. A wife I wasn’t supposed to have. A wife I’d written a contract with and broken almost every single one of the items on it. We were living together. We were kissing. We were having sex. And I absolutely, one hundred percent, didn’t want to see her with any other man. I didn’t want anyone else to have her in that way. In any way. I wanted her to be truly mine.

? ? ?

“I think those were the best fireworks I’ve ever seen,” Jersey said to me with a smile as we disembarked from the boat and headed toward the pickup.

“They were pretty good,” I agreed. They had been. They’d been improved a lot by Jersey leaning up against me with her face turned to the sky, watching them.

“Okay, where have you seen better?” she asked.

“Well, the ones in New York are pretty awesome.”

“That’s not really a fair comparison.”

“Why not?”

“Well, they have a lot more money than our little town.”

“So, what you meant to say was they were the best fireworks for the money this town can provide?”

She nudged me in the arm with her shoulder. “I suppose.”

“Have you even seen fireworks anywhere else?” I asked, remembering what Vi had told me about them and their lack of travel.

She shrugged. “Not in person.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve seen them on TV,” she replied as I opened the pickup door and held out my hand to help her climb inside. When she was seated, I leaned in and kissed her.

“What was that for?” she asked when I pulled away.

“Do I have to have a reason to kiss you?”

For the first time since we’d lost our heads in our bodies earlier in the day, I could see her wheels turning. I could see her reflecting on the paper we’d both signed about our pretend relationship and what it would and wouldn’t be.

I leaned in and kissed her again. This time, I didn’t stop with a gentle swirl of my lips against hers. This time, I forced open her mouth with mine and demanded she stop thinking. That she respond with the same passion she’d responded with earlier, and she did, holding my neck and moaning into my mouth. And when I pulled away, all we were both thinking about anymore was how long it would take for me to get us home where we could shed our clothes once more.

? ? ?

My phone was ringing. It was the tone I’d set for my captain on base, and I reached for it with my eyes still closed. As I did it, my other arm left the warmth of the body I’d had it wrapped around. Jersey. I was suddenly fully awake.

She mumbled something as I stood, grabbing the phone and hitting the on button and hoping it hadn’t woken her completely.

“Captain?” I whispered as I stared back at the bed where Jersey lay, the sheet wrapped partly around her, hair glimmering like candlelight as the moon skated over it from the window. Ghostly in so many ways, but now with a soul to it that I didn’t want to have slip away.

“You need to come down here.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and I stepped toward the closet, trying to quietly grab my uniform. “What’s going on, sir?”

“Your brother is Dawson Langley, right?”

“Yes, sir. What about him?”

“We’ve arrested him.”

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