Page 113 of Avenged

It had been almost the sweetest thing he’d ever said to me. Almost. I still rolled my eyes at him. But I also knew it was a topic he felt strongly about. A topic he wasn’t going to let die. Ever since I’d let him read the comic book I’d made Violet, the one Di Felix had written her message on, he’d brought it up repeatedly. He knew I could make something of them, but he also knew, like Di herself had said, that I needed to be ready.

The day he’d given me the table, I’d given in because I’d learned that, sometimes, when you surrender, when you finally let go, you find the most beautiful things. Like I’d found him. That day, he’d made me promise to try to do something with my superheroes, and I’d made him promise that if, after a year, nothing had happened with them, he wouldn’t say anything about me putting my psychology degree to use instead of my drawings. He’d agreed with a smile the size of the bay.

Then, six months ago, close to the end of that year, I’d gotten a call from a local firm wanting to use my comics in their environmental ad campaigns. It had been a start. A start that had snowballed into other things. Until I had an agent and people asking me for graphic novels. Until Di Felix had called me and asked if I’d pen some of her characters with her.

It had felt like a dream. It really was a dream. A life I’d never imagined for myself before Truck had entered my world with his glow, his charm, and his determination.

Today, I was finishing up my secret project. The one about a girl called Viola who’d earned her super brain and invisibility from beetles she’d been studying. It was a new gift for my sister on her eighteenth birthday. I couldn’t wait for Violet to see it.

The door slammed open, and before I could breathe out a hello, Truck had me wrapped in his arms and was kissing my neck. I lolled my head back on his shoulder as his lips and his hands did what they always did—lit me up from the inside out.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Good. Really good,” I responded.

His hands landed on my stomach, and we both smiled when the flutter of butterfly wings reached out and touched him. “God, that never gets old,” he said.

“It really never does,” I agreed, my smile getting wider as I added my hands to his on top of the stomach barely showing the baby growing inside me. Our baby. At first, when I’d asked him how he felt about kids and the fact I might never be able to have them, he’d said he didn’t care. That he’d never seen himself with kids.

But when my new doctor here in San Francisco had put a time limit on my uterus with the adenomyosis, we’d decided to at least try. If it was fated to happen, if the gods looking down decided we were supposed to have one, it would. And it had. We weren’t completely out of the woods; there was a chance my uterus and the expanding muscles that were supporting the little critter might not be prepared to handle him or her, but it was so worth a try. It was worth it to feel the overwhelming sense of love I had for the baby I hadn’t seen.

We wanted a baby of our own to spoil and love the way children were supposed to be. But with structure and rules. Boundaries Truck and Dawson had never had. Love my dad hadn’t given. We wanted to be the parents we hadn’t had.

I turned in my chair so I could truly put my lips on his, and his kiss went from gentle and sweet to hot and demanding in an instant. “How long do we have before Vi gets here?” he asked.

I glanced at the clock Mandy had given us as we’d packed up our stuff and headed across the country. “At least an hour.”

“Thank God,” he said, as he picked me up and carried me down the hall to the bedroom we’d been sharing since coming to California. I was unbuttoning his uniform shirt, and he was pulling at my blouse. By the time we got to the bed, we were down to bottoms, and he was already stepping out of those.

We lost everything in the world we created every time we touched. Our own little alternative universe where nothing existed but him and me and our hands and lips. Our bodies moving together in a way we’d perfected but was far from stale. Every single time he touched me, it felt like the first time. Heat and love. Control and abandon.

After, he pulled me up against him, running his fingers over my now bare stomach with its tiny swell of life. My seventh good thing. He kissed it gently and then returned to my lips, kissing them gently as well. “I love you.”

Simple words. Words I had once thought I’d never hear a man say to me. Words that had drawn me from my shadowy, invisible self into the light. Words I would never take for granted.

“I love you, too.”

Then, there was a knock on the door heralding Vi’s arrival all too soon. It took us a minute to scramble into clothes, and she had to knock again before we’d gotten to the door.

“Come on, you two. Open up, it’s freezing out here.”

I opened the door, smoothing my ponytail, and she took one look at me and rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, don’t you ever stop doing it? My poor niece is going to come out bent all out of proportion.”

“Don’t be gross,” I said but hugged her. Behind her was a beautiful blonde in heels so high I wasn’t sure how she’d made it up the stairs. I flushed. “Sorry for my sister’s mouth. I’m Jersey.”

“Nice to meet you. I am Raisa,” the blonde said with an accent I couldn’t quite place.

They both stepped inside.

“If you don’t want me to tell the truth, then don’t bang your husband at all hours of the day,” Vi sassed.

Truck came into the room and hugged her. “Stop harassing her. We didn’t have time to get that far. You’re early.” He flicked her hair.

“Thank God.”

“Please, I have sister who is the same way with her husband,” Raisa said.

“Wait. I know you. Are you Georgie’s sister?” Truck asked with a small smile.

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