Page 81 of Unstable

“You picked your ringtone, huh?” He still hasn’t looked at me, eyes on the road.

“Nothing gets past you, Cash. Why won’t you look at me? You don’t like my choice?” Loaded question—I know he does, but I want to hear what words he chooses to tell me so.

He pulls into the driveway, stops immediately, and hangs up.

Then he turns his head slowly, showing me what he was hiding before—a moist sheen to his eyes. “That song,” he speaks softly, “I know the words. Are you saying my love for you changes you?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Changes you how, Hen?”

I squirm and feel a blush climb my cheeks. “You tell me, how have I changed?”

“Nope, not how this is going down. You know what I’m asking. Tell me, Henny,” his voice is filled with hopeful awe.

“Your love,” I inhale and raise my eyes to his, “showed me that it’s okay, safe, and will be wonderful, to love you back.”

“Do you?” he growls, tugging me against him.

I nod.

“Say it.”

“I love you, Keaton Fucking Cash.”

My admission earns me a thorough, heated kiss, but then he ends it abruptly and flies into superhero mode.

I’ve never seen a man formulate and organize a complex plan so fast in my life. I don’t think anyone has. Not even the brilliant characters on T.V. show half the determination that’s oozing off of Keaton right now.

Within minutes we’re parked and I’m being carried inside my house, given a list of instructions. Take care of Bourbon when he sends him out, get him settled for the night somewhere other than the bedroom and wait twenty minutes before coming in there myself.

And then he disappears…to put his plans in place.

I know what’s about to happen—Keaton is going to take me, make love to me, finally connecting the past to the present, and the present to forever.

I’m an excited kind of nervous, bobbling my way through seeing to Bourbon. My mind’s reeling with anticipation, possibilities and…finality.

Keaton was right, as always, when he surmised what sex means to me. And love. And a lifetime.

It’s all the same and interweaved to me—one complete commitment.

“Alright boy, you sleep in here tonight. Mama’s gotta,” I pause, searching for the right words, “go start the life she was always supposed to have.”

The life where I cherish the love and special moments I’m given in the moments they’re given. And return them.

The life where I forgive, forge on and…live.

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