Page 237 of Vegas Heat

“I wanted to give you something with my number on it, but I didn’t want that to be what tipped off the people we’re trying to keep this from,” I say.

She pulls it out of the box and holds it out to me. She turns around, and I clasp it on her. She turns back toward me and sets her hand over it. “I’ll wear it always.” She leans forward for a quick kiss, and I grab her head and hold it there for a beat, never wanting to let her go. “Now you open one.”

“The big one?”

“Sure,” she says, and she seems nearly giddy.

I tear the paper off the box in a similar way to how she did it, and then I rip open the box.

Inside I find a huge gift basket filled to the brim with Slim Jims. I laugh as I lift it out of the box, and she giggles along with me.

“This is absolutely perfect,” I say. There must be a hundred meat sticks in there, and it should satisfy my anxiety over running low on my favorite snack for at least a month or two. “I love it, and I love you.” I kiss her again, and I’m about to push her onto her back and give her a real gift when she pulls back, panting a little.

“I have another one for you.”

“I have another one for you, too,” I say. I’m panting a little myself as I hand her the next box, and then I gulp down some more Firenog.

She tears this one open, too, and she stares at the random numbers printed in fancy font in the framed black and white photograph. “Thirty-six point eleven sixty-two degrees north, one-fifteen point seventeen forty-five west?” she asks.

“The coordinates for the place where I first fell in love with you.”

She brushes away a tear. “This is incredible, Cooper. The most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me.”

“Get ready for a lifetime of them.”

She pounces on top of me, and I laugh as I fall back to the ground with her body on top of mine…just where I wanted it. She presses her lips to mine, and the kiss turns pretty intense before she pushes herself up, balancing with her palms flat on my chest.

“You have one more gift to open, and I know we’re sitting right next to a fire and we’re creating some of our own, but do you smell smoke?”

I grab onto her back and sit up, sniffing the air, and she laughs at me.

And that’s when I turn toward the kitchen. “Oh shit! The cookies!”

She leaps off me and we both run toward the oven. We catch them in time before they set off the smoke alarm, but they’re definitely a little…crispier than I prefer my chocolate chippers to be.

She giggles as we inspect the cookies to determine whether there’s anything edible, and then we throw more dough onto another pan and this time, I set a timer rather than relying on thinking we’ll actually watch the clock.

We head back to the tree, and she hands me my final gift, which happens to be in an envelope. I bend it a little to try to guess what’s inside. “Did you get me a…gift card?”

She giggles. “Yes. I bought the man with a ginormous bank account a gift card because I couldn’t think of anything else.” She rolls her eyes with mock exasperation, and I laugh. “Just open it! No guessing!”

I gently slide my finger along the sealed paper and slide out the card inside, and attached to it is a sort of metal photo card.

It’s the first picture we ever took together, a selfie from the room at Caesar’s Palace. We didn’t know the true identity of each other back then. She had no idea I played baseball or that I was moving to Vegas to play for her father. I had no idea that she was the daughter of one of my closest friends.

It was easy back then even though at the time, it felt impossible. We’d just met, and we’d both somehow fallen in love in one weekend. It didn’t matter that we were from different worlds—nearly even from different generations. What mattered was how we felt, and that remains true to this day.

“It’s small enough to slide into your wallet so you can carry us with you wherever you are, and I figure if it’s tucked in there real good, nobody will ever see it,” she says a little nervously.

“I love it,” I whisper, and then I flip it over where I find a personalized note engraved onto the back in Gabby’s handwriting.

To my Captain. I love you always. Forever Your Sunshine

I chuckle at her words. “So we’re settled on Captain Orgasm, then, as my nickname?”

She dissolves into giggles, which then turns into more kissing, which is only interrupted once again by the damn cookies.

But at least this time, we salvage them in time to be able to eat them with another round of Firenog.

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