Page 119 of Smooth Sailing

“Never forget the look of your face, and of you, curled up in here, hiding away so no one will see you lick your wounds. Yeah, you’re a survivor, but how much you gonna make yourself take before you realize how much it’s taking out of you?”

Instead of answering, I shoved my face in his throat again.

He returned to stroking my back.

So I guessed I answered him.

I decided a change of subject was in order.

“Emmylou is taking over. I’ve learned in the Texan way of doing things, there are gender differences in making sandwiches. The boys got ones with three inches of lunchmeat. Me and Maddy only had two inches.”

Hugger chuckled.

I pulled my face out of his throat again in order to look at him. “Two inches is a lot of meat, Hugger.”

He got a certain look on his face and kept chuckling.

And he said, “Not really.”

During this awful day, was I really going to laugh?

I couldn’t help it.

I laughed, even as I bossed, “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“Right,” he pushed out through his continuing amusement.

“Ink, Driver, Cruise and Gash did their manly best, but I feared a wafer-thin-mint moment was going to happen.”

Hugger’s brows drew together. “Wafer-thin-mint?”

“That scene in the Monty Python movie where the guy eats so much, he explodes.”

“Haven’t seen it.”

“You must. It’s a classic.”

He slid a hand over my hip (nice). “Maybe we’ll do that our next movie night.”

Our next movie night.

Nicer.

“Also, you’ll probably be pleased to know, Emmylou is using the cubed beef we bought so I could craft my fabulous shredded-beef tacos to make beef and noodles tonight. She needs numbers of who’s coming to dinner.”

“I’ll get those for her,” he replied.

“Your turn,” I said.

He sighed before he dropped to his back and pulled me on top of him.

This wasn’t a better or worse position with Hugger.

They were all just right.

His big, long, burly frame was just so snuggly.

“I need to report all this shit to them,” he shared. “But even when I do, I don’t think their mission will change. Aces and Chaos are out, Resurrection is gonna deal with the Babics.”

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