Page 126 of Smooth Sailing

Eventually, there was silence, and my body, tense from toes to top of my head, remained that way.

There was a quiet knock on the door.

I didn’t move.

I felt Hugger lift his head before he called, “Yeah?”

“They got our girl. She’s all good,” I heard Big Petey say quietly.

“Thanks, brother,” Hugger replied.

The door snicked shut.

I turned in Hugger’s arms, pressed close and let the tears go.

Hugger tangled his fingers in my hair, held me tight with his other arm, and let me.

14

SOLITAIRE

Hugger

An alarm went off that sounded like birds tweeting.

Jesus, Diana woke up to tweeting birds.

Hugger was partly on his stomach, partly on his side.

Diana was tucked to his back.

He felt her shift, the softness of her lips pressed to his back, the softness of her voice ordering the alarm to stop, and then she rolled out of bed.

He opened his eyes and saw his gun on the nightstand.

He moved his gaze and watched her ass in loose shorts covered in daisies disappear behind the closed door in the bathroom.

He rolled to his back and lifted both hands to rub them over his face.

When he was smoothing down his beard, he saw Di’s 3D white flower hanging over the bed, and he felt her soft sheets and perfect-mix-of-firm-and-soft mattress.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he muttered to himself.

He heard the shower go on and his morning wood made itself known.

“Christ, what the fuck am I doing?” he repeated, again on a mutter.

Yesterday, the day they woke up without Maddy, had been a chill day.

Even so, Diana had moped through it, and Hugger found he liked she didn’t try to hide her upset Maddy was gone.

She didn’t make a drama about it, but he and big Petey knew she was suffering. They didn’t have to guess, and they didn’t have to worry she was tamping down shit that would explode at some future time and bite everyone around her in the ass.

Hugger had never had a relationship that lasted over two months. He’d never lived with a woman, outside his mother.

But his mother had moods.

Then again, he did too.

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