Page 249 of Smooth Sailing

Where I was meant to be.

And where my man was born to be.

Before we left to go back to Phoenix, we were delivered one more brutal, and velvet, blow.

Renae gave us the Christmas presents Big Petey had ordered for us.

Renae, being that kind of woman (in other words, awesome), even wrapped them in Christmas paper, although it was still well before Thanksgiving.

We opened them in front of her, though I knew Hugger didn’t want to, and I didn’t either, because we knew they’d be blows.

We did it because she was hanging in there, but she was also broken. This was the second man she’d lost (Rosalie’s father died before Renae met Big Petey), and if she wanted to see our reactions, we were going to let her.

The good news was, it didn’t make me cry.

I loved my present, and Hugger’s, with every fiber of my being.

They were black tees (mine a babydoll—man, did Big Petey pay attention or what?).

They had the Chaos logo on front, and on the back of mine it said, Property of Hugger.

And on the back of Hugger’s it said, Property of Blue.

They were everything. They were life.

And after we got home, I called Rebel to find out where Pete got them.

I ordered three for Hugger and three for me, so there’d always be a clean one at hand.

The ones Big Petey got us, I had mounted in a shadowbox and hung on the wall behind the head of the table in my dining room, where Pete belonged.

And now he’d always be there with us.

Always.

Six months later…

Hugger walked ahead of me down the path. Caught up in looking around, he didn’t notice I’d stopped to take an up-close picture of a cherry blossom.

Once I got it, my gaze sought my man.

He’d stopped too and was breathing deep, taking in the delicate fragrance all around, the beauty of the place, the trees a dreamy, soft-pink landscape, a four-story, bright-red building with green roofs with the famous Japanese swoops at the edges decorating the distance.

I lifted my phone to snap a photo of him just as he turned to look for me, found me and smiled at me.

I returned that smile before I looked down at my phone to see the shot.

Damn, he was beautiful.

I heard a call I didn’t know what it was because it was in Japanese, so I looked up and saw a woman rushing toward Hugger.

But her little boy was standing close to him, staring up at him like he was some fantastical being who had fallen to the earth.

I understood the sentiment.

The woman made it to Hugger, bowed repeatedly and spoke, trying to pull her boy away.

Hugger just smiled, reached out and mussed the boy’s hair, and I wasn’t really close, but I could swear I saw him wink at the kid.

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