Page 123 of The Love Bandits

“You think a couple of cards led you to me?” I ask, tracing her face. She told me about the Tarot cards Claire drew for her, and I made a vow to myself that I’d never be that third sword in her heart. “I’ll draw a photo of the wand one and have it framed. I’ll bow down before it.”

She leans in close, a whisper between our lips. “I love you, you idiot.”

“Thank God,” I say, and lean in and kiss her again. And again. She tastes sweet, and I feel euphoria licking through me, threatening to engulf me. My brother’s okay. Lainey’s okay. She wants to be with me.

I taste more of her, wanting to remember this moment always, and then lift her up, her legs automatically cinching around my waist, and carry her into my bedroom. Even though I’m going away, and this won’t be my place anymore, I’d like to make some final good memories here to chase away the bad ones. And I’d really be doing my neighbors a disservice if I didn’t make some noise they could complain about.

“Can you be really loud about your appreciation?” I ask as I lay her down on my bed.

“I seem to remember you not wanting participation awards,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to earn it,” I tell her, then reach for the button of her jeans.

“I like the way you think,” she says.

And I like the way she thinks, and smells, and tastes, and a few minutes later, when I have my face buried in her, her moans filling the air and probably aggravating the hell out of the bickerers next door, I feel like the luckiest man alive.

She tugs on my hair, hard, and pulls me up. “Your cock. Now.”

So I bury myself in her, and it feels like a meeting of the world to have her here, in this place where I lived as Jake Langston. Ikiss her as I thrust in deeper, her hand clutching my ass, because I want every part of me to be touching every part of her. Her soul has lit something within me, and I never want it to go out.

I kiss her more deeply, my eyes on hers as I take her slow and deep, bottoming out with each thrust, drinking up her little moans because they’re for me, and I’ve earned them. When I feel her tightening around my dick—sweet torment—I thrust in one last time, slow and deep, my mouth still on hers, and the feeling of her clenching around me so tightly is enough to shove me off the cliff too, into a pleasure so encompassing and deep that I can’t see the beginning or end of it.

This is love, I think.This is what love feels like.

“I love you,” I whisper again, for probably the millionth time today. I’m still buried inside her because I don’t want to leave. I never want to leave.

“I love you too,” she says, her eyes on mine, her body under and around me, and I’m in that ocean beneath the cliff doing the backstroke.

Later, my body still wrapped around hers, I say, “What do you think about buying a rude welcome mat for Todd while we’re in town?”

“I say yes,” she says, her eyes dancing, but then she reaches up and lightly taps my injured nose. “But we’re still going to Connecticut.”

I consider telling her no, but it’s incredibly hard to say no to my woman, and there’s a part of me that needs to see Dale again. I’d like to know him as myself. To let him know that he had a more profound impact on me than he ever had on my alter ego. If he’s open to it, I’d like to be his friend.

“We’ll do it.” I weave my hand through her hair, looking into her eyes. “We’re going to have lots of adventures together, Elaine Catlan.”

“And you’re going to write about all of them in your comics?”

“Allof them?” I ask, running my hand over her perfect, round ass and giving it a squeeze.

“Of course,” she says with a smirk. “But those will be just for us.”

It’s a month later,in early December, when Anthony Rosings Smith agrees to meet me at the peanut bar. I still haven’t heard anything from my brother, but his note had made it sound like he might be gone through Christmas.

I’ll keep hoping, and if he doesn’t show up after the holidays, Nicole and Damien have offered to track him down. They both seem excited by the challenge it would offer.

I’m nervous about this meeting—almost as much as I was when Lainey and I arrived at Dale’s place weeks ago, and I had to stop at a bar to knock back some liquid courage before I could find it in myself to ring his doorbell.

He was good to me, too good, and hearing what he’d done for me—how he’d convinced me to change my life—had made him cry.

So when he asked Lainey and me to stay a while, we did. For a whole damn week, and we’ve asked him to come visit us too. He feels like…family.

So does Mrs. Rosings, actually. We’ve fallen into the habit of having weekly teas with her—a tradition that started as soon as we returned from Connecticut. Claire usually comes, too, and occasionally we can twist Declan’s arm and get him to join us. Joy supplies the tea, but Rosie has never accompanied her after the disastrous mushroom tea incident. She’s embarrassed, I guess, even though everyone has forgiven her for her role in the mess with the necklace.

According to Mrs. Rosings, Anthony now knows who I am and why I came here. Her ability to keep secrets for thirty years is apparently selective, because she told him days after she returned from our trip to New York. I guess he wanted her to have me arrested initially, but he changed his mind.

When I arrive at the peanut bar, he’s already there, two sweating beers waiting on his table.

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