Page 53 of Sully

While she was distracted, I got to work on a list to hand off to Fallon to bring to Chris up at Hailstorm.

“Are the girls heading up?” I asked.

“They’re dragging their feet and grumbling, but yeah,” Fallon said. “And they all got their old men and uncles to bring them to and from work and shit. So, they’re all set there. We can focus on this without having our focus split.”

My focus was, of course, split though.

Because I had a special night planned for Bonnie and a lot of work to pull off before then.

If the night ended with us finishing what we’d almost done when we’d woken up together that morning, then so be it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bonnie

After I made the bread—and Dezi literally ate an entire loaf himself—I was shooed into Sully’s room. Where I went ahead and let myself shower and get changed, more than a little excited about his plans since, so far, everything he’d arranged had been fun.

I never would have thought that playing poker would be something I enjoyed. But I had. And it wasn’t even just the cards themselves, but the men gathered around, easily pulling me into their conversation, not seeming to mind when I was occasionally my usual quiet self.

It was so strange and wonderful to feel so welcomed and accepted just as I was.

I guess when you had an organization their size, and the extended family and friends that came with it, you got really comfortable with vastly different personalities.

Even with my limited time with her, it seemed like Luna was much like me. On the shy side, bookish, happy being alone with her books.

The only difference for her was that she had this big, crazy, loving family group to pull her out of her shell a bit, to involveher so that her aloneness didn’t morph into loneliness like it sometimes did for me.

Excitement sizzled across my skin as I sat on the edge of Sully’s bed and waited to be escorted out to… whatever he had planned for the night.

There’d been a lot of noise in the common room for over an hour until, finally, I heard footsteps making their way down the hallway toward me.

The door opened.

And there was Sully.

There was no stopping the burst of laughter that escaped me.

“What are youwearing?” I asked, taking in his bright blue smock with yellow piping and several large pockets.

“You like?” he asked, swirling around to show it off. “Because I got you one too,” he said, reaching out into the hall to produce a matching smock, only mine was pink with purple piping.

“Okay,” I agreed, beaming at him because his excitement was contagious.

“Come over here so I can get you suited up.”

“What are we getting suited for?” I asked, getting to him and turning my back on him, so he could slide it over my head, then tie the strings. “And why do I get the feeling that it is going to be messy?”

“Because it’s Sully,” Rune said as he passed on his way to the prospect room at the end of the hall. I hadn’t been inside it yet, but I heard it was a massive space, something like a school gymnasium, with bunk beds, lockers, and a giant bathroom.

All the men lived there from when they first started to prospect until they were patched. When they hopefully got their own rooms.

“He knows me well,” Sully said, reaching down to take my hand in his.

I knew that for someone like Sully, handholding was probably casual. But for me, I couldn’t help but notice a tingle where our skin met that quickly moved up my arm and across my chest as he pulled me down the hall.

I don’t know what I was expecting, even with the smock, but it certainly wasn’t to find the entire common area set up with card tables, each one of them featuring a different craft to work on.

“Oh my God,” I said, having to blink quickly because my eyes went watery. Not because of crafts. I mean, crafts were a big part of my life. But because Sully not only accepted my hobbies but embraced them.