Page 96 of Our Lips Are Sealed
Her heated skin chilled at the memory of Toby’s rantings. Failing to block them out during times like these was a small victory for the bastard, his words having buried themselves right where he wanted them. Someday, what she shared with Samuel would burn them to a crisp, but until then, the minuscule fraction of doubt Toby had planted would remain.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Fitz nudged her with his wet nose, disliking the way she was thinking. Evie buried her face in his fur, and after a minute, she sensed more than heard Samuel’s return.
“Talk to me.”
She looked up to see him standing at the side of the bed with a mug of coffee in each hand. This domestication thing suited him and made her heart hitch in her chest. “I’m acting ridiculous.”
“Well, that’s nothing new. But why are you crying?”
Was she crying? Evie wiped her eyes and found moisture there. “It’s the coffee, I guess.”
Samuel set the cups aside on a nightstand. “I promise my coffee skills are not bad enough to merit tears.”
“No, that’s not it. We’re safe in our house.” She sat up to flap a hand around the room. “And it’s our house, Samuel. I’m not leaving.”
“I hope not.” He joined her on the bed. “There’s cat hair everywhere already, and I’m not going to be the one to clean it up.”
She pointed a finger at the bathroom. “That’s our bathroom, where we can brush our teeth and have sex. Lots and lots of sex. I want to try it in the bathtub next.”
“Is this something you’re wanting to try right now or—”
Her bottom lip trembled. “That’s just it. We can do it anytime, because we don’t have to worry about someone coming in to kill us.”
“Ah, I was wondering when it would hit.”
Samuel pulled her into his lap, smiling broadly at her bewildered state, and the tears already starting to fall exploded in a rush.
“And I make you smile,” she wailed louder. “You never smile, especially like that.”
He pressed his lips together, sucking in the grin. “You can’t cry every time I smile around you, or you’ll be crying all the time.”
“This is so stupid,” she blubbered. “I’m naked and crying because no one is trying to kill us, and you love me.”
“And you love me.” His lips brushed against her temple. “It’s nice to agree on something after all these years.”
“It’s over, isn’t it? Can we live like normal?” she asked weakly, with a hiccup. “Well, not normal-normal. Nothing about us is normal. But he can’t get us, right?”
Samuel laid them back on the bed, covering her with his warmth, erasing the cold she’d felt just minutes ago. “He’s gone, baby. They’re going to lock him away forever.”
That reassurance had the dam breaking, and Evie went into a full-on hysterical cry fest, rambling incoherently through her fears and everything she’d felt in the graveyard. Samuel listened intently, holding her until the storm passed. When it was over, he kissed her, building on the strength already growing from just having him present while she talked.
“I saw my mom,” she whispered, ready to let it be known that she truly was crazy. “Out there in the graveyard, I saw my mom and yours and Devon. Do you know what that means? It means I’m a damn lunatic.”
“Well, if you’re a lunatic, so am I.” Samuel repositioned them so he could see her face. “I don’t know what happened out there, but something did. There was that thing with me hearing my mom’s voice, but also… I can’t really describe it. It was like a whispering that followed me as I ran through the forest, telling me where to go.”
Sniffling, Evie used his outstretched arm as a pillow. The ache in her head was starting to return, and she snuggled in close. “Good. Maybe then everyone will see that we are nothing but a pair of lunatics that are perfect together and leave us alone.”
“Or maybe we should run away.”
“Come again?”
“My dad is going to take on double his workload. It’s how he handles stress, and I know not to get in the way,” he said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind covering some of my things for a week or two, and after we deal with the shitshow at the house, and the fires, we could take some time and just go.”
The fires Toby set damaged six homes in total. The houses were on the outskirts of the development and still under construction. Out of the six, only four were salvageable.
Running away sounded like an excellent idea.
