Page 96 of ILY
Like I’m important.
Thorne touches the side of my face, and I meet his gaze. He looks concerned. “What?”
“What what?”
“You look like you’re about to cry.”
“That’s ridicu—oh.” Yeah, I can hear it in my own voice, that tightness. And my eyes feel a little hot. “Shut up. I’m hungover and sensitive right now.” I’m not a crier, but goddamn, everything that’s happened over the last few months has been so fucking much.
At some point, I probably am going to have a huge, chest-deep, sobbing breakdown and cry myself into dehydration. Today, it’s just a few stray tears, and those are mostly because I’m happier than I ever thought I could be.
I have this muscular, gorgeous, sex on a stick weirdo who stalked me into falling in love with him, a home about to be destroyed but with the potential to make it so much more, and I have hope.
That last one? That’s the best fucking part.
“Where do we start?” I ask him.
He smiles at me and shakes his head. “You are going to take a shower while I make you something for breakfast to soak up all the junk in your system. Then you’re going to either lay down and relax or go into town and meet with friends, and I’m going to do some serious digging.”
“You don’t want help?”
He curls his fingers around my jaw. “I just want you. And I have you. And I love you. That’s enough.”
I decide to let those words be poetic and sweet and beautiful instead of a kind way of telling me that I’d only fuck things up or be in the way. Or maybe he’s trying to avoid getting in even more trouble by letting some civilian or whatever I’d be called onto a crime scene.
Whatever the case, it sounds delightful. There are plenty of people I can go bother for a few hours while Thorne does his thing.
‘Kiss me,’ I sign.
He grins wider, leans in, and does.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LEAF
“God,this is nice. Thanks for inviting me over,” I tell Dex as I take a seat on his back porch. His condo overlooks a small pond with ducks and everything. I close my eyes and sip on the cucumber water Dex shoved in my hand.
“Well, you kinda just showed up, but yeah,” Dex says with a laugh, and I peek an eye open at him. He looks a little rumpled, like he threw on clothes or maybe had a wild night of sex, but I can’t tell. Last night was a blur, and I don’t remember much about it.
Maybe Dex went home with someone. Maybe that someone is here.
God, what a way to distract me. I’m a nosy bitch on the best of days.
“Thom and Robbie weren’t answering, and Otto told me to go away because Salem was helping him with an aggressive hive, so here I am. I just needed to get away.”
“Well, you’re welcome anytime, just more of a heads-up would be nice.”
“Well, welcome to old-school Deaf. And I’m channeling that today. But honestly, do you want me to go? If you have someone upstairs…”
His cheeks flush, and he swallows. “No. Why would you think that?”
I open my other eye and roll them. “You looked thoroughly fucked is why. Please give me any gossip to distract from the human tooth we found in my serial killer aunt’s backyard.”
Dex freezes, his eyes widening slightly. “What the fuck? A humantooth?”
“Yeah. I thought it was Michael’s, but it’s not a groundhog’s.”
“Shit,” he says, taking a seat and eyeing me. “You okay? You want to run that stress off.”
