Page 129 of Rumi: The Hawthornes

“A little bit better than yesterday,” she replied with a grimace. “Still hurt like an absolute bitch if I’m not careful.”

“Then we’ll have to be careful.”

“If you can get me off without jostling my ribs, I’m here for it,” Nova said seriously.

“In the truck? Probably not. You think Bird will stay on the couch tonight?”

She looked at me with mock sympathy.

“Alright,” I said with a sigh.

I stood there for a few more minutes, kissing Nova and running my hands over any part of her body I could reach, but eventually we were interrupted by her phone.

“Shit,” she said, gingerly turning to reach for it. “It’s Bird.”

She answered it, her eyes on mine, and I knew immediately that something was wrong. I wanted to fucking scream. We couldn’t get an hour to ourselves, not a single hour, without some new problem popping up. I didn’t know how the hell Nova was handling it all.

“We’ll be right there,” she said into the phone. “Ten minutes.”

She hung up and let out a screech that startled the birds out of the tree behind me.

“My mother is at your house.”

“Shit,” I spat.

We’d had one conversation with Ava since she’d shown up at my door the first time, but it hadn’t amounted to much. She’d fawned over Bird, practically ignored Nova, and snapped at Ash. None of us had told her that Ash was facing charges because we weren’t sure what she’d do with the information and we were trying to get our ducks in a row before she started throwing her weight around.

“We need to go back,” Nova said with a sigh, putting her hands on my cheeks. “It won’t always be like this, right?”

“Sugar,” I replied, my lips twitching as she rolled her eyes at the endearment. “Some day soon, you and me are going to get plastered, have sloppy bendy sex, and then sleep late… naked.”

“That sounds like heaven,” she said, leaning forward to kiss me.

I’d kissed her plenty of times since I’d brought her home from the hospital, but my knees almost buckled as she slid her tongue into my mouth. We hadn’t donethatkind of kissing for months.

“You love me?” she asked, leaning her forehead against mine.

“Jesus, No,” I said, giving her another peck on the lips. “Keep up.”

“You’re such an ass.”

“I’myourass.”

“I’m so lucky!” she called sarcastically as I shut her door.

“I’m the lucky one,” I told her as I got into the driver’s seat. I reached out and grabbed her hand as I got us back on the main road.

“Do you really think it’ll work?” she asked quietly, rolling up her window. The relaxing drive was over, now we were just getting from point A to point B.

“Yeah. I think there’s a good chance we can keep Bird with us.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Us. Do you think we’ll work?”

“Baby, we’ve been together for years and both of us were too blind to see it.” I glanced at her. “Yeah, I think we’ll work.”

“You’re ready to give up all that strange?”

I coughed in surprise and glared at her. “I don’t even want to fuck anyone else.”

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