“Do you need me to take him for a bit? I don’t mind,” I tell her honestly, his joy and light giving me a reprieve from the darkness trying to smother me.
“No, but thank you.” She shakes out her arm. “He’s climbingeverything,and I just need a breather from trying to wrangle him.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “Anyway, I need a favor.”
“Of course.”
“Remember that you already said yes,” she says with a bright smile, her eyes sparkling and lacking the exhaustion of only a second ago.
Fuck my life.
“What do you need?”
“I ordered the new countertops for the bakery from that place south of Sweetwater, Norman & Sons. The waitlist was a mile long and with everything else going on, I forgot about it.”
“Okay…”
“The countertops are ready. They’re gorgeous and I’m thrilled, but I need to be here. I can’t go get them.”
“I’ll drive and get them, no problem.” Rolling her lips inward, she tries—and fails—to hide her smile. “What’s the catch?”
“You’re going with Ella.”
“I’m—”
“Before you freak out, it was supposed to be her and me but I just can’t make it happen. I need her to go to make sure that what I want, what we ordered, is indeed what they have ready for us and that the dimensions are correct before it’s all loaded to come home. The guy is good but he’s an asshole, and I don’t feel comfortable with her going by herself. So, you’d be doing me a huge favor.”
A favor.
I’d be dead before I repaid all the favors they’d done for me.
But Ella…fuck.
There’s no way.
She makes my heart hammer in my chest and the blood pound in my veins. I’ve barely been able to string a sentence together since I met her, since she literally knocked me on my ass, her smile always brightening at my grunts and mumbled responses.
I’ve never met anyone like her.
Never been affected by someone like that before.
“How long is the trip?” I ask, swallowing hard as Gage rests a slimy hand on my face.
“Like seven hours. We’ll get y’all hotel rooms for the night.” I open my mouth to speak but she holds up her hand. “I know youcoulddo it in one day, but it’s fourteen hours without traffic or anything plus confirming and loading the order, securing it because I love them like a second child, and no one needs me sleep-deprived and raging.”
“Of course,” I tell her, resigned and a little nauseous. Interacting with Ella briefly at the bakery is one thing, but being trapped with her in the car for hours on end is another.
“All the pastries and coffee you want.”
“You don’t need?—”
“Bodhi,” she says gently as Gage reaches for her and she pulls him into her arms, “I know it’s a lot for you and I need you to know how much I appreciate this.”
“It’s not?—”
She snorts. “I married an older version of you; I know it’s a lot.”
I open my mouth and close it because she’s right.
I know it.
