“You okay, honey?”
He jumped a little, bringing his gaze back to me. “Yeah, thought I saw something. Anyway, those are some really good points. There’s a bakery just a town over from Heaton Springs I used to go to a lot. It isn’t too far, and I can just see if they’re hiring. Do I want to move away from Love ’n Sugar? Not necessarily. I like my coworkers, and I like the management, but I guess I could get over that. I don’t know. Money isn’t really that big of a concern, though. I was living with Mom and Dad until I moved here, so I have a good amount saved up. Moon was—and it hurts to say this, so don’t ever tell him—kind of right. We do have a small apartment, and I’d like to get you your own room for painting. Hell, maybe you could start selling some if we moved. Therapy, well, let me look up their website to check something.”
I watched as he pulled up the company’s website, searching through it. He pointed to a paragraph of text. “They do telehealth, so maybe we could do it over a video call until we figured something else out, or indefinitely. When you think about it, I don’t think either of us has much here. I mean, we have Sarah, and I like James quite a bit, but I guess we don’t have much else.”
“Who’s James again?”
“He’s my coworker. We work in the kitchen together.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ve mentioned him before.” I thought about it a little longer, weighing every option in my mind. “So, you’ve given some possible solutions to each one of the cons. I guess, logically, it doesn’t seem all that bad when you put it out like that.”
We started to fall sideways as Crescent shifted onto his back. I curled on top of him as much as I could, pressing my head to his chest. “Yeah, and none of those things have anything to do with Jude. Is it a plus we won’t run into Jude? Sure, but it isn’t us letting him run our lives. Nomatter our decision, it’s never been about that. The idea is nice in theory—it’s just a bit scary.”
“Definitely scary. But leaving Jude was also scary.”
I closed my eyes as Crescent rubbed circles over my exposed lower back. “Mhm. Getting back in contact with me was scary. Going to therapy was scary. When you think about it, we’ve done a whole lot of scary. Maybe it’s worth thinking more about.”
Yeah, wehaddone a whole lot of scary. Enough for three lifetimes worth, it felt like. “Doing the scary isn’t as scary when it’s with you.”
“Whatever we do, we’ll be doing it together. We’ve got each other.”
I nuzzled deeper into his chest, inhaling the scent of everything Crescent. “And we’re never letting go.”
My head wasin Crescent’s lap, his fingers slowly carding through my hair. He scrolled through some more options, both of us agreeing the price range was way too high. “Set the max lower in the filters.”
“Forgot I could do that, honestly. Thanks, baby.” He didn’t have his earbuds in this time. I hadn’t seen them in a while, which made me hopeful about his hallucinations.
Once we were in a more comfortable range, we sifted through a few houses and apartments in or around Heaton Springs. They were cute, but they weren’t exactly what we were looking for. We hadn’t even decided if we were going to move, but it was fun to look through everything without any pressure to decide on a time limit.
After the third page, I sighed. “Jeez, there’s not a lot out there, huh? At least not any I think we’d like.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit less than I expected to see.” He swiped his thumb, stopping on a particular house.
It was beautiful. The front windows were massive, and it had a wooden arch above the front door, a dark oak shade as an accent to the lighter-colored wood surrounding it. “Let’s look at that one.”
When he tapped on it, I took note of the address. It was only about twenty minutes away from the Millers’ house, and not too far from town, while still being secluded enough to not feel suffocating. There was a big backyard for if we ever decided to get a pet, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms, all modernized without being too over the top.
One of the rooms had both of us pausing. It was large and fucking gorgeous. Natural lighting filtered through the windows, which were the same sizes as the ones out front. There was plenty of floor and wall space, and even a walk-in closet with shelves.
“Oh, that would be perfect for your art. It’s apparently supposed to be the master bedroom, but we don’t really need that big of a room.” Crescent was talking as if we had already made a decision.
And honestly, I couldn’t disagree with him. “That really would be beautiful to work in. Imagine the view during winter when all the snow is falling.”
“Yes, that’d be amazing.”
“And it isn’t ridiculously priced, either.”
“Right? I need to save this for later.”
“Save what?” A new voice joined our conversation, making Crescent and me both jump.
I looked up at Sarah, who was standing by the arm of the couch. “Sarah, holy shit. You can’t scare us like that.”
She frowned, plopping onto a chair. “Sorry, I used mykey. I didn’t see Crescent’s car out front, so I thought maybe you were in here painting or sleeping alone.”
Crescent laughed. “You really did scare us, but that’s okay. Maybe knock next time. You never know what you’ll walk into if you don’t.”
“I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. What were you going to save for later?”
