I turned so that I could bury my face in his chest.
He wrapped his arms around me, still fully dressed in his outer clothes that smelled like smoke.
He pressed his mouth to the top of my head and murmured, “Your sister heard about the fire from Doc, who heard about it from one of his buddies. They recognized me. They didn’t know it was your house that’d burned down until I told her just now.”
I sighed. “This is such a mess.”
“Convenient.” He sounded slightly upbeat. “I mean, now you have no choice but to move in with me.”
“I could move in with my sister,” I pointed out.
“But then you’d have eight thousand kids in your bed every night because neither one of those dumbasses knows how to tell their kids to sleep in their own bed.”
He did have a point.
My sister had been bitching about how the kids liked to sleep with them, and she barely got any alone time with Doc. When I’d pointed out that she was the reason that they stayed in bed with her, she hadn’t wanted to hear it. But she did like to continue to complain.
And the kids were all for sharing the love and slept with Kent and Anders just as much as they slept with Doc.
“It’d be kind of weird to have you sleeping over at my sister’s house.” I giggled.
His hand came up to sift into my hair. “And I’d be there. Every night. It’d be really awkward.”
I snorted. “I don’t think you and me being together will smooth over well, but if you can weather the storm, so can I.”
“They’ll hate that you’re with me,” he agreed. “They’ll be all ‘she’s a club princess and you’re a piece of shit.’”
The way he said it was kind of nasally and whiny, which had me giggling all over again.
“I guess I’ll just have to agree to disagree with you.” I looked up at him.
He looked down at me, the beanie still snugly on his head, pulled down far enough that his hair was all tucked underneath it. It gave me a great view of his face.
One-half smooth and unblemished. The other scarred and unforgiving.
I kissed him on the scarred half.
“Why do you do that?”
I tilted my head slightly. “Do what?”
“Only kiss me on the scarred side,” he said. “You always touch me on the scarred side, too. You smack me all the time on the scarred forearm. Yet you barely ever touch me on the unblemished side.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just where I gravitate to.”
“The ugly side?” He looked disgusted.
“You don’t have an ugly side,” I told him honestly. “I like all of you. No, I love all of you. I love your scars. I love your scowls. I love that line that appears on this side, but not on that one.” I touched him between his eyes. “And I especially love the way your lips feel when they’re running over my flesh.”
He swallowed hard. “You love me?”
I hesitated, wondering if it was too soon to tell him that yes, I was desperately in love with him.
But then I caught a beam on my house collapse, which started a chain reaction to where all that was left standing fell into a cloud of sparks and dust.
Life was too short.
I needed him to know how I felt.
