“I miss you, babe.”
“I miss you too, but I’ll call again tomorrow. I promise.”
“Great. Love you. Have a good night. Say hi to Hux for me.”
“I will, and Dee?”
“Yeah?”
“Only you, always,” he says, and my heart fills with joy. I know it’s not exactly what I want to hear, but it’s pretty damn close. So I’ll take it—I’ll take anything.
“I love you, too. Now go and jerk off in the shower,” I joke.
I sit on the sofa for a couple of seconds, reveling in the three words he said to me. Yes, it’s notthose three words, but I’m more than happy with what I got.
Eventually, I get up and walk back into the dining room with a bright, maybe-too-obvious smile.
Johnny doesn’t miss a thing. “He wanted phone sex, didn’t he?”
My face erupts in heat. I gasp dramatically, moving my hand to my lips and miming a zipper, locking it shut.
Laughter erupts around the table, the mood lighter, easier than it’s been in days.
Someone cracks a joke. Another playfully shoves their plate toward Johnny, demanding he “taste-test this one first.”
The tension melts away as they dive into sampling the new menu, passing plates, trading bites, and getting lost in conversation.
And for the first time in a long time…
I feel okay.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Three Weeks Later
Colt has been calling every day.
And every day, he sounds stronger. Clearer. More like himself.
I’ve been allowed to visit the center a few times, which has been amazing, and just seeing him, watching the light slowly return to his eyes, has made everything feel a little less heavy.
But outside of those visits? It’s been chaos.
The paparazzi have practically camped out at my front door, desperate for any scrap of information on the Slade brothers’ recovery. They follow me everywhere, cameras flashing, voices calling out questions I refuse to answer. At this point, I don’t even open the door anymore. If I have to leave the condo, I slip out under the cover of darkness, head down, moving fast.
And then there’s Daddy.
He’s called more times than I can count, insisting I need to end things with the“drug lord”or“once a druggie, always a druggie,Deliah.”He always puts emphasis on my name, like I should know better, like I have lost my damn mind.
I told him to stop calling.
Eventually, he did.
The doorbell rings, and when I answer, Anna’s standing there with a massive bunch of flowers. “And what are these for?” I ask as she hands them to me.
“They’re from Colt. He asked me to get them for you,” she says, and inside, I melt a little, or should I say a lot.
Joseph smiles while I lift the bouquet closer, breathing in the mix of roses and lavender. The petals are soft against my fingertips, still cool from the morning air. I pull out the littlecard, nestled between the stems. It’s a simple card, yet it means more than words can say.
