Because today, I get to write two hundred and fifty-nine on the mirror.
One more week, one day at a time…
I want to celebrate with my entire family. Without them, I’d be back at zero.
And that includes Gemma.
We hung out with my dad most of yesterday afternoon, then went to bed early—or, we tried to. It’s difficult falling asleep when I can’t seem to stop talking and sharing every thought that runs through my head with her while she smiles softly. And when she let me be the big spoon last night, I couldn’t stop grinning as I touched her.
There’s something about the early morning that makes me feel as if the night is hanging onto its time as much as I am. I’m curled in Gemma’s arms on my dad’s largest paddle board, the calm ocean rolling beneath us as we watch the sky turn from night to day. Laying against her chest, her hands raking up and down my bare thighs… This might be fucking paradise.
I take my phone out to click a selfie of us, and while she still has sleep in her eyes, they’re stunning against the golden morning glow.
“I don’t think someone is allowed to be as sexy as you,” I say before taking another photo of our view.
She kisses the top of my head, her calves dangling in the water. “I could say the same thing about you,” she says.
I tap over to one of my social media pages and start to post the picture of the sunrise, but Gemma pauses me.
“Wait, before you post, go to your followers’ list.”
My gaze narrows, and it takes me a second to realize why she’s telling me to do that. “We could be at any beach. Rad isn’t smart enough to figure out that.”
Her brows lift like she agrees, at least about the last part. “I did get rid of their IT guy,” she says.
I sit up and look back at her, taken aback by the nonchalant claim.
“Get rid of?” I ask.
“Ah…”
“Okay, we’re really going to have to talk about how many people you’ve ‘taken care of,’” I say, mildly bewildered by the fact that she talks about it so casually.
She scoffs. “I’m curious what you think I did while we were apart,” she says. “Where do you think Kade and I met, or how our company got such anastoundingreputation that your people hired us?”
I push out of her arms just so I can turn around and see her face. “What, were you a hit team?”
She doesn’t respond other than to lick her lips and glance at the ocean. “Well… I mean, kind of? Not like you see in movies. That shit makes it look much more glamorous than it is—though, we were paid well,” she says.
“How did you get into doing that?” I ask, genuinely curious how she came about such a job.
“Kade and I met in college. We grew really close, really fast. I think we bonded over a mutual obsession for conspiracy theories—but ones about aliens… timeline shifts… Big Pharma—that one was huge.”
“Oh, I would love to hear the alien theories because Zeb and I have a few,” I say eagerly.
“That does not surprise me,” she says, beaming.
“So you and Kade decided one day to be a team? How does that work?” I ask.
“He figured out early on what I was doing in my spare time—stalking you. Actually caught me on a camera one day and sent it to me. I was so fucking embarrassed. I had that… Do you remember the half-mask I used to wear? The blue contacts and wig?”
“I still have dreams about you in that,” I admit.
She smiles. “Kade found those and threw them at me one day, telling me he knew what I was doing and that I needed to be more careful doing it. He had cleaned up the camera footage andeverything without me asking that night, and I was completely caught off guard by the fact that someone could do that. After that, we kind of became partners. Kade had a reputation for being the person who could clear anything. A fixer. Sometimes those people needed more than computer wiping. I had skills. I had time. We weren’t necessarily mercenaries for hire. We were verycraftyin our downtime, and that resulted in some jobs that required us not to ask questions. For a while, it worked out. We had money coming in. The jobs weren’t too difficult. One day, though, things fell apart. It was after I’d left you, after that Halloween. I started working more and more jobs on my own after that just to keep myself busy. Kade took a job without me, and it happened to be an FBI coverup.”
“Oh shit.”
“He went to jail for four years for that,” she tells me. “Once he went to jail, I stopped working in that industry and started concert security. It didn’t take me long to get a reputation there of being someone people didn’t mess with. Liam joined me. Then, when Kade got out of jail, we started our own security business.”
