“Yep.”
“To go and be happy with your Leo?”
“Yep.”
“Then stop wasting time speaking to me and bugger off,” he smiles.
And I do. I run almost all the way home, oppressive heat be damned, so I can grab my car keys and go do what I should have done fucking ages ago.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sadie
Ichecked Wishbone on the way in case he was staying over in the flat upstairs, but he wasn't there. I didn’t think he would be; he prefers to go home to his townhouse to sleep in the hot weather because it’s cooler, but I didn’t want to miss him on the off chance he’d changed his mind.
I wonder how many other tidbits of information I’ve taken in and retained about Leo and his preferences over the years without even noticing.
It’s good to see the truth at last: you couldn’t design a better man for me than Leo Mills. He’s the best fun to be around, but knows when to turn it off and be sensible. He backs me up one hundred percent in everything, from my art to my life choices, even if he disagrees with them. Even if they cause him pain. And he’s always there for me, every time, asking for nothing in return but my friendship, never pushing me for anything more.
However cautious I feel the need to be, how can I not take a chance on him? What on earth happened to my gumption? I’m known for it, after all. So it’s about time I started showing some.
The streets whizz past me without me paying them any mind as I drive to his place in my clapped out Renault. I’m on autopilot now, focused on getting there. I don’t know what I’ll say to him once we’re face to face, but I’ll worry about that when I’m there. Something will come to me.
Parallel park outside his place. Gears back in neutral. Windows up. Ignition off.Everything done carefully, one at a time, following the process.
The moment has come.
I turn my head to look up at his house. All the lights are out, so I guess he’s asleep. But, even though it’s selfish, I can’t bring myself to go home and come back later. I need to be with himnow, and will shake him awake if I have to.
I don’t think he’d mind.
As though I’m in a dream, I get out of the car and lock it, and climb the steps up to his front door. Running my hands over the door frame, looking for his spare key, I swear under my breath when it’s not there, so I try my luck under the plant pots by his front door.Bingo, third one’s the charm. I keep telling him it’s a bad idea to keep his spare somewhere where people could find it and rob him, but tonight I’m glad for his carelessness. I’d hate to have to try to find an open window to climb through. Sliding the key into the lock as quietly as I can, I open the door and close it behind me.
To my right is the hallway, leading to the kitchen dead ahead, and the door to the lounge.
To my left are the stairs up to the first floor, and then the second. That’s where his bedroom is.
I climb them slowly, my heart rate picking up in a way that has nothing to do with the rush to get here. Past his work room and a spare bedroom on the first floor, and over to the next staircase. I stop in my tracks as I look at all the photos he has framed on the wall on the way up. Eli and Emily ontheir wedding day, just the two of them, and then a group shot of us all outside the registry office. Dean and Liaden, laughing together across the table from the picture taker at a restaurant. A candid shot of Eli looking over my shoulder and talking to me as I ink Leo. Me and Dean making a fuss of Click, the dog’s tongue licking my nose as I screw up my face. Me, smirking at the camera at a concert he and I went to, my hair up in two space buns, my jewellery plastic and neon. Me and Leo laughing as we eat lunch at the parlour. Me and Leo pulling faces on a night out, both looking tipsy.
Me and Leo. Me and Leo. Me and Leo.I’m not in every photo, but I’m certainly in most of them.
He loves us all so much, but it’s impossible not to see from this display that he loves one of us in a different way to all the others.
Silently, I tiptoe quickly up the rest of the stairs. His door is ajar, and I tentatively push it open with one finger, glad when it doesn’t creak.
He’s lying diagonally across his bed on his front, a white sheet covering just his arse and thighs. His hair is tied back loosely, and the moonlight through the window on the right makes his tanned skin glow. He’s hugging the white pillow, and when he’s fast asleep, he looks so pure and so free that I can’t help smiling. I wander over to him, taking in the way his hair is fluffed up at the sides having partially escaped his hair tie, and all his tattoos. I’m responsible for so many of them, and as I kneel next to the bed, I count the ones I can see. The walrus mandala on his shoulder, which he volunteered to have so I could work out the kinks in a design I couldn’t stop thinking about. Another mandala, because I do love doing them, this one in the shape of a fleur de lys on his neck; I did that one for his birthday, my gift to him. TheFunnybonescartoon skeletons on his hip, because I started muttering the theme song once and hejoined in, word perfect, and in the moment it was so funny that we commemorated it.
Without even realising it, I marked him as mine, over and over again. It awakens something inside me, something territorial and aroused.Leo is mine. He belongs to me in a way that can never be erased.
I’ve always been against the idea of belonging to anyone, as it’s basically the same thing as being someone’s property. I’m my own person and must remain so… But this is different. He’s mine, and I’m his, and I don’t feel stifled. If anything, I feel freer in a way I don’t understand and can’t explain, but it’s a wonderful relief that it exists.
One step at a time. I’m not going to get ahead of myself, and I’ll still take each day as it comes, but this feels right in a way nothing else has for a while, if ever.
His eyes slowly open, heavy with sleep, and it takes him a couple of seconds to register that I’m there. He frowns, surprised and puzzled. “Pumpkin?” he mumbles in confusion, sitting up and scratching his head. “What’s up? Is everything OK?”
I look and look at him, at the ripped body covered in more ink, and the beard in need of a trim, and his soft, wide mouth, and a ripple of pure lust passes through me from head to toe, finally free to just be.
He starts to look more awake, and with that, more concerned. “Are you - ”
