“You told the world what he did to you?”
“I did. And I’m renaming my bus. It’s re-opening this week as Spite Burgers. I started new socials for it and shared where the name came from and I already have seven hundred followers.”
My heart swells as my smile stretches my cheeks at this news, and I cannot hold it in any longer. “I love you,” I say, my voice going hoarse with the magnitude of the words said exactly in that order, to exactly this woman, who will own me, heart and soul and body and mind, for all of eternity.
“I didn’t wait too long?”
My head is sloshing about. My body aches as though I’ve run six marathons and lifted a car off someone.
I don’t want to move.
I want to flop back onto the bed and lie perfectly still until everything stops spinning.
But none of that matters as much as pulling her into my lap and breathing in the scent of her hair and her skin and her morning breath, which is just as perfect as every bit of the rest of her. “I would wait for you to the end of my natural life, and then some.”
She shudders against me. “I don’t know that I deserve you.”
“Will you chide me in that schoolteacher voice at least three times a day?”
“Simon.”
I rest my head on her shoulder and draw lazy hearts over the fabric covering her side. “Yes, like that.”
She huffs out a laugh. “We’re working on your standards and expectations for yourself and all of the good things you deserve.”
“Quite a bit of trouble when I’m exceedingly content with my life exactly as it is now.”
“Headache and all?”
“Perhaps that part could see itself out.”
She runs her fingers through my hair and brushes a kiss on my forehead. “I’m sorry I got so mad.”
“You should have been angry. I knew it was wrong of me to continue to draw so much inspiration from your life without your knowledge, and yet I persisted longer than I should have.”
“But the final script was nothing like my life?”
“No one would recognize it for the leaps my mind took in revisions.”
“Can I read it?”
My hand stills. “I’ve told the studio I won’t be delivering it to them.”
“But can I read it?”
“Certainly, if you wish. I have no desire to hide anything from you, no matter the consequences.”
“What if the consequences are that I think it’s amazing?”
“May I remind you, darling, that I was the head writer forIn the Weeds?”
She laughs.
I cringe at the noise. How can something be so perfect and so painful at the same time?
Blasted alcohol.
“Maybe a little more sleep?” she says softly. “Lana has the boys. You don’t have to get up.”
