Gio raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t eat, Fizzy?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Baby, you haven’t eaten in a week,” he said witha sigh. “I’m home, I’m safe, Cupid’s never going to see the light of day—”
“Did you kill him?”
“No, baby. We handed him over to the FBI.”
I speared Hatch with a pointed stare. “Is that true?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. One hundred percent.”
I relaxed in my chair. “So, it’s done?”
“Yeah, baby, it’s done. You’re free.”
I turned to Gio. “Can we go to bed now?”
He smiled gently. “Yeah, beautiful, we can go to bed. You sure you don’t want more to eat?”
“I just want you.”
“We’ll take care of the dishes,” Maisie said. “Go reconnect.”
“Thanks, Maisie,” Gio said, taking my hand and leading me downstairs.
The second the door was closed, his lips were on mine and he was guiding me to the bed.
“I love you,” I panted out as he ripped off my panties.
“Love you, too, baby.”
As he made love to me, I thanked whatever god might be in the universe for the man he or she had brought me.
He wasn’t at all who I’d imagined, but he was perfect.
Waverly
December—one (ish) year later...
“BABY, IT’S ON!” I called.
Gio came into the living room, a bottle of Jim beam and four shot glasses in his hand.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
He settled himself on the sofa. “Every time someone says, small town or take over some farm, or welcome home from the big city, we take a shot,” he said, explaining the rules ofDrunken Holiday Movie Bingo.
“We’ll be hammered by the first commercial.” Isnorted. “The trailer alone could cause you to need a twelve-step program.”
“Ah, you’ve seen this one, then?”
“No, but you know they’re all the same. It’s what I love about them.”
“Wait for us,” Lennon ordered, Snarl following from the back of our brand-new home in Ridgefield.
So much had happened in the past year or so, it didn’t seem real. Lennon was home and working her dream job at the Denver Zoo, Snarl was no longer a NOMAD, now permanently with the Primal Howlers’ Monument chapter, and he and Lennon had purchased a home just outside Denver and she was pregnant with their first child.
