“Fen?”
“Hmm?” I came back to the present to find Rami had replaced Mae. His arm was around my waist, fingers burrowed beneath my clothes stroking bare skin. “Sorry. What?”
“It’s time to go,” he murmured. “Where did you go? Anywhere nice?”
I smiled at the repetition of a phrase we’d bantered before. “Maybe. I’ll tell you later?”
“Sounds like a promise.”
“If you want it to be.”
Rami’s eyes blazed, but we had too many little people around us to finish the conversation.Tiredlittle people. We hustled them back to the car and strapped them in. Rami offered to drive home, but I shook my head. I—I liked the ritual of driving him and kids. It felt right, as if it was a dynamic that was meant to be.
At the top of Christmas Mountain, Safia met us at the gate. “Don’t even think of driving straight back down this fell,” she told me. “Paddy’s made a roast, and I need you to test the latest mince pie batch for me.”
Put like that, how could I refuse? As if I even wanted to. Rowdy McCade family dinners had been one of my favourite places to be long before Rami had washed up on Christmas Mountain.
I couldn’t deny that having him by my side, his hand in mine as we let the kids run ahead to the house, was seven shades of awesome, though. The sense of borrowed time seemed far away, and I could almost pretend this was my actual life. Right here. Right now.
Forever.
Wowzers. I couldn’t deal with that image in my head. It was too much, and yet nowhere near enough.
Rami squeezed my hand. “Are you okay?”
I felt like he’d asked me that already, but I couldn’t remember what I’d said in response. I smiled. “Of course.”
Rami nodded and scanned the horizon for Charlie while I admired his profile, because it didn’t matter where my head was at or how my thoughts landed, one thing never changed: this man was beautiful.
Dinner was louder and more chaotic than any other I’d ever lived through at Safia’s kitchen table. Addie and Mae fought and screamed. Charlie cried. Rami comforted him, all the while laughing at Paddy’s best impression of The Hulk and my retelling of the horrors Mae had put me through in Santa’s grotto.
Safia winced and passed me more mince pies. “I’m sorry. She takes after her grandmother. Paternal, obviously.”
Paddy launched a badly aimed cream cracker across the table.
Rami caught it with a snap of his hand before it could hit me square in the side of the head. The expression on his face was murder and I wanted him so much in that moment I had to look away and keep my gaze to myself for a solid ten minutes. Did I like his smile more? Sure. But ragey Rami was scorching hot too.
Damn. When had we shifted into the heady space where I couldn’t think about him without sex being the dominating theme? Had it always been like this, but I’d been too scared of losing him to notice?
Was I still scared?
Back when I’d met him, I’d understood myself well enough to know the answer to those questions, but pain and trauma had made my brain a complicated place to be. There were people out there who’d suffered far worse than me—Iknewthat. I’d seen it. But that didn’t fix the part of me that had been broken. Only time could do that. And love.
Lots of love, in any form I could get it.
Sex was part of that…right?
“Earth to Uncle Fen.” Mae giggled and smooshed a mince pie in my face.
Safia opened her mouth to go postal on her, but I laughed, cutting her off, and smooshed a pie right back on Mae’s dark head. “Don’t try me, kid. I’m the biggest clown you’ll ever know.”
“You’re a sleepy clown,” Mae retorted. “So you should stay for a slumber party with Uncle Rama.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
The whole table laughed, even Charlie, though his cute bemusement gave away that he had no clue why I was the current source of Stone/McCade amusement.
I didn’t have much idea either. I looked to Rami for help.
