He lurches forward and grabs my hand. “Don’t leave.”
“I’m—”
“Please. I’m not asking you to stay for me, I just want, I need, damn, I can’t get my words out, I just. Shit. Joss, I love you, man. You’re my friend. I’ve never felt as strong as I do when we’re together and that means something to me. Fuck, it means everything…what are you laughing at?”
“I’m not laughing.” My face is split in half so hard my cheeks ache. I take his hands and lead him back to the fire. There’s an upturned milk crate. I sit him down on it and crouch between his legs. “I don’t want to know what you think you just heard me say on the phone. I just need you to know something if you’re ready to listen?”
The unfettered panic in Kai’s honey-brown eyes fades a little. But he’s still confused. This sweet man has no clue what I’m about to say, but he nods anyway. Bracing himself. Here for me with whatever I need.
One day he’ll truly believe all I’ll ever need is him. “So here’s the thing,” I tell him. “That was Tanner on the phone offering me a permanent job, and I took it, and do you know why?”
Kai squeezes my hands tighter. “Why?”
“Because,mate. I’m so fucking in love with you I couldn’t leave this place if I tried.”
27
KAI
Five months later…
Joss loves me. It’s a fact I carry close to my chest, but I never know it more than whenever I see him with my mom and my grandma. They’re together now at the dinner table. It’s Thanksgiving, and for the first time ever, my family got a meal that isn’t likely to kill them.
The remains of the turkey dinner Joss and Tanner cooked in Cheryl’s kitchen are still spread on the table. Tanner is drunk and dozing against Jax, his head lolled on his shoulder, while Jax watches Molly pick out chords on her beat-up guitar.
It’s an odd reality to have all these people in my mom’s house. Six months ago, apart from Joss, they were all part of my life, but I’m so much closer to them—to everyone—now. It should bug me that I needed someone else to help me feel whole, but it doesn’t. Nothing could ever make me resent loving Joss.
I watch him rise and disappear into the kitchen. He comes back with a pie I still have flour in my hair from watching him bake. It’s a stolen recipe—apple and cranberry from the family V&V sources their cider from, but Joss put crushed almonds in the crust. He also wandered off before he crimped the edges and put it in the oven, but I’m here for that.
For everything he forgets, I remember.
For everything I remember, he helps me forget.
Like now, when he serves everyone except himself.
I pull him into my lap and hold my spoon to his lips.
“Idiot.” He swats it away. “You eat it.”
“You first.”
“That’s not how it works.” Joss waggles his brows, and I laugh into his neck, as if the room full of people aren’t here, and this moment is just for us.
Maybe it is. Tanner is awake and murmuring something that makes Jax grin.
Molly is with my mom and grandma, talking a mile a minute, waving her arms like Joss does in the morning when his body is still in rebel mode. It’s been a while since he threw an egg in my face, but I don’t mind. Chaotic or not, every morning with Joss is a fuckin’ dream.
The night draws on. We’re waiting for one more guest, and the knock on the door doesn’t come until late.
By then, everyone is either in bed or sprawled out in my mom’s living room. Knowing who it is, I get up and shuffle to the door.
My brother is on the other side, rumpled from his delayed flight. It’s been a while, but he grins at me from behind his hood. “So it’s true,” he says as he hugs me.
“What is?”
“You really are happy.”
How he can tell from a split-second interaction, I don’t know. But itistrue.
