“Hey, so here’s a thing,” Lake said in a tone I couldn’t read until I looked way up to his face. He was feeling awkward.
“Can we walk and talk? Reina is getting antsy.” Theo looked at us. “Except if you want to continue toward the reserve?”
“No, this is fine; let’s walk back.” I fell into step with Hope, which meant walking really fast, as slow as she was going.
“I’ll do things with Reina to keep her occupied, never mind me,” Theo said and started to do some training exercises with the young mare.
They soon got ahead of us, but Hope seemed calm enough, so we settled into the walk back.
“I’ve been thinking.” Lake cleared his throat. “You two don’t need two rooms, right? And the kids are in the next room…”
Ah, yes. The awkwardness made sense now. I wanted to groan, but I also recognized that I wasn’t a kid anymore, so I nodded.
“Yeah. It’s a bit…”
Jack chuckled but said nothing.
“So, unless you, Jack, are super into keeping your old room, why don’t you two take River’s old room instead? That would put your rooms in between Mona and Madden’s, too.”
Theo, who now rode back toward us, called out, “And it’s much bigger than your individual rooms!”
Lake chuckled. “We might’ve talked about mentioning this to you two earlier.”
They were such a married couple sometimes, without even being married.
I waited for Lake and Hope to move forward, and then moved to the other side of the road to take Jack’s hand.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“You two figure it out. No pressure!” Lake waved a hand, and they continued riding back home while we slowed down to a more comfortable pace.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Jack said thoughtfully. “It’s not like we need two beds anymore.”
“I’d rather sleep next to you every night.”
He tugged me to a stop, then leaned down to kiss me. “I agree wholeheartedly.”
* * * *
I’d forgotten how good I’d been at school. It had always been easy to me, and if I’d stayed home, I would’ve graduated last year. Now, I was a year behind and I needed to get my GED if I wanted to do anything with my life.
So, I started with that. It was easy enough. I had my mail forwarded to the rescue, not that I expected any, and that was the address I gave when I signed up for my GED stuff.
I felt like I had a home again in a more official way.
Since I had my birth certificate, Jack decided to teach me to drive. I refused to do that in our new truck because I didn’t want to crash it.
Lake got inspired by our truck, so he bought two new vehicles for the rescue: a truck and an SUV, although both were decidedly less fancy than he could’ve gone for.
Lake also invested in the hot tub, which he put on the concrete slab in the back of the house. He had the slab extended, just so there was more room for the fire pit we now used a lot and the grilling area with the deck chairs.
As soon as the tub was installed and there were no little ears around, everyone collectively agreed that there would be no sex in the tub. Even if it was pretty private in the corner with no windows right next to it and no bedrooms on that side of the house, it would just be…icky. River’s word, not mine.
* * * *
Jack had gotten me my late presents, too. I now had an anatomically correct horse model standing on my dresser in our new room. It wasn’t huge, but it was such a great learning tool. Mona was fascinated by it, and was now putting it back together faster than I could. Toby was proud.
In April, Toby finally got his foster parent license, as did Theo and Lake who had taken the courses alongside him.
