“Stop!” He kept laughing. “You win.”
“Yeah, I think so too.” I smirked and heaved a pillow at his head.
He caught it and hugged it, hiding his shit-eating grin.
“Enough with my ears. Gah! You’re giving me a complex. How would you like it if I pointed out your imperfections to keep from wanting to do very dirty things to you?”
He perked up. “I’m intrigued. So you think about doing very dirty things to me? What tampers your desire? My love handles?”
“You don’t have love handles.”
He pulled up his shirt. “True. Is it this tooth that I chipped years ago?” He opened his mouth and pointed to a lower tooth. I’d never notice it before. “Is it my hands? They really are too big for my body, but they come in handy for gripping a football.”
His hands held a master’s degree in doing the most incredible things to my body. They were perfect.
“I’m not telling you because I don’t want you to be self-conscious about it, like what you’ve done to me.” I had nothing. Absolutely nothing on him.
“Then tell me about the very dirty things you think about doing to me.”
Second-degree burns didn’t come in handy for much, except for hiding my embarrassment. “I want to tell you about me. You said I could and I’m ready.”
The jovial mood in the room died and his smile did too.
He cleared his throat and sat up in the chair. “Okay. Tell me. ‘Lake I-don’t-know-your-middle-name Jones was born…’”
I shook my head. “Just highlights. The ones that matter.”
He leaned forward, resting his arms on his legs. “I’m listening.” It pained me to see him stare at the ground, like he needed to emotionally brace himself.
“I met Ben on a bike tour of San Francisco. My friend Lindsay insisted we take the tour because her boyfriend owned the small tour business. They hadn’t been up and going long, so they needed people to take the tours, write a review, etcetera.”
Cage looked up. “You’re a very willing guinea pig.”
I nodded. “I’m game for just about anything once. Anyway, Ben was our guide for the four-hour tour that morning. At the end he handed me a purple conversation heart candy that said, ‘Say Yes.’ I stared at it with confusion for a few seconds, and then he asked me out on a date. It was oddly romantic and totally unexpected. I felt certain no guy would top his unique gesture. Until I met you. Beijing for the win, baby.”
His flicker of a smile encouraged me to continue.
“He gave me a conversational heart on every single date. It’s how he told me he loved me. It was crazy how I lived for those two or three simple words. I never ate them. Instead, I kept them in a jar. On the morning of Luke and Jessica’s wedding, I was supposed to go to the church with the rest of the bridesmaids, but I didn’t. I wanted my heart. I wanted those little words that meant so much to me. So I had Ben pick me up and take me to breakfast before going to the church.” I laughed, the kind that did nothing to ease the pain.
“Ben tried to talk me out of it. He said I should spend my morning with the other women. However, my insistence, my utter stubbornness, won over and he caved.”
“You blame yourself.”
My eyes met Cage’s. I nodded. “How can I not? The truck hit us on a road we never would have been on had I not altered the morning’s plans.” I closed my eyes and whispered, “Ben died and I lived.”
The bed dipped. I opened my eyes.
“Come here.” He leaned his back against the headboard and spread his legs.
I eased over between them so my back rested against his chest. He brushed my hair off to one side and kissed the back of my neck.
“Death is filled with whys, what-ifs, and so damn much regret that it can swallow your whole fucking world if you let it. Ben died and you lived. It’s just a fact. It’s nothing more and nothing less. You can hold onto it or let it go, but either way, it won’t change the fact.”
I rested my hands on his legs and my head against his shoulder. “Is that what you tell yourself about your dad?”
“Every damn day.”
“Does it help?”
