“Yes,” I said with a heavy sigh. Iris was one of the strongest supporters of helping me after her daughter and grandson had died in a fire. I still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was my fault. She had been right there with my own mother, arguing that I needed help and support, and that if it came from outside them, so be it. “Gina would be so smug right now.”
“Because her family loves him?”
“Yes.”
“You told me once that she would have loved him to pieces.”
“Oh my God, if those two had met when Gina was still alive, she would have adored him. And he would have loved her,” I said, eyes drifting to the side and fighting back the tears that stung. “They would have been the best of friends.”
“And now he’s a vital part of your life, and you love him.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you met him so late then.”
I stared at her. “What?”
She grinned. “Because at least this way you don’t have to worry about your wife leaving you for a gay man, and she doesn’t have to worry that you were going to leave her for a man that lights you up so much inside that even a bitter bitch like me can see you’re so much happier having that stubborn, manipulative, loving, caring, wonderful man at your side.”
“Did you just…” I began, but I couldn’t even pretend to be indignant. Her fucked up humor had been as much a help for me as it had been a way for me to trust her. “Fuck you.”
“I think you should save that for the man who’s waiting for you at home,” she said in one of her rare moments of gentility and grace. And then her voice switched back to its familiar, welcome irreverence. “After all, our time is up. So go on, get home.”
I was being dismissed, and why not? Nothing that happened today was going to be fixed with a few words and sharing how I felt. I was going to need to remember what she had taught me; what my life over the past several years had taught me. I was never going to be normal, or well, I was just me. Messy, emotional, lost at times, but me.
And someone was waiting at home for me.
It was that thought that carried me forward more than anything else I had talked about over the past hour. It was whatkept me from steering the car toward the nearest solid object that would guarantee the end of what plagued me. I was never going to escape the pain, not completely, but it was like I had been promised something that had not grown easier with time but...more acceptable.
Our apartment was not goingto win any awards but pulling up to the plain building and seeing that the sliding door to our balcony was open made me smile. Stepping out of my truck, I could hear Isaac’s voice floating down to me as he sang. It was a song of heartache and want, but it was filled with yearning and love as well, exactly the sort of thing I would expect of him.
Mounting the steps was easy, and stepping through the door, I heard the song he was singing as it washed over me. I closed the door softly and took off my shoes, so I didn’t get in trouble for tracking dirt into the apartment.
Stepping out from the entranceway, I stopped as I stared at the pictures over and around the TV. There was Isaac with his parents, and another with his siblings. There was me with my sister and my parents, grinning at the camera. There was Isaac and I standing on the edge of a building as we smiled at the camera, Isaac in that private, secretive way, and me grinning like an idiot.
And there too was me with Gina and Mikael. Isaac had never wanted me to forget them or ignore that they had been important to me, but that wasn’t a surprise if you knew Isaac. They had a spot on the wall, just like Gina’s favorite sundress still hung in our shared closet. Just like how that silly stuffed lion of Mikael’s had been carefully maintained over the years as it sat on a shelf next to the sliding glass door.
It had been Isaac who had done the research, made the calls, and was given all the information before he’d come to me with the idea to have them properly cleaned. The smell of smoke had been thick on Gina and Mikael’s favorite things, even years later. But it had been Isaac who had carefully arranged for them to be safely cleaned, and they no longer smelled of the fire that had taken my first real loves from me.
I stepped closer to the source of Isaac’s voice and recoiled when I was met with a pointed, narrow face.
God, I loved that man and his love for all living things, but a fucking snake?
“Hi,” I said to Mildred, the rescue Isaac kept insisting wasn’t venomous, but goddamn...no one wanted to come home to a large snake dangling from a light fixture.
Her tongue flicked, and I took that as permission. I walked back to our bedroom, where he was happily folding laundry. I knew I had about twelve hours before he went back to Arete, not as a guest, but as a Guide. Apparently, Reggie had decided to extend the offer to Isaac to join their team, though Luka and Cade had played a part in making that offer happen.
But really, who better to help someone in dire need than someone like Isaac? Yes, his time learning to lie to people who wanted him to lie, even when they didn’t want to admit they wanted to be lied to, helped him develop a lot of the skills that would come in handy, but...he was also one of the gentlest, kindest, and hardheaded people I knew. It was a perfect fit for a group of men who were broken and desperate but needed someone to help them.
He was still singing when I walked in and saw him swaying his hips naturally, not because he was trying to seduce anyone. I’d never realized before that he was the sort to sing for the sake of it, but after I’d been released from the last facility and he had started coming around, as a friend at first but little by little?—
Well, he could sing. He could sing beautifully, maybe not in a way that was going to top charts, but it was enough to make me stop and listen without hesitation. He could reach highs, and he could reach lows, but it was the way he could break your heart and lift it at the same time that truly made me listen.
And then I interrupted it by wrapping my arm around his waist, laughing when he yelped in shock and then slamming him down onto the bed. It was exactly where he had been piling up the laundry, but I didn’t care. What mattered was the shock on his face, followed by recognition and a smile as he ran his hands gently down the side of my face with that silly little smile of his.
“Hi,” he said with a chuckle. “Get your reality check for the day?”
“I did,” I said, nuzzling his neck and inhaling deep, taking in the scent of him, of home. “I love you.”
