“Let’s go home,” I whispered, pressing a soft kiss to his lips.
He nodded, and I tossed him over my shoulder, anchoring my hand right on his jean-covered ass.
“Hiro!”
“I’ve got to carry you over the threshold. It’s tradition.”
“We’ve been in there a thousand times,” he pointed out.
“This is different. This time it’s to stay.”
At the door, I flipped him into a bridal-style hold and unlocked the deadbolt. “You ready?”
He nodded.
I went into our new home, across the small entryway where Rett put racks for shoes and hooks for our jackets, to step into the large great room with a solid wall of windows. The place was warm and homey, not at all bare like my last place. The huge sectional in the center of the room looked like a cloud and had way too many pillows. There were throw blankets on the back and one on the ottoman from when we were snuggled up the previous night.
The coffee table in the middle was the same material as the sectional, and when you pushed it close, it turned the whole thing into a bed. A large console sat across from it, and with one click of a button, the TV would rise out of the top.
There was a braided rug that, according to Pip, was in the colors of summer. There was art on the walls, picture frames he wanted to fill, and some floating shelves for knick-knacks that didn’t match or make any sense. But he loved them, andthat was all that mattered.
“Welcome home,” he said, staring at the place we’d built.
I carried him into the kitchen and set him on the huge white marble island so I could open the fridge disguised behind light wooden cabinet doors to pull out a bottle of champagne.
“You can’t be drinking on your meds,” I told him. “But a couple sips won’t hurt.”
The cork flew up into the ceiling. I nearly lost an eye, and the bubbly fizzed out and dripped all over the floor. We didn’t bother with glasses, just drank it right from the bottle.
“Can I see my surprise now?” he asked.
“Only if you promise not to love it more than you love me,” I bargained.
“That’s impossible.”
After lifting him off the island, I threaded our fingers and tugged him down the hall to a door that had remained closed since the moment I’d written the check.
I pulled the key from my pocket. “You wanna do the honors?”
He shook his head. “You do it.”
I slid the key into the lock and turned the handle, pausing one last time to look over my shoulder.
“Welcome home, baby,” I said, echoing his words from before, and swung the door in.
I expected him to barge right in, but he didn’t do that.
He froze right there in the doorway, eyes moving around the room as though he couldn’t quite comprehend what he saw. And then his eyes moved to me, and he burst into tears.
Well, that wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.
“Pip…”
He slammed into me, arms winding around my waist as he cried into my shirt. I patted his back as worry squirmed through me.He hates it.
“I can take it all out,” I said, just wanting to stop the tears.
Rett gasped and pulled away. His glasses were fogged up and tear-stained, and I watched as he slid his hands beneath them to rub his eyes.
