Page 38 of Jay Bird

Willow’s eyebrows shot up. “What?! I’m not letting her color on your walls.”

“Why not? According to you, the place needs personality.”

A startled laugh burst out of her. “That’s your decorating solution?”

“I’ve seen her drawings. The kid’s got artistic potential.”

“She draws circles.”

“So, it’s modern art.”

Willow laughed harder, quickly covering her mouth so she wouldn’t wake Lily. Jay Bird caught himself smiling before he even realized it. It was an easy, unguarded grin that made him feel a little ridiculous, like he’d been caught off guard by something as simple as her happiness.

He then continued. “Second, I don’t expect you to be my maid. You don’t owe me cooking, cleaning, laundry, or anything else.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” She gave him a look. “But I like cooking, and I need something to do besides sit around thinking about everything that’s wrong with my life.”

The humor faded, replaced by understanding. Jay Bird knew better than most what it meant to need something productive to keep your head occupied.

“Then cook,” he said. “Clean if it makes you happy. I’m not going to stop you.”

“Thank you.”

“Twenty-one.”

She threw him an annoyed look.

He grinned, and before he could talk himself out of it, he added, “You can help me figure out what to do with the house too.”

The words surprised the hell out of him almost as much as they seemed to surprise her.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You clearly have opinions on what my house is lacking.”

She stared wide-eyed at him. “You actually want suggestions from me for your home?”

“Sure.”

Something shifted inside him as he said it, a quiet realization settling in that he had always called this place his house, never really his home. There was a difference.

A house was walls, a roof, somewhere to sleep between deployments, a place to store your shit and lock the door behind you.

A home was where memories were made, where people laughed in the kitchen, and kids left toys in places specifically designed to break adult ankles. It was where someone cooked dinner while another person complained about whatever was on television, and where you could walk through the door and just know without a doubt that somebody would notice you had come back.

Jay Bird hadn’t wanted that in a very long time. But now Willow was sitting on his couch talking about cooking dinner and decorating his painfully empty living room, while her two-year-old slept down the hallway with a stuffed elephant named Ellie tucked beneath her arm.

And somehow, for the first time since he had bought the place, Jay Bird could actually picture this house turning into something different—something warmer, something lived-in, something that didn’t feel so empty and sterile—a home.

Jesus Christ. He had only known this woman for two fucking days, and somehow she already had him domesticated.

The word made him recoil internally. No, absolutely not. And yet, even as he pushed the thought away, it lingered at the edges of his mind.

He glanced at Willow. “For now, if you want, you can use the tablet that Lily uses to shop. I can leave you my credit card.”