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“What do you say we go visit Chaos?” he suggested.

“You don’t have to twist my arm for that. I already called Kizzie and she thinks she can come home a day sooner than expected.”

Kai pulled me into his arms and kissed the end of my nose. “That’s great news, Baby,” he whispered.

I let out a shaky sigh. “I know. Not having her with me, hurts.”

“She’s your baby. Of course it hurts.”

I bit my lip. It was probably too soon to ask something like this, but fuck it all, I needed to know. “What do you think about babies?”

“Babies of ours, or babies in general?”

I didn’t answer. He was a bright man, he knew what I was asking.

“Okay, Marlowe. If this goes the way I’m almost a hundred percent sure this is going, I’m all in for babies of our own. How old are you?”

“Almost twenty-eight?”

“The reason I’m asking, is that I don’t want you having babies when it’s not healthy for you. Especially not when there are plenty of babies around the world to adopt. Trust me, I’ve been all over this world, and I’ve met the orphans who need homes.”

I was pretty sure my ovaries just exploded. I grabbed him around his neck before I had a second to think, then I let go. I cupped his cheeks. “God, how can I love you more every single second of every single day? I just want a big family with you. It’s why I went into teaching. I love kids. I love seeing them learn, grow, and flourish. Being a mother, having a family again. Well. It means the world to me.”

Kai blessed me with the sweetest kiss of my life.

“Giving you a family again means the world to me, Marlowe.”

I wanted to stay close to the house so that Beau could find us. The fact that there was a bed close by might have been another reason that I liked staying close to the house. My cooking repertoire left something to be desired, but Marlowe had a wok and all the fixings for stir-fry, so this I could do. The bummer was that she didn’t have any Asian noodles, but I improvised and went with spaghetti noodles instead.

I was trying to be quiet, because Marlowe had passed out. Her taking down Teddy the Turd then spending an hour with Chaos and then having drinks with Trenda, Lisa, Roan, Simon and me wore her out.

And maybe the sex.

I grinned. Yeah, possibly the sex. Okay, probably the sex.

Shit.

I sucked the web of my right hand, where the grease had spit up at me. Apparently, I needed to concentrate a little more on cooking, and a little less on sex.

Then I heard the slow sound of the slide guitar that was the intro to ‘Free Bird’ and I picked up my phone. Big Brother wasn’t FaceTiming me, just calling.

“Is the shitty Canyon truck outside yours?”

“Whose truck are you calling ugly?” My heart was beating a mile a minute. Beau was outside. I turned off the gas on the two burners and headed for the front door.

“Marlowe has too much good sense than to buy herself an orange truck.”

“It was a hell of a deal. I just needed to get from point A to B, and to haul shit. It does that.”

I flung open the door, and there was Beau. In the flesh. Standing right in front of me.

He wasn’t wearing a uniform. He was wearing civvies. Shit, we were both wearing light blue t-shirts and jeans, only difference was he was wearing a ballcap. He pulled his off.

“Brady,” he breathed out the name.

I just nodded. I didn’t correct him. Because who was standing in front of me was Grady.

His eyes widened.