Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

“That’s when you get to go sit it out, find a way to shake it off. But inevitably, you’re right back in the thick of it again,” he finished.

“Do you really think that’s the way life is?” she asked softly.

“Do you think I’m wrong?”

She didn’t answer for so long, he kept talking.

“What I’m saying is, shit happens. Shit is always going to be happening. We’re always pivoting, running, ducking, jumping. The bottom line for me is, we’re at that starting line you mentioned. And right now, that’s not only all that matters, that’s my priority, so that’s got my primary focus.”

She was still talking softly when she said, “That’s very sweet.”

“Good you think so.”

“And I’ve noticed we not only both love French silk pie, you and me are hell on wheels with metaphors.”

He grinned at her.

“Though your dodgeball one is scary,” she murmured.

“Babe?”

“Yes?”

“We need to eat so we can spend some time making out before you gotta go to work.”

She brightened. “We’re gonna make out?”

“Yes. But we’re gonna practice restraint since we’re taking this slow.”

She dimmed. “We’re taking this slow?”

“Yeah.”

“Boone and Ryn were going to take it slow. That lasted, I think, a day.”

“We’re not them.”

“Axl and Hattie took it slow, and in the end Axl took it so slow, Hatz had to beg him to fuck her.”

Christ, he hoped she never begged him to fuck her—that would probably end well, but he might scare her when he went at her.

“We’re not them either.”

“I’m sure Mag and Evie would have taken it less slow, if he hadn’t been shot. Then again, if memory serves, the first time they did it was the night he got shot.”

“Pepper?”’

“Yes?”

“Are we gonna finish eating?”

“Can we discuss this ‘taking it slow’ concept further over food?”

“No.”

She scrunched her face at him.

He bent and touched his mouth to hers.

He didn’t pull back far when he said, “When it’s time for us to go there again, we’ll know.”

“It kinda feels like that time right now, right here where we’re standing,” she noted.

He started laughing and through it said, “It’s not.”

“Bummer.”

Good to know she was ready to roll with that.

It just wasn’t time for them to go there.

He communicated this by touching his mouth to hers again. He then broke out of her arms and took her hand to guide her back to their food.

“You want me to nuke any of this?” she offered.

“We’re good.”

“Awesome call,” she said, sliding back onto her stool and taking up her fork. “If I nuked it, that would delay us making out.”

“Stop talking about making out. Tell me more about this Thanksgiving show I’m gonna be making sets for.”

“I know nothing about it, except if anyone’s dressed as an Indian, we’re walking off in protest.”

“Word,” he agreed, shoving lo mein in his mouth.

They ate for a bit and then he heard her voice coming at him quietly.

“You’re cool, Augustus Hero.”

He turned to her, saw she was in profile, diligently eating her food to prove to him she was focused on it, not him, when he knew she was focused on him.

It was then he realized the toll that scene probably took on her, which was significantly magnified from what he experienced, and he hadn’t liked it in the slightest.

So he bumped knees with her and replied, “You’re cool too, Pepper Hannigan.”

Her lips turned up before she shoveled fried rice in her mouth.

Aug reached to open the foil that would expose the crispy duck so he could start ripping it apart so they could start eating it.

Pepper let out a dreamy sigh.

Auggie started laughing.

And they finished dinner.

Chapter Ten

Dynamite

Auggie

The next morning, Auggie was glad the only men in the office he had to face when he first walked in were Billy, Marques and Axl.

Billy and Marques were younger, newer to the team, and hadn’t been roped into Lottie’s fixups (yet, but Auggie had seen her eyeing them at her wedding reception, so he figured, once he and Pepper got their shit sorted, she’d be buckling down for round two).

So it was only Axl around first thing to give him shit that he and Pepper were finally getting it together.

And Aug knew Axe was going to give him that shit by the stupid-ass grin that spread on Axl’s face the second Auggie walked in.

He didn’t even bother to wait for Aug to get close.

He called, “Word is, you actually went over to her place. Means I lost my bet that you’d hit eighty before you break bread with Pepper at the assisted living place you’d both eventually shack up in.”

Both Billy and Marques, standing together higher up in Hawk’s theater-style control room, looked down at Auggie.

And at a glance to his left, where Elvira’s office was, he saw she was in and her stick-your-nose-in-everyone’s-business antennae had received the signal.

She was staring right at him.

Aug said nothing. He just walked toward his station.