I snorted. “Yeah, because Julie allowed for something like that to ever happen. I didn’t have time to be selfish, not with trying to find ways for the Kid and me to stay alive.”
Otter’s fingers tightened just a little on my face, and I didn’t like the frown he wore very much. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t know why I did.
And no matter what you do, that voice whispered, that damnable voice I didn’t think I’d ever get rid of, she’ll always be right there, won’t she? You can go for days without thinking about her, and then surprise! There she is, all over again.
“Ignore me.” I nuzzled his hand just a little, trying to distract him. “I’m just bitching because I can. Tell me what else you bought in order to take down Melanie Marshall like the responsible adult you are.”
“What makes you think I bought anything else?”
“Otter.”
“Bear.”
“Everyone knows you can’t walk into Lowe’s without coming out with at least ten things you didn’t know you desperately needed.”
“I’m a man. That’s what men do.”
“Oh Jesus. I’m a man and I don’t do that.”
“Kind of a man.”
I shoved him off as he laughed at me. He snagged one of my hands and tugged me toward the kitchen, walking backward and grinning at me. “Come on. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him but allowed him to pull me along. “This better not be anything like the last surprise.”
“Yeah, okay. But that wasn’t my fault at all. That w
as on the Kid.”
“Both of you brought home that dog. And don’t you try and tell me different, Otter Thompson. I saw the look on your face.”
“Yeah, because we could possibly have known that you’d be allergic.”
“I got splotches. On my everywhere.”
He grimaced. “So you showed me. And that’s still an image I’ll probably never get out of my head, so thank you for that.”
And maybe I was trying to play at being annoyed, but my husband was holding my hand and I just so happened to love him a lot, so I huffed out a breath and said, “As long as it’s not an animal.”
“Not an animal,” he promised. “It’s better than that.”
“I don’t even know how to take that.”
His smile took on a bit of a wicked curve. “I’ll show you how you can take it a little later.”
I stared at him.
He waggled his eyebrows at me.
And I laughed. Of course I did. I’d had a shitty fucking day, and all I wanted to do was make it to the end of the week and we’d officially be on break for the holidays. I was cranky and tired, but Oliver Thompson was here, looking like he did, acting like he did, just being himself, and so of course I laughed.
God knows life hadn’t been exactly the best. We’d been dealt a shit hand for a long time. And even when things had started getting better, there was always something that seemed to come up that threatened to break apart everything I held close to my heart. Some of it seemed like a lifetime ago, days by the sea where I was young and scared and sure that there’d be a knock at the door with news that we were being evicted from that shitty fucking apartment with the brown wooden steps that creaked dangerously when walked upon.
Or it would be someone there who’d found out that she had gone off to parts unknown, leaving an eighteen-year-old in charge of the smartest ecoterrorist-in-training, a vegetarian with more brains than common sense. They’d come inside and he’d be yelling for me, begging me to not let them take him away, and yes, I’d fight for him, I’d scream and punch and kick, but I’d be held back, and Tyson would be gone, gone, gone, placed in a home where I couldn’t get to him, where they wouldn’t let me see him.
Those were the fears I had lived with.
But then it was other things. Those things I didn’t expect.