CHAPTER ONE - ADAM
Core McKay sleeps next to me now.
It’s a stroke of good luck and I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that this one small piece of my life feels complete.
His body is hot, and hard, and there is a lingering scent of workshop on him. I want to fuck him before I get out of this bed.
But I can’t.
Things to do today. Things that don’t involve McKay and I don’t want him to wake up during my escape, so I push all those thoughts away for later.
Tonight. I will make it all up to him tonight.
McKay is a pretty good sleeper these days. When Indie was young, he only ever slept with one eye shut. He was forever listening for her soft footsteps on the creaking floorboards of Old Home.
And even though there is a lot about Indie that deserves such close attention, she’s a grown-up now. And Core McKay is getting old.
I have to pause here to smile. Hold in a laugh. He’s not old. He’s a year younger than me, but the thought that he might make it to middle age horrifies him.
And we’re nearly there now. Practically thinking about retirement.
I take one last look at my best friend and then slowly extract myself from our bed, walk to the door—stepping over every single loose floorboard that might creak—and go into the hallway.
Six-year-old Magnolia Accorsi is waiting for me. Her blonde hair is a wild, tangled mess of kinks. She won’t sleep in braids even though she would make my life much fucking easier if she did. This morning she’s wearing a smirk, a pair of light blue shorts, and a frilly white tank top. Her bronzed arms are crossed over her chest and she’s leaning against the chair rail that runs down the hallway towards the stairs on either end. A pair of sneakers dangle from her fingertips.
She came prepared.
She can do that because she doesn’t share a room with anyone, but I’m still in my pajama pants.
I point to the front stairs and then we’re off, our bare feet barely making any noise at all as we descend. We go down the hallway to the family room and kitchen, pause in the laundry so I can dress in cargo shorts and a t-shirt, slide on some sneakers, and then we slip out one of the French doors.
I made sure that McKay didn’t arm the security system last night. Told him Sasha or Merc might trigger it in the night if they tried to go outside for some reason. It’s not likely that either Merc or Sasha would make such a mistake, but he agreed.
Once outside, Maggie and I walk around the far side of the pool and slide into the thick woods that surround Old Home on nearly all sides. There’s a little path—one Indie and Nate made back when they were kids, I’m sure—and it takes us right to the river.
A couple minutes later, there we are. Looking at the dock where the boats live.
There are two of them—the larger one that we take down river to the ocean on occasion, and the smaller one that is left over from Indie and Nate’s childhood adventures. Imaginary or not. They took that boat out thousands of times.
Maggie and I climb into the bigger boat and get busy untying it and a few minutes later we are started, and settled, and motoring our way south. We take the Old Pearl River until we bump into the eastern edge of the Rigolets where there are already a lot of boats out here. Fishermen. Which is what we’re technically doing too, but that’s really only technically.
Maggie sits next to me, playing co-pilot in the second captain’s chair to my left until we are making our way east through the deep-water trench, and then the only thing she says is, “Breakfast?”
I nod my chin at the galley. “Go ahead.”
She goes into the galley and she’s busy for a little while. When she comes back, she places a plastic plate in front of me filled with pancakes—no syrup, just butter—and sets a tall glass of orange juice into my drink holder.
Maggie likes to cook and I like her cooking, so this makes me smile. But the really delightful thing about this moment is how she’s always trying to take care of me. I appreciate this more than she’ll ever know, so this warms my heart.
We eat the pancakes with our fingers, licking the butter off when we’re done, then gulp down our juice.
It feels like the old days when we sneak off like this and even though I know I’m not supposed to miss it, I do. I miss the old days when Maggie was all mine and every day was our own private adventure.
But this new life we have with her parents and McKay, this is what she needs. And anyway, I need McKay. I don’t need to remind myself of that, but when I think about how I miss our old routine, it feels like a reminder of all the time McKay and I spent apart.