Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

Don’t you be a little bitch and cry, Dahlia Ferguson. Don’t you dare! Think of the snot.

Out of sheer desperation not to turn into a blubbering little girl, I went with humor.

“Isn’t that a Doctor Evil line?”

His eyebrows twitched together as he looked at me in confusion. “A what?”

“Doctor Evil. You know, from Austin Powers? He has a little clone and he keeps saying to it, ‘You complete me’ in the third movie. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s got that dude called Fat Bastard in it.”

I will hold my hands up and admit (or at least I would if I didn’t still have two handfuls of Madix’s awesome ass in them) that if I’d laid it all out on the line like he had for me, and he’d quoted a movie, I’d be pissed. He, however, wasn’t as he burst out laughing, each jerk of his body making me gasp and tighten around him again.

“Out of everything I said, that’s what you got?” he chuckled, running his thumb gently over my eyebrow.

Shrugging, I let his left butt cheek go so I could run my hand up his back, hoping that it would give me the courage to give him back what he’d just given me. A bit like a magic lamp.

“I went with that because I’m not comfortable crying,” I muttered, doing everything to not break eye contact with him even though I desperately wanted to. In fact, if I could have had this conversation with him through a door or by text, I would have. “I struggle to trust people and trust what they’re feeling for me. Until now, the only people I’ve truly let in were my dad, my grandma and Bonnie because I knew they loved me. When I met you… for the second time,” I added when he growled. I doubt he’d ever let me forget the fact I hadn’t instantly recognized him or remembered him. Fucking alcohol! “I was terrified. After that, I was scared of letting you in, of trusting you, of just letting go of the walls I’d built around me. You going away and me thinking you’d dumped me broke a piece of me. I wasn’t one hundred percent certain you’d done that, but at the same time I didn’t have any proof you hadn’t,” I took a shuddering breath in as I felt the tears and snot coming. “As soon as I saw you, I knew that you hadn’t, and I also realized that I’d known all along that you hadn’t. I was just being stupid.”

“It’s okay, Dahlia,” Madix whispered. “It’s understandable.”

“It’s a stupid female cliché is what it is,” I snapped. “But seeing the truth like that, I know that I love you,” I said the last bit so quietly that it was a wonder he actually heard it regardless of how close we were at that moment.

Then he rocked my world for the billionth time when a huge grin took over his face and I got to see it in all its high definition glory.

“I love you, too.”

Oh, fucking, fucking, tears!

On a shuddering breath in, I lifted my hands and started to make a heart in the air. “You complete me!”

The force of the laughter that burst out of Madix at that moment made his dick slip from where it had still been nestled inside me, and that was a huge loss. He made up for it by continuing to laugh until he lost the ability to hold himself up and I got the full weight of his body on top of my own forcing the oxygen out of my lungs.

“You’re such a big shit,” I wheezed, trying to move so that even one lung could inflate again.

“Shut up, Mini Me,” he chuckled, but thankfully raised his torso slightly allowing me to take a deep breath.

“I knew you’d seen it!” I crowed.

I mean, who hadn’t seen Austin Powers?

At that moment, there was a small high-pitched bark followed by a deep one. “Oh shit,” I gasped as it hit me. “The poor puppies. They saw that!”

His eyes on the kitchen door, Madix replied, “Nah, I think they left when things heated up, otherwise they would have been jumping on us.” There was more barking and growling from the kitchen which made both of us frown. “What the fuck’s going on?” he muttered, getting up and nabbing his jeans on the way to the kitchen, leaving me spread out in a very unladylike position on the couch still.

That was until a voice yelled through the front door, “Are you done yet? And you better wipe any surface down that y’all have been doing the bad boogey on. I’m not sitting in the funky patch.”

Fucking Tate!SixteenDahliaT wo days later…

So, there I was again, without Madix because of some asshole who had cut a couple of hydraulics lines at a different plant. Our special moment had been ruined by the Townsends all coming in (and refusing to sit down as they eyed every surface like it was a nest of Vipers). It was then ruined even more with this news followed by Madix running around getting some stuff together so he could go visit the site with Tate and Jer.