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He shrugged. “Nothing substantial. My only complaint was that I hated having no complaints. Which sounds like an entitled asshole thing to say, so I keep it to myself.”
Her gaze darted away. “I can’t imagine what that would be like. To be raised so normal. I mean, my parents weren’t mean or anything, but I always felt . . .” She trailed off, her gaze darting away.
He smoothed a path over her stomach. “Always felt what?”
She shrugged. “They loved me, but they never really wanted me. They never said, but I’m pretty sure my mom got pregnant on accident. It was more like they were putting in time, that they couldn’t wait for their responsibility to be done.”
He frowned, thinking of his own encouraging childhood. He’d never once doubted his family’s dedication. “That must have been hard.”
She pushed a lock of hair from her face. “Not really. It was how it was. They are who they are, what’s the point of wishing for someone different? I had Penelope and Maddie and all the freedom a teenager could possibly want. Sure, sometimes I’d walk into a group meditation session going on in the living room, but there’s far worse things.”
True, but he didn’t like the idea that she’d felt like a responsibility instead of a blessing.
She touched his chest, her fingers a soft flutter over the scrolling black design on his skin. “Does this mean anything?”
He shook his head. “I got it on my eighteenth birthday, so it wasn’t a well-thought-out plan. I picked the design out of a book because I thought it was cool.”
She chuckled before tracing the word “freedom” on his ribs. “And this?”
He shrugged. “I got that one when I was twenty-one. As a reminder, I suppose.”
“How do you mean?”
The thoughts of his twenty-one-year-old self seemed distant and unclear, but the word still resonated with him. He tugged down the sheet, exposing her hip where he curved his hand around her soft flesh. “It’s like I’ve always been a little too wild, a little too reckless for my own good. It’s hard for me to feel content. I’m not sure if that makes any sense. It’s to remind myself that most of the time when I feel restless, it’s because I’m trying to put myself in a box.” He laughed, slightly embarrassed. “Or, I don’t know, something equally stupid.”
Her eyes went wide. “I don’t think that’s stupid.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “Some people just need to roam free.”
A smile curved over his lips. “Exactly.”
She furrowed her brow. “I’m surprised you decided on a career in law enforcement.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s a field governed by rules.”
He nodded. “It is in some ways, but it’s also not a traditional work environment. I’d go crazy working in a corporate job, and since my parents didn’t raise me to be a good criminal, this seemed like a balance.”
“Do you like it?”
“I do, very much. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Her gaze flickered to his face. “I know what you mean, about the wildness.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise him. He leaned down and brushed her lips. “Tell me more.”
She bit her lips. “Like I said, I didn’t have a lot of rules growing up, and Maddie was like my kindred spirit in causing trouble, with Penelope standing over us as the superego. And it worked. I needed Maddie and Penelope. Maddie to fulfill my bad girl, Penelope to fulfill my good. But then Maddie got in a terrible car accident that killed her father and left her in a coma, and when she woke up, she’d changed. It’s a long story, but she felt a lot of guilt and decided the way to cope with it was to become perfect. I understood it. Even as a fifteen-year-old kid it made sense to me. But I lost my partner in crime. Now I had the superego standing over me, and the ego, and eventually my antics began to seem silly, like an annoyance. In college, I found new people to be wild with, and it came back to bite me. So I learned a lesson: to stop letting it control me. To be safe and responsible for it. Oh sure, I was still feisty and outgoing. Still the life of the party. And people think I’m the wild one. But I haven’t felt wild in a long time.”
Somewhere in that story was the truth of her. But he was smart enough to bide his time, so he asked softly, “Until me?”
She looked at him. “Yes. I like the way you make me feel. I like how I don’t have to tuck myself into a contained ball around you.”
“Thank you.” He kissed her, soft and gentle. “I feel the same exact way about you.”
“Really?”
