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He did know how to lift my spirits, though. Before heading back to… wherever he was going after his last visit, he left the ratty old Chinese finger trap I’d given him more than a decade ago on my bathroom vanity with a sloppy note that read:
Do the opposite of what you think you should do.
The notion lingered in my brain for a long time, wearing down my hesitations with every rotation in my thoughts.
It circulated in my thoughts almost as much as Barbara Ann Copeland, who would remain a tight, convoluted knot. Somewhere in the center of that knot, I suspected there could have been a decent person who would have been a good grandmother and guardian to me. It was the intricate loops, turns, and ties of lies, deceptions, and unknowns that prevented me from ever confirming it.
I still didn’t know where my father was, or why he’d left, but after everything that happened, I wasn’t ready to look into it further. And I maybe never would be.
I’d never know if Grandmother’s erratic behavior that day in the casino was an adverse reaction to her medication or an early-warning sign of her impending stroke that I’d missed.
Or the reason she moved me out of the Big House.
I’d never know if she burned down her own house.
But I did know that she had put the items from my trailer in storage, which was something else she’d been untruthful about. I’d resolved to look through the rest of her things after finding the lighter—with only a little guilt this time—and found the receipt for the storage facility.
I also knew, after reading Cody’s note, that I’d be asking Vinh to officially move into the cottage tomorrow, which happened to be Thanksgiving.
Vinh’s familiar loving—and entirely naked—embrace wrapped around me, and I turned in bed to face him.
“Bree,” he whispered, “what are you thinking about so hard?”
I looked up at him, the glow of the nearly full moon casting enough light into the bedroom for me to see his face.
“Everything,” I replied honestly.
He leaned down and kissed the corner of the mouth and breathed my second favorite words against me. “Tell me.”
VINH
“Tell me.”
I held the woman of my dreams in my arms as she returned my kiss.
“Most recently, I was thinking about tomorrow. Do you think your dad is already up fussing with the turkey?”
I laughed against her lips, giving her one more kiss before turning over and checking the time. “It’s 3:00 a.m., so yeah. It’s likely.”
I took her lips again, as I had hundreds, thousands of times over the last three weeks, taking every opportunity to assure myself that she was here.
That she was whole.
She was mine.
“Were you also thinking about how you were going to ask me to move in?”
She gasped and pinched me in the side. “How did you know that?”
“Liem has been calling me ‘roomie’ all week.”
“That witch,” Bree replied without any actual heat behind her words.
I pulled her close again, careful of her healing back, and kissed her hair. “I was also thinking of telling you about my parents’ plans tomorrow, unless you’d rather be surprised.”
She tapped her fingers across my chest, a habit she seemed to have picked up from me. “I think I’d like a break from surprises. So, tell me.”
I swatted her ass lightly, knowing it was a safe spot, and my heart soared at the sound of her laughter.
