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Aside from family, I’d never gotten a chance to really pamper a woman before. I couldn’t have anticipated how good it would feel to see the way her eyes would light up when I snagged something off of a shelf for her that I knew she’d like, but wouldn’t ask for.
Someday, when all this shit was done, I would find other ways to spoil her. Get her appointments to get her hair and nails done. Facials. A massage.
After all the stress of the past few years of her life, she deserved to learn how to relax. To have a soft life.
“You look far away,” Claire said as we waited on the check-out line after stocking up on food, leaving us with two overflowing carts.
“Not far,” I said, wrapping an arm around her, and pressing a kiss to her temple. “Just thinking of the things we can do when we’re back home.”
If she had any reservations of me calling my place our ‘home,’ I couldn’t see it in her face.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Well, the kid needs to go to a sit-down restaurant,” I said as Judah started to wiggle and whine in the cart, clearly done with this trip, getting hungry and likely tired since he’d skipped right over his nap to shop.
“That will be… interesting,” she said.
“He needs to go to a park. A movie. Maybe an arcade.”
“He’ll love all of that,” she said as we moved up, and she started piling things onto the belt.
I figured it was best to talk about what she could give to Judah, not the experiences I wanted to give to her. Eventually, she would become more comfortable again doing all the things she did before Warren, and before becoming a mother.
It would all just take time.
Luckily, when all this shit was done, we would have nothing but time.
After the store, we treated Judah to his first taste of fast food nuggets, cheeseburger, and fries that he dipped into a milkshake, and he ate like he’d been starved for weeks.
“I feel I should be offended that he’s never eaten food I’ve cooked him like that,” Claire said as she looked back at him in his carseat, humming and rocking to himself as he ate, his little toy plushie getting the occasional ‘bite’ of food as well. It was going to need to go in the wash when Judah went to bed.
“It’s hard to compare with deep-fried junk,” I said, shrugging. “But he would’ve eaten the entire tray of brownies if you’d have let him.”
By the time we got home, got the stuff in the house and put away, Judah had put himself to sleep on the floor in the living room amongst a pile of his new toys, including one of those big, squishy toys that he was using as a pillow.
Claire put him to bed while I poured us wine from one of the bottles I found in the pantry. We had to drink out of coffee mugs, but neither of us cared as we curled up on the couch, amongst the chaos of toys on the floor in front of us, my fingers toying with her hair, her head resting on my chest.
And, suddenly, I could envision nights just like this, over and over and over, for the next several years.
All I could do was hope Claire’s head was in the same place…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Claire
We fell into a similar rhythm like we had back in Navesink Bank.
The only difference was that Aurelio didn’t have meetings that took him out of the house. He did occasionally have a phone call to take, going outside to do so, leaving me wondering what they were discussing, if it had to do with Warren, how things were going on that front.
But I didn’t feel like I could really ask for details, considering this involved his whole family, a criminal empire that likely didn’t appreciate non-Family members being too in-the-know.
I did imagine that, considering we were still in the sweet little safe house, that Warren was still, you know, alive.
I couldn’t imagine how Denny had managed to keep control over Warren enough to not start directly attacking the Grassis in an attempt to get to me.
I guess I could just be happy that he’d managed to do so.
I couldn’t live with the guilt of more of Aurelio’s loved ones getting hurt because of this.
