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Oh.
The bastard.
"Um, excuse me? Fuck my attitude out of me? I don't know who the hell you think..."
I lost the rest of my sentence when he stalked suddenly toward me, hand going behind my neck hard, lips crashing down on mine and cutting off whatever I had been planning to say.
It wasn't a quick, hard kiss either.
It was hot and long enough to burn deep until my entire body was lapping flames, very much needing the fuck he promised a few moments before.
He pulled away, leaving my lips feeling swollen and sensitive.
My eyelids fluttered open to find him grinning, not smiling or smirking, but freaking grinning like a boy on Christmas morning.
"We finally had our first fight."
"That wasn't a fight," I insisted, stomach clenching painfully as I realized it totally, totally was.
"Sure as fuck was. With yelling and throwing shit to boot."
"Lazarus, I didn't mean..."
"I'm still here."
"What?" My brows drew together, completely not comprehending what that meant.
"We had a fight. You shrieked and yelled and threw shit at me. And I'm still here."
Oh.
So he picked up on my fear of fighting with him.
Not surprising seeing as he seemed to pick up on every damn thing.
"You gotta bitch at me sometimes."
"I'm pretty sure no guy likes being bitched at."
"Sure they do. Know why?"
"Why?"
"Because it proves you feel safe with them."
Oh again.
That actually made a lot of sense and I almost felt guilty for spending the last several months not arguing for things I wanted or didn't want.
"And," he added, his smirk taking a turn toward wicked, "there's the make-up sex too."
"Oh, really?" I asked, my own lips twitching for a long minute before the smile broke free.
"Mhmm. We should probably get on that, don't you think?"
Oh, I thought alright.
So then we did.
And it was as hot as I always heard it could be.Lazarus - 1 year"It's a shithole."
That was Pagan.
He apparently had very strong opinions on the house I just bought.
It wasn't exactly pretty, sure. But it was definitely a step up from my old apartment.
Fact of the matter was, I didn't spend much time there. First, because it was easier being at the compound. Second, that Fixer firm thing Janie warned me about was finally up and fully functioning which brought with it a lot more traffic, some sketchy clients, and the kind of overly paranoid surveillance that made me nervous even though I didn't do a fucking thing wrong.
It was time to move.
Besides, Bethany and I needed our own space.
My apartment and the room at the compound, while she settled into both, were definitely sort-of mine still.
We needed a new place we could work on together, build a future in. Which was why the place I chose was on the same street as Repo and Maze's, one street away from the compound, and perfect starter home sized with three bedrooms and one and a half baths and just enough of a yard for kids or dogs but not enough to be a real chore to take care of.
It was old.
And dated.
And maybe a little bit shithole-ish.
"It's a fixer-upper," I corrected.
He shrugged at that. "It's gonna take a lot of goddamn work."
"Never been afraid of rolling up my sleeves and getting to work, man. I see a lot of potential here."Bethany- 2 yearsPagan once told me that when Lazarus showed him our home, before I even knew it existed, before there was even a ring on my finger promising things like houses and white picket fences and babies, that when Pagan called it names and said it was a lot of work, that Lazarus hadn't balked at that.
No.
That wasn't my Lazarus.
He said instead that he wasn't afraid of hard work and that he saw potential.
It came back to me then, sharp as if she had said it to me that very morning.
Find a man who buys the half-dilapidated fixer-upper, she told me, and not the guy who buys the brand new model. The guy who can see potential and is willing to roll up his sleeves and get to work and make it the best it can possibly be, who will love discovering all the hidden gems hidden inside, all the history, all the layers, that's the kind of man you want to settle down with; not the guy who only sees the pretty, the perfect. Because one day, that pretty and perfect will need work. And he won't want to do that. He will just move on to the newer and prettier.
I think I had scared the shit out of Pagan when a giant, uncontrollable, loud as hell sob escaped me and I threw myself into his arms and cried through his shirt.
"Jesus fuck, alright," he had said, sounding lost as his hands went awkwardly around me for a second before he relaxed and just let me work through the realization that there absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent for sure were signs.
