I leaned back so my woman would see the seriousness in my eyes when I said: “I’ve been living out of go-bags for three years, Grace. A porch sounds great.”
“Really?”
“Really.” I kissed her temple and encouraged her to settle into the crook of my shoulder. “Living with the woman I love sounds like?—”
She shot out of her comfortable position, eyes wide and lips forming words that didn’t come.
“Grace Laurent, speechless?” I couldn’t help my smile. Yeah, she was rubbing off on me. I pulled her in close. “We’ll figure out the details when we get home.”
She snuggled in tight and curled her legs up on the couch. “I love you, too, Mr. Grumpy Face.”
My laugh came next, every bit as insistent as the smile had been. We continued watching the silly movie until Grace’s breathing slowed and she fell asleep. On the screen, the bookshop man and the yellow-dress woman were walking in the rain, arguing again. How the hell had this become my life? I was watching a romcom on a private jet with a bullet wound in my shoulder, and a future I’d never planned nestled against me.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift off with her.
Because it was a damn good life.
Epilogue
GRACE
Two months later…
Garrett sat on the bench at the back of the shower, head tipped back against the tile, his good arm wrapped around me. I was straddling him, knees on folded towels on either side of him, riding his cock inourhouse. The water beat against my back, hot and steady, and steam curled around us.
“Fuck, yes,” he growled.
I was going to besolate for work.
But it wassoworth it.
I rolled my hips and his right hand tightened on my waist. His left was on my thigh, fingers spread, but he wasn’t lifting me with it. He’d kept trying for the first month, until I cut him off for a week, with a warning he wouldn’t heal if he kept it up. The man rarely admitted his shoulder hurt, especially during sex.
“Garrett,” I groaned, as his lips found my collarbone.
“Harder, sunshine.”
“Oh, god, yes.” I planted one hand on his thigh behind me and wrapped the other around his good shoulder, moving faster, slamming down harder.
His eyes closed, and a groan escaped him—a little noise I filed away with all the other sounds I’d learned to pull out of this man over the past two months. The quiet ones when I ran my fingernails over his scalp. The rough ones when he came despite the pain he was trying to hide.
“I want to feel you inside me all day, Garrett.”
“You’re making me?—”
I pressed close to him, whispering into his ear, “Not yet.”
He gripped my leg with his left hand and immediately released it. The shoulder would never be a hundred percent. The scar was puckered and pink, sitting only inches away from one he’d received in Afghanistan. He’d sworn if he could heal from that one, he could heal from this one.
The doctors, however, had told him to expect a year of rehab, possibly more. He’d grumbled about the timeline at every appointment and ignored about half of it, but he listened to the parts that mattered. He sat when he needed to sit. He let me do the work when the work needed doing. And today, that work was making my man come. The pressure built and built, until everything crested at once. As the orgasm hit me, his arm tightened at my waist, and he began to stand.
“Sit,” I gasped through the pleasure wracking me. “Fucking sit down.”
“Right there, I—” He found the bench again. His hips jerked up against me, and he finally came with a low rumble. “Grace! Oh my fucking hell, Grace.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he buried his face against my shoulder.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
