AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Me? I carried one small bag with a bottle of perfume for my mom.
“I like that almost no one knows us,” I said as we walked up the street to the garage where Cooper had parked his Charger. “Sure, sometimes we’re recognized, but if we wear sunglasses and I tuck my hair under a cap and you’re especially beardy, we’re practically inconspicuous.”
“Except when you talk really loudly about it.”
“Do you know how easily I could trip you?”
“And I’d end up with a faceful of lingerie sized to your perfect body. Am I supposed to mind?”
&n
bsp; “Okay, forgiven.” I tucked my arm through his, though it required a little bag shuffling. “Music store next? Then parents. Then grocery store. Then steak for Cole.”
“What’s for me?”
“Lean down.”
He tilted toward me so I could more easily reach his ear. “Remember all those ideas you had for me beside the pool? We’ll lead into them after I model an array of my new purchases.”
His stride lengthened until I laughed and scrambled to keep up with him.
After we dumped off the bags at the car, we walked back to the music store hand in hand. The sun was bright, and the temperature was climbing seemingly by the minute. My dress was sticking to my back, and we had to stop for ice cold drinks, but just strolling through the city with the man I loved was incredible.
I stopped dead in the middle of foot traffic on the sidewalk, making quite a few people swear and detour around us.
Cooper stared at me. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Oh, look, there’s the music store.” As if I hadn’t noticed it before, I darted up the block and hurried inside.
I fanned my face with the small purse I’d dug out of one of the bins of stuff from my place. It didn’t smell too bad after dousing it with Febreze.
When someone called their life a dumpster fire, they didn’t know the half. Yet in the middle of so much chaos, I’d found something so wonderful that I was afraid to examine it too closely for fear it would vanish.
That he would vanish.
Cooper joined me after a minute and grabbed me around the waist as he liked to do. “Trying to evade me?”
No, I just happen to love you.
So, I ran away. Typical.
I turned in his arms and pulled down his sunglasses. “I might buy a lot in here, but there’s storage. Unless you think you can carry out a piano on your back?”
“Definitely wouldn’t fit in my Charger.”
I laughed. “We should buy you something for a change. What do you want?”
His arms tightened around me, and his expression morphed into pure desire. “I have everything I want already.”
This was why I loved the guy. And why it scared me to death in the very best way.
“Me too. But I still like shiny things with keys.”
He shifted me around and hooked his hand at my hip as we walked through the guitar area in the front of the store. There were ones in every color and style, along with yet more hung high on the walls. I trailed my fingertips over a dark purple bass guitar on a stand and eagerly followed him to the drum section, leaning against the wall like a dreamy-eyed fangirl when he climbed behind a demonstration kit.
With a couple testing flips of the drumsticks, he launched into Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” quickly drawing a crowd among the store’s shoppers. I couldn’t hold back my grin watching him do his thing. He wasn’t showy like some drummers, but he played with an excellence that couldn’t be matched. Here and there, he’d add a few extra flourishes, impressing the audience with his stick tricks and his effortless rhythm. The song was so flawless I half-expected Kurt Cobain to step out from behind the curtain in back and launch into the lyrics.
He played the whole song, ending it to the sound of rolling applause. The owner of the store came up to him and slapped his back, obviously excited to have someone so skilled in his shop.
