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23
Jenner
Carefully, I guided Doe into my apartment and helped her sit on the couch. Her parents had wanted her to go home, but she’d only wanted to be with me. I’d told her I could stay at her parents’ place all evening, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted us in our own space, free to cuddle however she liked without her dad or brothers there to growl or disrupt us.
And because I would always give Doe what she wanted, I’d bundled her up once Dr. Contreras had signed her discharge papers and put her in my car. I was surprised her brothers hadn’t followed us home, but they still had a few things to finalize before Courtney’s karma hit the news later that night and in the morning.
It had been fun getting to know Doe’s brothers and Aspen as we’d worked together with Mieke to destroy my little lamb’s tormentor. All of Courtney Wilcox’s hopes and dreams to go into politics would crash and burn come morning—just as her father’s most likely would once all the mean girl’s secrets were broadcast.
Mieke had assured Jackson that none of what she’d uncovered and covertly slipped to Senator Wilcox’s rival in the general election in November would be traceable back to anyone. Once she’d heard of all the shit Doe had been put through by Courtney and so many others, she’d started digging, and she hadn’t held back once she’d started putting together all of Courtney’s dirty deeds.
As soon as Doe was comfortable, I covered her with her favorite fuzzy throw and gave her the remote. “Are you thirsty? Hungry? How’s your pain? Do you need anything for it or nausea?”
She giggled at me, and I had to stop and just soak up that sound. I would never get tired of hearing her laugh. “All I need right now is for you to let me use you as a pillow. I want cuddles, Jenner.”
“What if I hurt you?” I voiced my fear. “You’ve been through a lot today, and I don’t want to cause you any pain.”
She grabbed my hand and tugged, pulling me down onto the couch beside her. A firm shove that was surprisingly strong considering how fatigued she’d seemed all afternoon caught me off guard, and I fell back. Doe crawled onto me, literally using me as a pillow as she placed her head on my chest and wrapped herself around me.
I grabbed the throw and pulled it up over both of us as she gave a contented sigh. Her eyes drifted closed, and it was only a matter of minutes before she was asleep. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her skin was slightly pale, and there were a few dark shadows under her eyes. It was obvious the day had taken a lot out of her. But not even that could dim her beauty.
We lay there for hours, Doe sleeping peacefully and me content to do nothing more than watch her. The sound of her even breathing, the way her mouth was slightly gaped open, soft snores escaping her, it was all like a beautiful symphony that I could have listened to for days at a time without ever getting bored. When she would shift restlessly, trying to get more comfortable, I tried to move her off me, knowing my body was too hard and lumpy. But she only whined in her sleep until I stopped moving, and she snuggled deeper into me.
She felt so good on top of me that I eventually fell asleep too. Her pained whimper when she tried to get up startled me awake. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Bathroom,” she mumbled sleepily.
I jumped up and lifted her, carrying her into the bathroom. When I set her on her feet and started to push her leggings and panties over her hips, she slapped my hands away with a shy laugh. “Get out,” she commanded. “I can’t do this with you in here.”
Reluctantly, I backed toward the door. “I’m leaving this cracked,” I warned. “If you need anything, just yell.”
She rolled her blue eyes at me. “I think I can handle it.”
I left the door open wider than she thought was necessary and walked into the kitchen. It was after midnight, and my stomach was growling like a bear. Opening the fridge, I started taking out items to make us each a sandwich before checking my phone. I’d left it on silent so it wouldn’t disturb Doe, and I wasn’t surprised that I had missed calls and texts.
Seeing the latest one had only come in a few minutes before, I opened it to find a news link from Jackson.
Instead of opening it, I made the sandwiches and carried the plate into the living room, where I turned on the TV and found the national news channel that had been in the link. I hadn’t heard anything from Doe since I’d left her in the bathroom, and I went to check on her.
“Baby?” I called out.
“I’m okay,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Just really tired. Give me a minute.”
I heard the toilet flush, but when she started washing her hands, I pushed the door open. As soon as she was done, I scooped her up, being careful not to hurt her hips. She had small incisions on both where the doctor had drilled into the backside of her pelvic bone to extract the bone marrow.
“I think this is how a newborn foal feels,” she said with a tiny smile.
“Dr. Contreras said you will be like this for a bit. We need to make sure you don’t start running a fever, though. You need lots of rest and food.” Brushing a kiss over her brow, I carried her into the living room. “Which is why you’re going to eat and then go straight to bed, little lamb.”
“I’m not going to argue.” She picked up a sandwich and bit into it, moaning a little as the flavors hit her taste buds. “I didn’t realize I was so hungry. I barely kept the broth down they gave me at the hospital earlier.”
“The smell of that crap was enough to turn my stomach, baby.” I sat beside her and pulled her legs across my lap before picking up my own plate. “I don’t know how you ate so much of it.”
“I was determined to get to come home and not have to spend the night in the hospital. I wanted to sleep snuggled against you.”
“I would have made it happen if they had kept you overnight,” I promised.
She took another bite of her sandwich before looking at me through her lashes. “What you asked me before…about moving in with you…”
“I’ll go get your stuff right now if you want,” I told her, happiness causing little zings of pleasure to detonate throughout my body.
Her laugh filled the room. “That doesn’t have to happen right this second, but yeah, we can move my things over. If you’re still interested in me living with you.”
“Having you sleep in my arms every night for the rest of our lives would be a dream come true for me, Doe.” I cupped the side of her face, stroking my thumb over her bottom lip. “You are my entire world, baby. I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I couldn’t come home to you every day, I would wither and die.”
She leaned into my touch. “Same.”
The commercials on the TV ended, and the news anchor’s face filled the screen. “Breaking news out of Nashville, Tennessee. Senator Jonas Wilcox is under fire tonight after it was alleged that his daughter, Courtney Wilcox, has been prostituting herself to get her father’s campaign funded…”
The anchorman continued to go into more detail about the allegations, and several pictures of Courtney in compromising positions with major contributors to her father’s campaign popped up on one side of the screen. Beside me, Doe watched with wide eyes, her mouth hanging slightly open.
“Whoa, isn’t that the girl you were talking to in the grocery store a while back?” I asked, feigning surprise.
Doe didn’t seem to be able to look away from the dumpster fire on the flat-screen. “Yeah, that’s her,” she mumbled, taking another bite of her sandwich and chewing with gusto.
We watched in silence for a while until she’d finished her sandwich and started munching on half of my second one. She didn’t look away from the pictures on the TV until the anchor went to commercial.
“Huh,” she said with a grunt. “That sucks so bad for her. She always had aspirations to go into politics like her dad. I bet her dad will have to resign and back out of the November election now.”
I stared at her in wonder. After everything Aspen had said about what Courtney did to Doe over the years, I would have expected her to be full of glee and rooting for Wilcox and his daughter to crash and burn. Yet she was sincerely sad for the girl who had taken pleasure in bullying her for so long.
Doe had already shown me that she was precious, but it wasn’t until right then that I realized how one of a kind she truly was. There was no ill will in her, no maliciousness of any sort. She was good all the way to her core.
In that moment, I knew just how undeserving of her I really was, but I’d be damned if I ever let anyone take her away from me. I needed to lock her down, put my ring on her finger before someone more worthy came along and tried to steal this real-life angel.
Cupping the back of her head, I pulled her in for a long, tender kiss. With a dreamy sigh, she pulled back and looked up at me with glazed eyes. “What was that for?”
“Just reminding myself that you are mine.”
“I’ll always be yours,” she murmured, licking her kiss-swollen lips.
“Not long enough.”
