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There are tin cans in the cupboards, along with some dog food.
I can’t help but flood with warm feelings as I watch Jennifer feeding the dogs. She kneels next to them, her hands stroking over their fur as they eat.
Benny eats slowly, measuredly, but Lucifer goes at his food like a dog recently released from prison.
“It’s okay, boy,” Jennifer whispers. “It’s not going anywhere.”
“You’re going to make an incredible mother,” I say, my gaze moving to her hips, my fingers twitching as though needing to grab them now. “And a teacher.”
“Because I can feed these pretty doggies?” she says, laughing.
“No, because I can tell how much you care. It’s this I don’t know. It’s like a goddamn smell.”
She smiles. “A smell? Are you saying I stink?”
“Yeah, maybe I am,” I smirk. “You stink of our future. It’s like your body’s calling out to me, as batshit as that sounds. It’s like your body’s telling me to take you right now.”
She glows. “And that’s what will make me a good mother?”
I chuckle, causing Benny to look around at me. My thoughts are all muddled with Jennifer kneeling on the floor as though getting ready to take my manhood.
“It’s like I can feel the maternal instinct in you,” I murmur. “I know you’re going to care about our kids so much and always do right by them. Just like you’ll always try your hardest to give your students the best chance.”
She nods firmly, her cheeks turning a luscious shade of red.
“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” she says softly. “Even when I was a little kid. Is that normal?”
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. It’s you.”
Her smile is cute and sexy and beautiful all at the same time, making me want to tenderly hold her and savagely fuck her at once.
She slowly strokes her hand over Benny’s head, scratching him tenderly.
Outside, the day is far too obnoxiously bright, reminding me that Peggy’s betrayal and Matt’s reappearance were only a few hours ago.
But it feels like longer, much longer.
So much has changed with me and Jennifer and the course of our lives.
Our destiny.
I want to laugh that phrase away. It sounds so absurd.
But it also feels like the truth.
“I just love the idea of being able to truly help these kids, to be one of the good ones. Not to guide them, per se, not to force my own ideas on them or anything like that. But to give them a chance. The same way Kelly gave me a chance, I suppose, by using mom and dad’s life insurance to pay for my college.”
“You’re going to be amazing,” I tell her, pushing down the other thing.
I can’t think about the fact I’m not telling Jennifer when I should.
But we’re going to be together forever, forever. She wants it too.
Can I start our amazing future by tearing a rift between Jennifer and her sister?
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I’m about to reply when Lucifer leaps up, barking in deep volcanic tenors at the door, then springing over to the couch and trying to climb up it as though wanting to look out the window.
My body feels like it’s turned into one giant heartbeat as I leap from my chair and jog over to the door.
Throwing it open, I watch as a car approaches, the windows tinted, a four-by-four that bumps up and down as it approaches the cabin.
The lake glistens off to the left, and the forest stretches to the right.
I keep my hand near my hip, near my gun, until the car is close enough for me to see Matt… and Kelly sitting in the passenger seat.
I’m running over to the car without thinking, my head a mess of emotions.
Matt steps from the car, and now I know that Jennifer and Kelly are safe, I pull him into my arms.
He collapses against me, hugging me tightly.
“Goddamn, brother,” he says. “It’s over…it’s finally over.”
“You did it,” I tell him, aware of Kelly and Jennifer embracing on the other side of the car.
They’re crying, both of them, their words spilling out quickly.
“Years,” Matt says, taking a step back, staring at me with his wild hair around his face, the shape of his mouth masked by the tangled beard. “But it’s over now.”
He repeats the phrase as though he doesn’t believe it. It’s like he thinks he’s going to wake up back there.
I clap him firmly on the shoulder.
“It’s over now.”
“My chance came when Junior killed his father,” Matt says, staring down into his mug of coffee.
We’re sitting around the dining table, memories of dad, mom, and family returning to me as I struggle to match this Matt with the short-haired man I’ve always known him as.
“Junior was always trying to push the stuff they did to me further. He always wanted to escalate. When he took his dad’s place, I started talking to him about you, Jamie, about how I think you’d kill me if you had to. You’d kill me because you don’t love me.”
