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Two man? More strong.
Strong is good.
I giggled to myself.
“What’s so funny?” Jordy demanded.
I kissed him on the cheek. “Just thinking about how I feel like a cavewoman who was dragged away by two strong cavemen.”
Archer sat up in bed. “I quite dislike that summary of our relationship.”
“I wasn’t complaining!” I said. “Do you have the contract for the next year of nannying? I’m ready to sign as soon as you give me the documents.”
Archer shrugged casually. “I do not think we have made up our minds at this time.”
“We’re considering other applicants,” Jordy agreed with faux-seriousness.
I stuck out my tongue at them and then slipped into the bathroom.
Once our fun was over, it was time to get ready for the day. Archer and Jordy had both left the mercenary life behind, and tendered their resignations at the Mathos Company. Archer had found a job as the pilot for a medical evacuation helicopter assigned to the local Wilmington hospital. Sometimes he freelanced as the pilot of the local traffic helicopter, too. Every day he left with a big smile on his face, and came back without any of the stress of his old job.
Jordy hung around eating breakfast and playing with Kaylee until ten o’clock, when his DoorDash shift began. Yep, that’s right: the big, muscular mercenary earned a living by running deliveries all day. It had started out as a way to bring a little money in and to keep himself occupied until he figured out what hereallywanted to do with his life, but months had now passed and he still hadn’t stopped.
“Are you sure you’re happy?” I asked while kissing him goodbye.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s not very fulfilling. DoorDash isn’t exactly the kind of thing someone dreams about doing when they’re a little kid.”
He raised a brown eyebrow at me. “When I was a little kid, we didn’t have DoorDash.”
“You know what I mean.”
He gave me a soft kiss. “I bring food to hungry people. Everyone loves food. That’s pretty fulfilling to me. Much more so than what I was doing before, as a mercenary.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
He stroked my cheek. “Happier than I ever thought I could be.”
In my previous relationship, I felt insecure to the point that I always doubted whatever my partner told me. If he said he was happy, I wondered if he secretly wasn’t. If he told me he loved me, I spent all day assuming he was just saying what I wanted to hear. Now, I didn’t have any insecurities about that. When Jordy said he was happier than he ever thought he could be, I knew it was the absolute truth.
After Jordy was gone, Kaylee and I spent two hours playing Minecraft. We had a huge world built together now, and she was always thinking of new things she wanted to build. Today, we worked on constructing a replica of the Roman Colosseum. It was a lot harder than it looked, and we needed to pull up Google Maps to look at a 3D model of the actual building.
We broke for lunch, then settled down to another new routine of ours: reading time. At almost ten years old, Kaylee was the perfect age to start readingHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It was a great summer reading project, and it helped reduce her computer screen time—which was already far too high.
We spent two hours a day reading. Our system was to sit down together in Kaylee’s room and each read our own copy of the book. At the end of the chapter, we paused and discussed everything that had happened. Kaylee was a slow reader, so I had to pretend to keep reading long after I had finished the chapter. But I was already noticing a huge improvement in her reading skills since we started. And she was really absorbing the material, and offering her own insightful commentary.
It was around four in the afternoon when I heard the front door open. “Did they cut your time block short again?” I called from the kitchen, where I was mixing the batter for a batch of cupcakes.
The man who appeared in the kitchen doorway was not Jordy. This man filled the space with broader shoulders and a silent, dangerous aura about him. I almost dropped the bowl in my surprise.
“HARRISON!”
He gave me a satisfied smirk. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I put the bowl down and threw myself into his arms. “You weren’t supposed to get back until tomorrow,” I murmured into his chest.
He stroked my hair with a palm. “Plans changed.”
