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Sunday morning, I wake up to what feels like a paw on my cheek. I open my eyes to see Clyde asleep between us, a paw on each of our faces and soft snores rumbling from her pink nose.
On her other side, Nora’s already awake and grinning.
“She loves us,” she whispers. “Do you think the babies I’m adopting will love us, too? Once they can open their eyes and see us and everything?”
“How could they not?” I ask in a sleep rough voice. “We’re amazing.”
She giggles. “We are. I like us. And I think we’ve earned this vacation. Do we really get to stay here until Tuesday like Al said we could?”
I gently move Clyde’s paw from my face to the pillow. “I don’t see why not. Just let me call Mel and make sure she and the rest of the family are okay without me for a couple more days. That they don’t need me to come back and help with flood clean-up or anything.”
I reach for my cell, and Nora reaches for the TV remote. Just ten minutes later, through a combination of Mel’s updates and the shocking footage on the news, we learn my cousin Theo and his ex-girlfriend, Macy, had to be rescued from a flooded cabin in the woods this morning. A good chunk of the town is also underwater, and the state police are asking no one come in to or out of Bad Dog for the next twenty-four hours unless they have absolutely no other choice.
Considering all my family members are now safe and sound and Mel has plenty of food and fuel at her place, Nora and I decide wedohave other choices. We decide to stay until Tuesday, at which time we’ll meet Bear at the airport with the cats on our way home.
Then, we’ll start apartment hunting for us and aide hunting for Gram.
But when we arrive back in Bad Dog on Tuesday afternoon, Gram isn’t alone, and Aaron is traumatized by what he calls all the “old folk fornication” going on in his childhood home. Apparently, Gram’s had a boyfriend for a while now and they’re ready to go public and move in together.
Aaron can’t get to the airport fast enough, and Nora seems stunned.
“That’swhy she wanted me to go on more dates,” she says after we’ve shaken the nice, heavily tattooed older man’s hand and he and Gram have headed into the living room. “Because she wanted to get rid of me so she could shack up with her secret man.”
“I’m sure she didn’t want to get rid of you,” I say, drawing her into my arms by the back door. “She just wanted you to get the love you deserve.”
She crosses her wrists behind my neck, a wicked twinkle in her eyes. “So, you should sleep over, right? Come on, you can’t leave me alone with the geriatric perverts on parade.”
“I heard that,” Gram calls out from the other room. “I have my hearing aids in. And I’m not a pervert. I’m sexually liberated.”
“Amen,” her man calls out with a rumbly laugh.
“Or we could get another hotel,” I whisper, making Nora snort.
“Yes, please, extended stay, please,” she says. “I’ll go pack my things.”
But due to the families displaced by the flooding, we can’t find an extended stay hotel right away. And my house is already rented out for the year, so that’s not an option. We end up shacking up in the cottage in Starling’s backyard for a while, plugging in an extra space heater when the temperatures drop sharply at the start of December.
But we’re happy in our tiny love nest, so happy I’m actually a little disappointed when we finally land a one-bedroom apartment in a cookie-cutter complex not far from the airport. Cookie cutter or not, I’m grateful that I don’t have to spend a day (or night) apart from my girl.
It might have taken me a while to see the writing on the wall, but it’s so clear to me now that wherever Nora is, that’s where I belong.
For now and always.
Chapter Thirty
NORA
Two and a half months later…
The Super Bowl holds no interest for me.
I have too much empathy to enjoy smashy sports. I can’t even watch my brother play hockey, and that’s a lot less violent than football. Well, it usually is, anyway. As the new guy on the Minnesota Midges NHL team, it seems like Aaron gets picked on a lot more than the other forwards. His first game was so rough that I excused myself halfway through the first period and spent the rest of the viewing party playing with the cats.
Sunshine and Rainn are the light—and chaotic storm cloud—of my life. They are the sweetest, funniest, craziest little fluff balls and every day is better with them in it.
I can’t believe I thought I was anything resembling complete before they came into my life.
Though, the fact that Matty and I moved in together before the kittens came homemighthave something to do with my off-the-charts happiness levels. Not only is my man the sweetest, sexiest, most heroic newly minted high school French teacher in the world, he’s also every bit as obsessed with our little monsters as I am. When I asked him to run out at nine p.m. last night to buy more fabric for the kittens’ cheerleader and football player costumes for the Super Bowl party, he didn’t bat an eye, and he’s proudly posed for pics with the kittens with all his family members.
