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I get a taste of that smile, which doesn’t stay in place long because she wants to kiss me again right back. I indulge her for a second and then answer, “Make each other better.”
A new smile.
A soft sniffle a moment later.
“Oh, yeah,” she whispers. “Yeah, we did that in more than one way just now.”
“Mmhmm….”
A new kiss, too.
Then, because I’m suddenly both tired and hungry, “When are we supposed to get Rae back?”
“Noon. I don’t know what time it is now.”
“Neither do I. Guess we better get up.” I shift enough to see her again. The gorgeous, mussed way she looks makes me tsk with serious disappointment. “Damnif I don’t want to, though. This is a good place to be.”
She chuckles. “I agree.” Her eyes follow the glide of one hand down my arm. She speaks as delicately as she touches the trees silhouetted on my skin. “But this is your life now. Me and darling Rae.” Her eyes drift back up to mine. “How do you like it?”
“Loveit,” I assure her. “A hell of a lot.”
“Good. Me, too.” She gets a kiss on my tattoo, and then she starts to blush. “Rae loves it, too, but we really are going to have to be quieter about this—” she gestures between us, “—because that eight-year-old doesnotneed to know…you know….”
I grin. “You’re right about that.” As I lean in for the bite I’m about to give her bottom lip, I add, “We’ll work on it.” I feel what the little action does to her heartbeat, to her breathing, and chortle, “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she says playfully.
In kind, I reply, “Yeah, no, I’m not.Youshould be, for being such a strong Landon magnet.”
“It comes naturally. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
As much as we’d like to mess around for another minute or five or twenty, we agree that we need to get up. We really do need to see what time it is; the Kinleys have been so kind to us and we don’t want to be assholes back to them.
Luckily, we’ve got a good forty-five minutes before we have to be at their house. We don’t have to rush through properly fixing the bed and ourselves, so by the time we’re walking into the cold rain, we don’t look like we just got done burning it down up in apartment 3A.
And once we’re shut into the car and I’m watching her wipe raindrops off her face, it occurs to me that I’m in a truly good mood.
I expect it’ll turn shadowy as the holiday goes on because this will be my first one without Lolly, but for now, I’m good and it’s because of Liv.
“Want to hear a new song I found the other day?” she asks as she starts buckling up, unaware of my attention on her. “A guy sings it, but I still agree with the lyrics for myself. They remind me of us.”
“I sure do want to hear it.”
I reach over and tuck her damp hair behind her ear, and it gentles her movements, has her turning an equally gentle smile on me.
I smile back and then buckle up, too. “Play it.”
The song is “Wildfire” by Seafret, I learn before she turns it on. I’m hooked two lines in.
Sounds like that dude found his sanctuary, too.
*
The next difficult part of the weekend comes late in the night, when Liv has a bad dream.
I wake her up and try to talk her through it; even though she lets me touch her, she’s tearful and shaky for many minutes before she calms down. I feel terrible about it, feel like it’s my fault because I went along with what she asked of me this morning. She’s adamant that she doesn’t regret it, though, and that she loved it. Loves me. Trusts me. Is not afraid of me.
It makes me feel better, but I still carefully remind her that we can check into some counseling if she ever wants to. She goes quiet, lets me rub her back for a little while before she admits it might be a good idea.
