I cracked a smile and continued eating, grabbing the million ketchup packets and tearing each individual one open before I started smothering my fries in them.
“That looks gross, though,” he said, eyeing the way that the ketchup drenched the top of my fries. Not a single white space was left.
I shrugged. “I’m a ketchup person.”
He snorted. “That, I can tell. I bet you put ketchup on your eggs, too.”
I grinned around a mouthful of burger and reached for the plastic fork in the bag.
“I put ketchup on everything. Even my ham and cheese sandwiches.”
He made a fake gagging gesture and shoved twelve fries in his mouth.
“Have you thought about when you’re going back to work?” He asked curiously.
I nodded. “I don’t actually ‘work.’ I supervise. I call around, pay bills, collect payments. Which I’ve been doing from underneath my comforter since…,” I hesitated and grimaced, but he nodded in understanding.
“That’s kind of cool, what you’re doing. How did you get that up and started?” He questioned, taking a sip of his drink.
I eyed my to-go cup, but took a drink anyway, trusting him.
He’d spent a lot of time with me in the last week, and knew exactly what I liked.
I smiled when I tasted not one, but four drinks. “You got me a suicide?”
He nodded. “I felt like a dork getting a little bit of every drink they had, but it was fun. I don’t see how you mix all those carbonated drinks, though.”
I shrugged. “YOLO.”
He turned his head in confusion. “YOLO?”
“You know, YOLO? You only live once? The song?” I confirmed.
He shook his head with exaggerated slowness.
“Not a fuckin’ clue,” he said with wide eyes. “Then again, if it’s pop or R&B, I don’t listen to it. I’m more of a classic rock kind of man. I only listen to it when I’m working out and lifting weights. There’s a certain ‘tone’ one should set while doing that. It should get your adrenaline pumping. Not make me want to be a girl.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed at my reaction.
“You’re horrible,” he muttered.
I shrugged. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I want to play some cards.”
I leaned forward, my bare breast touching the cool wood of the coffee table, causing me to shrink back in surprise.
“Shit,” I hissed.
“Out of curiosity, why aren’t you dressed yet? I was gone for nearly twenty minutes,” he asked as he finished the last of his fries.
I blinked, wondering how I should tell him that I’d been wallowing over the fact that he’d left me.
“Umm,” I said. “I was…ummmm.”
He grinned.
“You thought I’d left, so you were laying there in a depression?” He offered playfully.
“More like I was trying to think of ways to torture you for leaving without a backwards glance,” I said dryly. “You’re saying I couldn’t do a thing to you to torture you?”
He shook his head. “I’m a SEAL, baby. You can’t do anything to me that I haven’t experienced before.”
I launched myself at him.
Challenge accepted.***We laid there in silence for a few moments, both of us allowing our heart rates to return to normal before either one of us moved.
I was now wearing Miller’s button up shirt, and he was tickled to death. Or so he said.
I’d worked up quite a sweat trying to convince him that I could torture him to death with tickles. But it’d worked differently than I’d expected. He’d started laughing at my inability to tickle him, and I’d taken it upon myself to prove to him that he was ticklish somewhere.
In the end, it’d been his laughing at my failed attempts that got him.
“Do you think you’re pregnant?” He rumbled quietly.
The sweat on my skin was cooling rapidly, and goose bumps started to roll over my skin.
Was it bad that I wanted to be pregnant with his child?
I’d always wanted to be a mother.
In fact, when I’d originally entered the relationship with Mitch, I’d been thinking about that going into it.
My biological clock had been ticking, and at the age of twenty nine, it was time, at least, in my opinion. I was ready to be a mother.
That’d been why I’d chosen Mitch.
He was stable relationship material.
Everything I thought I’d wanted.
What I hadn’t realized, though, was that I would be placing myself with a man that wasn’t mentally stable.
My first clue should’ve been the way he’d refused to move out of his mother’s house. The second should’ve been his mother herself.
“I don’t know. I want to say yes…” I said softly.
“I hope you are too. You’re not the only one that wants a baby. A family to call his own. You and I aren’t so different. I have my scars that I don’t want brought out into the light, and you have your scars that you wish were taken back into the shadow. But I guarantee you this,” he said softly. “I won’t ever leave you, and I won’t ever do anything to you that’ll hurt you. I’ll be your shadow that makes sure you’re always protected. This I swear to you,” he rasped against my forehead.
I love you, was on the tip of my tongue, but instead I just hugged him. Hard. Or as hard as I could. He didn’t seem too affected by the severity of my hug, though.
Something must’ve been on the tip of his, too, because when he leaned back and looked into my eyes, I saw questions there. However neither one of us said a word.
He held me. Spoke to me. Teased me.
And let me tell you something, it was perfect. Exactly what I’d needed at that point in time.
One thing was clear, though.
It’d be nearly impossible to be so close to him and not do anything with him again.
One time was not going to be enough. At least not for my body.Chapter 9I want to play hide and seek. And your penis and my vagina are the two main players.
-Mercy’s secret thoughts
Mercy
I returned to work, for real, a week later.