“Don’t do that again,” I repeated, just as there was a knock on the door.
“Time’s up, and I’m kicking ass,” Dad snarled.
He was interrupting a critical moment, though, and that made me lose the last shred of calmness I had left in me.
“We’re talking about something. Go and sit in the living room,” I shrieked—something, I might add, I hadn’t done since I was about thirteen.
“Come on, honey. We’ll go and make coffee or tea. You like tea, it’ll calm you down,” we heard Ryan soothe, the sound of his voice getting quieter as he led Dad away.
“Beer,” Sam grunted. “Or whiskey.”
“We’re not drinking at this time of day. Now, remember the exercises the spiritual woman gave us to meditate with. You’re in a warm pond with the sun shining down on you. The sound of a waterfall’s—”
“Ah, hell. Now I need to pee.”
Sighing, I looked back at Jackson, expecting to see him getting ready to run and disappear, but instead, he was grinning at me.
“I’ve always liked them, but damn if I don’t like them more right now.”
“That’s just your fever talking.”
“No, it’s true. They remind me of my family.”
Scowling at him, I leaned awkwardly against the wall to take the weight off my foot. Something he focused on and looked irritated about.
“You should be sitting down. Do you need your wheelchair? Where’s your crutches?”
“I’m only doing what Zach said to do.”
Zach was my physical therapist who was a god when it came to fixing people. Already I felt almost as capable as I did without the casts on, but I also knew my limits, and I wasn’t passing them.
“I don’t like it.”
Ignoring that, I mustered up the courage to go back to what he’d been saying before Sam interrupted us.
“So, you’re saying you’re mine and I’m yours, all so that your brain will adjust to having them here, and you won’t freak out?”
“No,” he bit out. “I’m saying that I’m yours, regardless. But if you’re mine, then I’ve got no reason to freak out about having your dads here.” He paused and then added, “Unless they start moving in on my personal space and fucking shit up. Then it’ll probably start to make me feel anxious and pissy.”
“Sam isn’t unlike you, so Ryan’s had to live like that for years. Trust me when I say they won’t do anything like that.”
His eyes narrowed on me momentarily, but then he reached out and tugged on the waistband of today’s shorts. I could have pulled against it, but I didn’t.
When a man like Jackson wants you to move closer to him, you’d be a fool to say no. And my daddies raised no fool.
With my front pressed against his, I tipped my head back to look up at him. “If you give me your cooties and I get sick again, I’ll be pissed.”
Kissing me on the forehead, he murmured, “Baby, you sleep next to me all night, and you’ve been looking after me, too. Unfortunately, I think it’s almost one hundred percent certain you’ll get my cooties.”
Nipping him on the chin, I sighed dramatically. “Damn. You’re going to have to carry me around if I get it, because being as sick as you’ve been and having these heavy things”—I lifted my hand and moved my foot, forgetting he couldn’t see it—“is going to be impossible.”
“Don’t you know, I’d carry you to the moon if you needed me to.”
Smiling softly up at him, I moved a chunk of hair that was out of place and stuck to his forehead. Yeah, we’d found what made his hair move—the flu.
“Being sick makes you really sweet.”
Wrapping the arm that wasn’t holding me up around my waist, he squeezed gently. “So, are you mine?”
“Do you want me to be?”
He didn’t even stop to think about it. “More than I want ice cream to put out the fire in my throat right now.”
“How about both? Yes, I’m yours, and I’ll get you some ice cream for your throat.”
Smiling down at me, he leaned in so that his chin was resting on the top of my head. I had short person relationship problems seeing as how he was six foot four, and I was five foot six, but at times like this it far from sucked.
“I’m keeping you.” Bursting out laughing at the declaration, I didn’t think what it’d do to him when my body shook his. “Ow!”
No one knows how long something lasts for, it’s just not possible to tell what the future holds. But it was safe to say that I’d hold onto this memory long after we ended.
Lifting his head back up, he glanced down at me. “What are you thinking about?”
“How I’ll look back on this moment happily for the rest of my life after we break up.”
Raising both hands to cup my face in his large palms, he stared down at me. “Have some faith. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know well that shit happens. Who’s to say we’ll break up, though? This could be the beginning of the best love story ever.”