"Time will tell," I agreed.Mackenzie - 6 monthsWe bought a house.
Maybe that seemed fast, like we were jumping the gun.
But, to an extent, it felt long overdue.
We would have done this ages ago had life allowed us.
I couldn't help but wonder where we might have ended up had things been different. What country, what area of that country.
But, somehow, it didn't matter either.
Because this was where we ended up.
In New Jersey.
In a place called Navesink Bank.
A lot of the members had houses a few streets over from the compound where the kids could play hoops in one driveway, badminton in another, ride their bikes in the street, chase fireflies, play flashlight tag.
But those houses were all rather close to one another.
And, well, we wanted a little more space, a little more privacy.
After all, there was always the club to stay at when we were feeling like we wanted to be closer to everyone.
But when we wanted to be alone, we wanted to be alone. I wanted to be able to have sex in the backyard without anyone seeing us. Or walk around naked without having to worry about pulling the blinds.
Because, well, we were still on the 'making up for lost time' binge.
It would be nice to have sex without a divorcé across the hall hearing. Or Pagan whistling at us through the door.
So we settled on a somewhat obnoxiously unnecessary two-story stone house with three bedrooms, three baths, a formal living room, and a full basement.
We'd both lived lives that had no space that was our own, just hotel rooms, just rentals, places we could never settle into, placed we had never even hung up our clothes in.
Having so much space was almost a little overwhelming.
Especially on moving in day.
When we had a total of five boxes.
Five.
"What are we going to do with all this space?" I asked as we sat in the foyer, backs pressed against the front door, sipping beer one of the guys had dropped off for us.
"Well, I figure we sleep in the bedroom."
"Way better than sleeping in the hallway," I agreed, nodding.
"And we dine in the dining room."
"What are we going to do with a formal living room. We are not formal living room people."
"A library?" he offered. "We could build some shelves. You like to read."
And now I could keep those books instead of always having to get rid of them.
"A library sounds like a good idea. What about the basement?"
"Gym? We could put down mats for sparring."
"We would never have to leave the house."
"Never thought that idea would appeal to me," Roan said, wrapping an arm around my lower back. "Spent so much time running around. Never thought I would want to sit still. But now that we got a space, I would be fine never going out again." My heart swelled a bit at that, at the sincerity there. He was always better at saying sweet, genuine things than I was. I was hoping it would come to me in time, with comfort, with familiarity. "This house is missing one thing, though. We gotta dig a pool."
To that, my lips twitched. "I may have told West we need him to come over to help dig it," I told him.
We'd never lied to the club about my past, but we didn't exactly tell anyone exactly what my net worth was either.
Which meant that West had a full day of dreading having to help us actually dig a hole for a pool.
"What are you going to do when he finally gets patched in?" Roan asked, and I could hear the smile in his voice. "You gonna start picking on Vance?"
"I'm not that bad!" I insisted, even though I knew it was a lie. I picked on West relentlessly. But, to be fair, everything about his personality invited someone like me to try to take him down a few notches.
"He's got a sweet side too," Roan insisted.
I couldn't deny that. He was forever doing unexpectedly nice things for the women, something that likely came from his mom and sisters growing up. He was the first one to put a stop to any kind of teasing amongst the boy kids in the club and the girls when they thought no one was listening. But he was listening. And fast to remind them that their job was to love and protect the girls, not tease them.
But, he was a shit starter and cocky.
It was fun to pick at him.
He could take it.
It didn't dull him.
"When is he going to get patched? It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Yeah. Or no. I don't know. Back before Reign lost most of his original club, I have no idea how long everyone went through the prospect period. I think it was sped up for a lot of us when he was trying to build up his numbers again."