The rest would be easy.
Epilogue
Xavier
Two months later
"I still can't believe we have our own place," Brooks said as we walked into our new bedroom.
"We have our own place for about a week," I reminded him. "That's all it's going to take for the workers to finish the rest of the rooms."
"A week," Brooks murmured as he turned around and eyed me. His fingers went to the hem of his T-shirt. The days of him wearing slacks and dress shirts were long gone. It was mostly jeans and T-shirts these days. Of course, I still preferred him naked. But when you lived with several other people, including your mother and little sister, naked times were pretty limited. So were noisy sexy times. I'd ended up doing exactly what Jules had suggested and had gotten creative with various items to gag Brooks with so that he wouldn't have to keep biting the heel of his hand to stifle his cries of pleasure every time he came.
"I can work with a week," he said, and then the shirt was gone and he was working on his zipper. I leaned against the doorjamb and enjoyed the little striptease he was putting on for me. His fingers fumbled a little as he tried to work the pants off, and I found myself smiling. As confident as my man was when it came to sex, he could never control his excitement when it came to being with me.
He wasn't the only one.
"I was talking to my mother this morning," I said.
Brooks stilled and frowned. "So I'm pulling my clothes off in front of you and you’re bringing up your mother?" he asked. "Is this the end? Am I losing my touch?"
I laughed and went to him. I knew he wasn't being serious, but just the fact that he was joking with me like this was proof that the real Brooks was coming out more and more every day. While things around us weren't always the easiest to deal with, the things between us were. I'd always heard so many people talk about how hard relationships were to make work, but Brooks and I hadn’t gotten there yet. And I wasn't sure we ever would. But if we did have things we needed to work through in the future, I knew we would figure them out.
One of the only areas we'd ever really argued about was Brooks's insistence that we share the bed at night. I’d resisted for weeks, but Brooks had been adamant and eventually we'd tried it. I hadn't slept even a wink the first two nights as I’d held him. But by the third night I’d fallen asleep so fast, we hadn't even had sex. When I'd woken up, Brooks had been there leaning over me, his fingers tracing patterns over my skin. He’d greeted me with a kiss and the words, "Morning, beautiful." I'd known at that point that I would always need to wake up to him in the morning.
The next several nights had been uneventful, but when I’d had my first nightmare, Brooks had woken me up. He’d done it with his voice, rather than his hands, and while I'd startled awake and nearly fallen off the bed, I hadn't touched him. When he’d calmed me enough that I could figure out where I was and that I wasn't, in fact, back in my prison cell, he’d held me and let me cry as I’d dealt with the relief.
After that, I hadn't worried as much about potentially hurting Brooks while I slept. I'd also confided in him that when I’d started working at the ranch and Curtis had invited me to move into the main house because I’d been uncomfortable sleeping in the bunkhouse surrounded by all those men, I’d attacked Curtis one night and in almost the same way I'd attacked Brooks when Curtis had done the same thing and tried to wake me from a nightmare. Fortunately, I hadn't hurt Curtis at all. I'd startled him more than anything else. That had been particularly hard to admit to Brooks, but like Curtis, Brooks had refused to give up on me and we were here now because he’d been so strong.
"She mentioned staying with Curtis a little longer. She thinks that she and Sara are good for him. And he's good for them. We would obviously still be over there for breakfast and dinner and all that, but basically this would be our house. Sara would probably spend the night now and then, or we might occasionally stay in the main house, but it would just be us living in this house most of the time. What do you think of that?"
I had loved living with my family and getting to know them, especially rebuilding my relationship with my mother who was finally having more good days than bad ones, but admittedly, it was hard for me and Brooks to find the privacy we sometimes desired. We’d taken to finding spots like the lake by the waterfall or the little darkened corner in the barn when we really needed to be with each other away from prying eyes.