She tipped her head back and looked up at him.
He fiddled with a strand of her hair. “Because of the buttons, all those cold cases are being revisited. Eventually one of the buttons could be connected to my mother. If it is, and I get it back, I’ll put it in a hermetically sealed box, take it up to Alaska, and bury it there next to Dad.”
“I think he would like that,” she said, her voice rough with emotion.
“In the meantime, I thought I’d go up, plant a tree, add a headstone, something that would represent closure to me.”
“The fulfillment of your oath.”
“That sounds so lofty, but I guess, yeah. I would like for you to go with me.”
She kissed her fingertip and pressed it to his lips. “If you would like me to, I will.”
He sank his fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp, while his other hand drifted back and forth across her breasts. “I want to volunteer.”
“For what?”
“To be the sperm donor when you thaw those eggs out.”
She rubbed her cheek against his pec. “You already have been.”
Both of his hands fell still. “What?”
“One of my eggs that wasn’t harvested proved to be more robust than those that were.”
His gaze moved down to the feminine landscape that had entranced him minutes earlier, then came back up to meet her eyes.
Shyly she said, “We were both a bit primitive that night.” Drex just looked at her. After a time, she asked, “Are you ever going to blink?”
He did.
Then he pulled her into a hug, and they did something they had never done together: They laughed, out loud, and long.