“To bed? You and me?” Her voice turns hopeful. “Here?”
“Yeah, baby,” I say softly. “You and me, right here.” I catch her hand and kiss it. “Any complaints?”
“Zero complaints, Rick Savage. I know you’ve answered this, oh two or three or six times, but are you sure we really are safe here?”
“Nothing has changed,” I say, happy to repeat any reassurance she needs. “Gabriel’s in Austin. I have men watching him and us.” I tug her forward and lead her to the bed, where I waste no time sliding her robe off her shoulders, my gaze raking over her naked body. “Get in bed and cover up before I break that thirty-minute rule you set.”
She laughs that sweet musical laugh of hers, pushes to her toes to kiss me, and then crawls under the covers. “Undress,” she says. “That’s an order.”
I can’t get in that bed with her soon enough. I grab my phone and quickly set it on the nightstand. The charge is low, but it’ll get me through until morning. And then for the first time in eight long years, I slide into bed with Candace. I’m barely under the covers when she scoots next to me and presses her body to mine.
“Can we make a deal?” she asks when I shift to angle our bodies together.
“Depends on the deal.”
“Wrong answer.”
“Okay, baby. Yes. We can make a deal.”
“Good. On my end, I’ll do my very best to stop beating you up about the past. You’re here now, and I’ll start living in the present.”
I stroke her cheek. “And on my end? I do what?”
“Stop trying to scare me away. Stop calling yourself a killer. I know you’ve killed people.”
“A lot of people.”
“A lot of people,” she repeats and then pushes me to my back and leans over me. “You took orders.”
“I made a lot of money killing people.”
“Did you do it for the money or because my father convinced you that it was where you needed to be?”
“I don’t know anymore. Somewhere along the way, it all got fucked up. I got fucked up.”
“And you got out. I know that story. Adam told me, not you.”
“Candace—”
“Do you do good things with Walker?”
“Yes.”
“Then live in the now with me, Rick. We need each other in the right here and now. I need to live in the now and I think you do, too.”
“Because you think there won’t be a tomorrow.”
“I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but while you were talking to Adam I really gave this some thought. What if we don’t make it through this?”
“We will. We damn sure will.”
“We never have a guarantee of a tomorrow, none of us. My mother, your mother, we both saw that early in life. You’ve seen it in ways I can’t imagine. Make the deal.”
She’s right. I’ve seen too many people die not to know that for a fact. “Deal,” I say. “But, baby—”
“Don’t finish that sentence. Not tonight.”
“Not tonight,” I agree, folding her in my arms, settling her at my side before I reach over and turn out the light, darkness cloaking the room. “Get some rest,” I say, stroking her head.
Her fingers tangle in the hair on my chest, seconds ticking into a full minute before she asks, “What are you going to do about your father?”
“The last thing I want to think about now is my father,” I say, which is true. “Not when I’m in bed with you, where I haven’t been in eight long years. Sleep, baby. We’ll deal with shit and assholes tomorrow.”
She laughs a soft, musical laugh that slides into my soul and settles there with every good moment we’ve ever shared. And then, thankfully accepts my answer, her body slowly softening against mine, her breathing growing steady with sleep. I shut my eyes with every intention of making this, holding her at the end of every day, my life. And to do that, I have no doubt that it’s going to get bloody. And a man needs his sleep to excel at that kind of killing.
CHAPTER TEN
Candace
I wake to sunlight piercing a crack in the curtains, Rick on his back, me snuggling to his hard body, my head on the pillow next to him, my hand on his chest; his heart thrumming a steady, relaxed beat beneath my touch. It’s a surreal, joyful moment that packs an emotional punch. We’re here in this bed together as I thought we never would be again, but for how long? I chide myself for such a thought, giving myself a mental talking to over entering that defeating headspace.
If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they’re yours; if they don’t, they never were. A quote my mother attributed to Richard Bach, from his book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I never actually found it in the book, but it never really mattered. The sentiment of the quote mattered. And the book mattered because of its hopeful content, and because my mother loved it so much. I read it again a year after Rick left. It was that book that snapped me back to reality. That made me look ahead and not behind. He didn’t come back. Until he did.