The light was shimmering through the blinds when I woke alone. I felt not quite hot and feverish, but still achy and raw. I sat up and found a tumbler on the bedside table along with a bottle of pain medicine. I took a couple, grimacing at the pain as I swallowed, and then continued to sip at the honeyed tea, trying to soothe my aching throat.
I turned my phone over to check the time, astonished to find it was nearly noon.
As if he’d somehow heard me barely moving, footsteps echoed down the hall, and Beckett appeared in the doorway with Vader trailing after him. When Beckett leaned up against the frame, the dog pressed into him, as if afraid to leave his side again.
“How are you feeling?” Beckett asked.
“Like my throat got stung by a thousand bees and I took a fall from Titan at a gallop.”
“That good, huh?” His lips quirked. “You feel like eggs? Toast?”
“Not really,” I said and started to slide out of bed.
“Where are you going?” he growled.
“To get ready. Go see Dad. Deal with whatever we need to after yesterday.”
In two strides, he’d reached the bed, taken my legs, and shoved them back under the covers. “You’re not going anywhere today. You need to rest and heal. Everyone can fucking handle things on their own for one day without you.” When I started to protest, he put a finger over my lips. “Don’t make me tie you to the bed.”
The warning landed in my stomach with an unexpected heat. When my eyes found his, I saw a mirror reflection of the desire that had rushed through me.
But as he leaned in to kiss me, I put my hand up between our mouths.
“No kissing, Beckett,” I said and nearly laughed at the disapproving look on his face. “I don’t think this is just the smoke messing with my throat. I think I’ve finally succumbed to the cold going around, and even with your rock-solid immune system, you’re bound to get sick if you keep touching me and breathing the same air as me.”
He shrugged. “If I do, I do. It’ll be worth it.”
“You say that now, when your throat doesn’t feel like you’re training to be a fire eater.”
“That’s an interesting notion. A firefighter who’s also a fire eater.Fireball absorbed the flames, but I could swallow them instead.” He was smiling, the large smile that always landed in the pit of my stomach and made his dimple pop. Over the years, I’d gotten good at pushing aside the longing that look brought, but now, I let it hit me fully, relishing it.
The longer I stared at him, the more the tease in the air disappeared, replaced with the electricity that zipped between us. He sat on the mattress next to me and tugged my hand into his.
“As much as I’d love to stay here with you and Vader and ignore the world,” I said softly, “I don’t think that’s going to be possible today.”
“Just today? Or has something changed that’s making you want to run from me?” he asked, and I heard behind his calm voice the teenage boy who’d once been abandoned. The man who’d shielded his heart, even from me, for twenty years. I hadn’t been able to drag myself out of the abyss last night to respond to his questions, and now he’d had an entire morning to doubt me. Doubt us.
“Since the moment you entered my life, Beckett. The thing I wanted most was you. That has never changed. It was the same yesterday. It’s the same today. And it will be the same years into our future.”
Relief softened every line on his face. “Then move in here. Truly move in here. I want you in my bed, in my bathroom. I want your books strewn across my living room. I want you to turn this house into something that’s ours and not mine. And I desperately want to be the person who makes all your dreams come true, if you’ll have me…if you’ll let me.”
Emotions bloomed, filling my chest to their limit and making it difficult to talk. How long had I wanted to hear just this from someone? No…not from just anyone…from Beckett. I’d always wanted him to look at me just this way and offer me himself. Offer me the love I’d always known he had inside him to give. Now that I had it, now that he was mine, it felt unreal. And yet it wasn’t.
Forever after wasn’t just for romance novels.
The intensity of my joy nearly left me breathless, and it took far too long for me to finally respond. “Okay. I’ll move all my stuff out of the guest room and bath today.”
The happiness in his eyes matched my own, but he shook his head, humor twinkling in his eyes as he said, “No. You’re not doing anything today but resting. I’ll move your things.”
As much as I would have liked nothing more than to not move a muscle from Beckett’s bed, I longed to see my dad. To make sure he was okay. When I said that, Beckett just shook his head again.
“You heard him last night. He wants you to rest. When I talked to him this morning, he made me promise I’d make sure you did just that.” WhenI started to protest, he covered my lips with his hand. “I talked to the doctor too. He said there’s no way they’re releasing your dad for at least two more days.”
“But the sheriff—”
He pressed his finger firmer into my lips. “I also called Cleaver. He and the sheriff and Cooper are still sorting through all the details, but Chelsea is trying to lay as much of the troubles as she can at Carter’s feet, hoping to keep the charges against her down. She says it was Carter who spread the Sterno at your dad’s. He thought your dad wasn’t home, and when your dad walked into the kitchen, Carter knocked him over the head, thinking he’d die of smoke inhalation and that would be that. When the house didn’t burn to the ground, they changed their plan of attack. They wanted you out so you’d stop helping your dad, but also so you couldn’t claim your half of the estate when your dad died.
“The sheriff got even more information when Gavin showed up at the station, wanting to file a missing persons report for Chelsea because she hadn’t shown up at the studio. When they questioned him about Chelsea’s whereabouts for some of the incidents, they were able to piecemeal most of what happened. It’s likely she was the one who smashed your windshield. And Cleaver found a pair of steel-toed boots at the Helmers' place, so we think she attacked you too, trying to place the blame on a firefighter…maybe even me.”