“I don’t see how it would work, you know, with the staying out of jail aspect. But maybe keep it on the back burner for a little while.”
Vero bounces as he walks. “See?! You are so smart. Oh, yes,” he says as we stop at my loft. “It’s nugget time!”
I pull out my keys and open the downstairs door, and we take the stairs up to my loft. Vero is a gigantic ball of energy, and once I unlock the top door, he rushes inside. He dumps his bag of snacks on the table and beelines to the kitchen to find the nuggets.
I kick off my boots and drop my bag as I watch him tear through my freezer.
“Found them,” he announces, holding the bag in the air. “This is why I love you.”
“Because I have nuggets?”
“Because you have nuggets and didn’t throw them away.”
He pulls out a tray and turns on the oven. “Brawley wouldn’t let me cook at midnight. He would just pull a face.”
“What face?”
Vero turns to me and makes a very good impression of Brawley. I laugh and Vero joins me.
“He has been making that face since we met. I thinkhe might have been born with it because there is a baby photo of him making that face at whoever is taking the picture.”
I pull myself up onto the counter and watch as Vero figures out my oven—the temperature dial sticks and he doesn’t realize it yet. When I reach down and fix it for him, he looks at me and then at the dial.
“You knew it was broken?”
I nod. “I was curious how long it would take you to figure it out.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Nothing will keep me from my nuggets, woman.”
He places the tray in and steps between my legs. “You good?”
“I am now because you’re here,” I tell him.
He grabs his second bag of sour worms from the counter beside us and pulls one out, offering the bag to me.
I shake my head and he shrugs. “Brawley wanted me to walk you home tonight. They were all busy doing boy stuff, which sounded boring. I prefer to be around you.”
“I like being around you as well.”
“Three more minutes.”
I laugh. “If you are referring to your nuggets, the oven hasn’t even warmed up yet.”
“It will be fine. I can negotiate with it.”
I smile at him. There is no way I will let him eat half-frozen nuggets. He can learn to have some patience.
After fifteen minutes, he deems them cookedenough. He brings them to the bed, and we put on the television, choosing a serial-killer documentary. Vero is the only person insane enough to enjoy them with me. Brawley vetoed it last night, and sure that ended in sex, but Vero is content to eat his nuggets and commentate how he’d have done things differently so he wouldn’t get caught.
Meeting him was hands down the best thing that has ever happened to me. Though it was a little rocky there for a minute, I’m glad I forgave him and didn’t let my past with Aaron ruin it for me.
Kayla
The carousel has been making weird sounds for a week, and Clay agreed to have a look at it after Nixie told him that since we broke it, we’d better fix it. He has no experience fixing anything here, but Cipher has been MIA, so apparently Clay’s words were, “How hard could it be?”
“It’s the belt,” Clay says.
“It’s not the belt,” Ares argues.