Page 256 of Five Brothers

Nuh-uh.

He caresses me everywhere, finally coming up to cup my face.

“All I could think about was this.”He comes in to kiss me, and I whimper, putting my hands on him. “Baby …” he begs.

The sound of his voice is desperate, and I can’t help it anymore. The relief floods me, and I wrap my arms around him.

“Mine.” I press my forehead to his.

“That’s what I want to hear.”

He whips me around to face the dresser mirror, and I break into a smile as he hugs me to his body and buries his face in my hair. It’s his comfort move. How he feels safe.

“I love you,” I tell him.

Turning me back around, he holds my eyes as he lifts me into his arms and carries me to our bathroom.

I hug with my arms and legs as he leans over and starts the shower, shrugs his jeans off, and steps in. He closes the door, the shower inside dark with the black tile I picked when we added it to our many renovations of the house.

Liv’s old room no longer exists, Macon and his brothers having to tear down the walls to make a hallway toward the new wing.

Liv and Clay are looking into buying an old, abandoned light-housea few miles away, but we have a few spare bedrooms in case they ever sleep over. Dex has his own room, Paisleigh has a balcony, where she likes to imagine she’s Juliet, and Mars opted to have his room in the attic. There’s a window that leads right to the tree where the old treehouse still sits. They built the wing around it, keeping a small courtyard in the middle on the lower level. Mars likes to sleep in the treehouse. Still. At sixteen years old.

Macon puts me down, and I soap up a loofah, starting to wash the sweat and ocean off him.

“I’ll get the satellite phone today,” he finally says.

“Thank you.”

“You really fucking love me, don’t you?”

I dart my eyes up to his, watching his proud smile spread like he has me right where he wants me.

I tear my eyes away from the way the suds drip down his golden skin and push him down on the stone seat of the shower. His eyes gleam as he watches me drop to my knees and take him in my mouth.

He exhales, holding my head to his body.

Yes, I love you. And I’m never losing you.

It was a long road for him to learn how to manage everything that goes on in his head, and some days he forgets how altogether.

But he knows that I love him, and that another good day is coming.

Once he found a doctor who didn’t aggravate him—and got to know them—it got a lot easier for him to keep talking to someone.

He knows he’s not alone. They check in with each other regularly.

And the time between one bad day and another has gotten longer and longer, and there are so many days when he’s the one taking care of me.

We’re lucky.

Every time I feel him, smell his skin, see him crook his finger with a smile on his face, I’m so goddamn lucky I found him.

“Mama Kris!” a kid yells.

I pull my mouth off my husband.

“Can I have pancakes?” the kid, Mato, from across the street, yells. I see a dark form peek around the bathroom door. “Willow says I can’t!”