Page 241 of The Grand Duel
I slide down the bed, twisting to my side. “I do. And now you have them too.”
She smiles. “Because you’re gone?”
I kiss her. “Because I’m in love with you.” My forehead settles against hers. “Because there isn’t a single thing I want to have and hold in this life if you’re not at my side to experience it with me.”
Her eyes grow glassy, and I take her face in my hand, my thumb dusting her cheek.
“No sun I want to see rise, no laugh I want to pass my lips, no dawn that doesn’t greet me with warm brown eyes. I was always quietly afraid of never falling in love, Lis, and yet if I’d known you were coming, I’d have happily waited another thirty-five years for you. For this feeling.”
“I love you, too,” she whispers back. “I, umm…” She pushes out of my hold and climbs from the bed, pulling open my drawers. “I unpacked that bag before we left yesterday. I thought you’d see, but you didn’t, and I was going to wait for you to stumble across it.”
“You unpacked the bag?”
I’ve been on her for weeks to move in, ever since I finished the house, but she’s been putting it off.
She nods. “And I think it’s time I quit at the club. I don’t really have anything to put the extra money towards.”
She holds whatever she’s pulled from the drawer and brings it to me.
It’s a picture frame, the photo printed inside one I took on my phone. Lissie is kissing my cheek, Luna and Daisy lie with their crazy eyes and flopping tongues hanging out as they fight for position on my chest.
“I want to wake up every day to the three of you. I want to make memories in this house and invite our friends along, too. I want to love you here, in this home, forever.”
“You’re moving in with me?”
She shrugs. “I practically live here anyway.”
I grin, pulling her by the waist onto the bed and rolling on top of her.
FORTY-FIVE
Charlie
“Lis, hurry up, you’re going to make me late.”
She gives both dogs one last kiss and stands, closing the front door to our home and walking to the car. “I’mgoing to makeyoulate?”
I smile at her, well aware that our morning shower—and the way I made it something else entirely—is the reason I’m going to be late.
She pulls on her seat belt and looks over at me. “You’ll be even later if you just sit there staring. Crack on, Charles.”
“I’m just preparing myself for the three hours until lunchtime that I’ll have to be without you.”
“Longer. I had a message from Scarlet this morning about meeting for coffee on my lunch break, the girls, too.”
“No.”
“No?” she repeats. “What do you mean no?”
“I mean no, you’re not meeting the girls for coffee instead of spending your lunch hour with me.”
She chuckles. “Yeah, anyway, Scarlet wants to go over her plans for the memorial ball. She said she’d explain it more later, but I’m presuming it’s in memory of her parents?”
I side-eye her.
“Stop being a brat. You need to learn to share your toys.”
“I don’t.”