Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
You almost here? Let me know when to reheat the food.
I replied.
Nuke it, baby. I’m there in two minutes.
I wiped my nose for the last time and nodded to myself. Time to start my second verse. I was gonna be honest with Jake too. I’d tell him I wanted to live with him permanently. We were fucking cute, tiptoeing around the subject, when we’d already discussed marriage.
His house was perfect for us. I loved the hacienda-style architecture, and he had plenty of space. A wonderful backyard he maintained like a pro. Four bedrooms, a big living room slash dining area. Would we ever need more than three bedrooms for five kids? Honestly. I’d grown up sharing, and that hadn’t killed me.
It wasn’t difficult seeing Sam and Callie sharing a room. Adam and Cas—or maybe Cas and Colin until Colin was older and needed more privacy. Our eldest were thick as thieves.
After grabbing Ninja’s carrier and my backpack with essentials, I locked up the car and left the driveway. No biggie, I was just gonna invite myself to move in to my man’s house. It happened every day.
“Oh shit.” I hurried back to the car, having forgotten the damn litter box. Suddenly, it was going to be a heavy little walk. Cat, essentials, litter box, the fucking litter… Okay, take two.
Ninja meowed.
“Stop judging me,” I said.
I walked briskly up the sidewalk until I reached Jake’s house. The front yard was, as always, in pristine condition. Jake, my gardener. Flower beds, fruit trees, manicured lawn, no weeds in sight, and an old-fashioned lamppost that cast a glow on the area. French café chairs and table—for Grandma Jo-Jo, who loved to sit there.
She’d done the same at the office when that’d been our home. She liked seeing the cars drive by through the hedge and keep an eye on the neighbors.
It was gonna be good seeing her again.
I knocked on the door twice before I let myself in.
“Honey, I’m home!” I called. “Are all the doors and windows closed? Or bug screens, at least? I have a Ninja who wants out.”
“Go ahead!” Jake hollered from the kitchen.
I heard the microwave beep.
I unloaded all the kitty shit in the hallway and let Ninja out.
I’m home.
I was fucking home. This was the home I shared with my photographer, who had collected our memories on the walls. So many photos of us and our condor family. Always candids. Laughter frozen in time, kids running around, hugs, tickle fights, some pictures black-and-white, some in full color. Nikki and the kids running through the sprinklers in the backyard, Haley and the kids opening pizza boxes, Jake and me… Photos from New York. My brothers, my nieces, my nephews, my aunt and uncle. They were Jake’s family too.
I rounded the corner and peered into the kitchen just as Jake quickly set a food container on the counter. It was too hot, judging by his “ouch, fuck” and withdrawing his hands.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
He glanced over at me and smiled—only to freeze up. “What the fuck happened to you?”
Oh…
Right.
“I may have gotten a little emotional in the car,” I admitted. “It’s fine.”
He frowned. “But you said on the phone everything went better than expected. Kathryn was a lifesaver and so on.”
“All true. All true. I guess I’m just…a crybaby letting go of the past. I don’t know.”
Something softened in his gaze. “But you’re my crybaby.”
I grinned. Damn fucking right.
He set another container in the microwave, then sucked some red sauce off his thumb. “Let’s circle back to you saying ‘Honey, I’m home.’” He came toward me and gestured for me to come with him down the hall.
More photos. Boston, Philly, Norway, Afghanistan, Finland, Poland… Two commemorative Emmy statues on a shelf. We kept the real ones in our podcast studio. And some minor awards and plaques.
We walked past Colin’s room—whoa, wait. Holy shit, was he for real? Jake had added Casper’s name below Colin’s. The same cartoon worms shaped like letters.
“Jake…?”
He stopped and looked back. “Well, fuck. You weren’t supposed to see that before I showed you the twins’ room.”
The twins’ room.
I pinched my lips together and understood that my discussion about how I wanted to move in was going to be very easy.
He was moving us in already.
Jake rubbed the back of his neck and nudged open the next door. That one used to be the gym. “I moved Sam in here. I figured since there’s a shared bathroom between these rooms… Anyway—” He cleared his throat before he opened the door across from…I guessed Sam’s new room. “Adam and Callie get her old one. It’s closer to our bedroom but smaller. So, I don’t know, one day, Adam can have it to himself if Callie moves in with Sam or however we’ll change things around.”
Our bedroom.
My God, I was glad I was all cried out.