Page 61 of Be With Me

Epilogue

Tyler

Isat at my kitchen table and watched Ailee as she unpacked a bag of groceries she’d brought over. Snickers danced around her feet. She was making dinner.

We were taking things slow.

It’d been three weeks since I got out of the hospital, and I was making great progress with my therapist. We now knew of five alters. Kate, who wanted to get into interior design and likes movie dates with Ailee.

Miko, a younger guy who liked art and techno music. And oranges. He fucking loved oranges. He’d also met Ailee that day he and Willow were shopping. He wanted to hang out with her some more, but she made him nervous because he thought she was really pretty.

The guy had great taste.

Tony liked to take out his aggression through boxing. He was also the silky boxer wearer and could watch reruns of Mash for days on end.

Superman was just a kid. Though he had fronted when I was younger, these days he felt safer just staying inside the system.

And Samuel. We didn’t know much about him. Not, yet. But I had a feeling he was a pretty heavy dude. Not physically. Mentally. My therapist thought he might know some things that I probably wasn’t ready to handle right now. And that was okay. He’d make himself known when it was time.

Apparently my alters had there for a while, living quietly within the system, or inner world, that was my head. We didn’t know what triggered them, or why they had suddenly started fronting, but they were here now, and that was okay.

“How does spaghetti sound?”

I smiled at the sexy woman in my kitchen. “It sounds great, sweetheart.”

She smiled and came over to give me a kiss. Something she didn’t do until she knew who she was kissing.

I pulled her down onto my lap, tugging her in close so I could nip at the soft skin of her neck. “I love you, ‘lee.”

She stilled in my arms. Fuck. Maybe it was too soon.

Pulling away, she took my face between her hands. “I love you, too, Tyler.”

“All of me?”

One side of her mouth turned up in a teasing smile. “We’re working on that.”

“Well, let me help you out.” I stood up with her in my arms and took her back to the bedroom.

Dinner was gonna have to fucking wait.