Page 151 of The Complete Truth Duet
I smirked. “There’s pictures too. Like one from our wedding on the mantel.”
“You told me on our first date that you’d been married before. I promise I won’t be shocked to see that a photographer captured still images of that momentous occasion. However, like I said, if you want me to say I’m uncomfortable to make you feel comfortable, I’m on it. But I have spent twenty hours in this truck, so I’m going to need the next place to be close by.”
Laughing, I turned my gaze back onto the house. It was a nice house. A really nice house, right on the beach. But it hadn’t been my home in years. If I was being honest, the only place I’d felt anything even remotely resembling a home was Cora’s old apartment. But that had less to do with the structure and more to do with the woman and kids inside of it.
I’d grieved.
I’d moved on.
I’d met the only woman who could have ever saved me.
But pain was funny like that. It stained your soul long after you had healed.
And, being there, a part of me was waiting for that pain to reappear and consume me all over again.
But then I looked at Cora.
Her face was soft as she stared back at me.
Her lips were tipped up, gentle but teasing.
Her hair was in a messy ponytail that she’d probably yell at me for not telling her just how messy it truly was.
How had I found something so good in the middle of something so, so bad?
Giving her hand a tug, I pulled her across the center console. I caught the back of her neck, meeting her halfway for an all-too-brief kiss, before mumbling against her lips, “I love you. And if you’re comfortable being here, I’m comfortable being wherever you are.”
She hummed, “Oh, my sweet Penn. Your cheesy lines are getting better. I’m impressed.”
I nipped at her bottom lip. “Your jokes are not.”
“So, what do you want to do? I’m really fine if you can’t stay here. The girls will be crushed, Drew will bitch, and Catalina will pout.” She put her hand to her chest. “But I, Penn Pennington, will be fine.”
That was enough for me.
I laughed, putting the truck into drive.
I could do this.
I could make new memories.
Of Cora.
Of River.
Of Savannah.
Maybe even a few of Penn.
“My name is not Penn Pennington.” I eased on the accelerator until we rolled through the gate.
She laughed, loud and carefree.
And after we’d parked, climbed the back steps, and then walked through the door together, those twenty-nine minutes of memories didn’t assault me.
Not with her smiling up at me.
“Oh my God! Did you feel that?” she cried, wiggling in my arms when another wave crashed into us. Her legs were wrapped around my hips, two scraps of fabric dividing us, my cock painfully hard. But as River and Isabel chased Savannah across the beach with a piece of wet sea grass, there was not the first damn thing I could do about it.
“You had to buy a fucking bikini, didn’t you?” I grumbled for no less than the twentieth time since we’d gotten back from the beach shop.
“Could you stop worrying about what I’m wearing and more about the shark who is about to tear my legs off?”
“What shark?” I reached behind me and tickled the bottom of her foot.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, fighting to get away, but I refused to let her go.
Turns out, Cora couldn’t swim.
Neither could River.
Or Savannah.
Having grown up on the water, where people taught their babies to swim before they could talk, I’d never considered they wouldn’t know how.
But I’d guessed, in Chicago, it wasn’t as imperative.
“That was not funny,” she scolded.
“Oh, come on. It was a little funny.”
She swung her head from one side to the other. “Why can’t I see the bottom? Aren’t you supposed to see the bottom?”
I barked a laugh, sliding my hands down to cup her ass. “Maybe if we were in the Keys.”
“Okay, so let’s go there. This place is scary.”
I spun in a fast circle, the sand tunneling beneath my feet, Cora clinging to my neck. “It’s a two-hour drive, baby.”
“Penn, stop!”
She had hated every minute of it since I’d dragged her into the water.
Every shell she stepped on was a crab and every swish of the water was a jellyfish.
I’d held her captive out there for a full thirty minutes, laughing the whole time.
It never got old. However, it was becoming blatantly clear that a life on the beach was not in our future. Maybe a winter home where we could escape the cold and she could sit on the deck, sipping a cup of coffee, and watching the waves roll in.
But if not Chicago.
And not Florida.
Where?
“Where do you want to live?” I asked, heading back to the shallow waters.
