Page 140 of A Lick and A Promise
“That being?”
“Making it clear I’m off limits and the family ties between me and any of them have been irrevocably cut.”
I wished those ties were such that I hated that for him too, but they weren’t.
This was healthy.
So all I could do was nod.
“And just to say, I like your bed,” he went on. “Your apartment has tons more personality than my pad. And when we used to be together, I didn’t get to be here very often. I want that time back now.”
“You in my bed and me not schlepping around changes of clothes and toiletries way works for me, Knox Chambers.”
“I’m not gonna schlep shit around, so don’t freak when I bring a bag so big, you think I’m moving in.”
My only reply to that was to roll off the bed, snatch up my phone, cue up Apple Music, make sure my phone was connected to my Bluetooth speaker and unleash Katrina and her Waves.
I was in the middle of doing the head banging Jack Black moves when I found myself on my back in my bed and Knox on top of me.
“You’re a total goof,” he said, smiling down at me.
“You stopped me before I could get to the air guitar part,” I complained.
Still smiling, he kissed me on my mouth.
Then he slid down my body and kissed me a whole lot more thoroughly somewhere else.
And I might have been lying on my back all the way through it.
But I was still walking on sunshine.
Knox and I had shuffled around my kitchen to cobble some dinner together from cupboards that weren’t exactly bare, but they weren’t teeming (we settled on baking the two frozen salmon filets I had, and miraculously, I had all the ingredients to make Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole, so dinner was going to be yummy).
Now, while the casserole cooked, we were camped on my couch, me and my two boys (only one had his head in my lap (Knox) the other one was curled in the crook of Knox’s hips), Knox was watching some skiing competition somewhere I wanted to go (not to ski, to drink hot toddies and look cute in outdoor gear).
And I got on my phone.
It rang.
And rang.
And then Dream picked up.
“Hey,” she greeted.
“Hey,” I replied. “Thought you’d want to know, Knox is sitting next to me, and we have Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole in the oven. He’s been here since last night. We had an epic session of letting it all hang out, we understand what went wrong, and we’re back on the right track.”
She said nothing.
“But I’m still up for a sister date tomorrow after your shift at SC,” I offered.
She spoke then. “You just made up with your man, he’s been there since last night, it’s the weekend and you don’t have to work, and you’re offering to leave him to have a sister date with me?”
“Full disclosure, the seal on our reunion was already broken when the girls came over this morning to see if I was okay, Knox gave them hell for not taking my back?—”
“Good,” she spat over my talking.
Her defense of me felt fabulous, but I kept going. “Then Knox had to go break up a fight between Jacob and Alexis’s dad in the courtyard. I mean, not a fight fight, though that was forthcoming as chests were being bumped and faces were in faces.”
