Page 130 of A Lick and A Promise
Oh no!
Alexis’s father was against her marrying Jacob. To the point he’d refused to pay for the wedding. He and her mom had been sent an invitation (I knew, I helped her address them). I didn’t know what their RSVP was, considering that deadline was a while ago since their wedding was next Saturday.
But I suspected his version of an RSVP was happening right now.
Knox asked for no further information.
He just turned to me and looked at his shirt on my body.
Ah, fuck.
I’d been guarding this secret and had no intention of ever telling it. Not even now that he was back. It exposed far too much.
“Babe,” he grunted as his way of telling me he needed his shirt.
Crap.
“That tee I stole from you? You know, the army one I liked so much?” I asked.
He said nothing.
“It’s under my pillow,” I mumbled.
Okay, so we shared a lot last night, including avowals of love.
But that said a whole lot more, precisely why I wasn’t ever going to tell him (all right, maybe one day, when we were old and gray and watching our great-grandchildren graduate high school, but not a day before that).
“Mm-hmm,” Shanti hummed.
Harlow and Gemma giggled.
“Well, all right,” Jessie whispered.
But Knox…
Knox stared at me…
And God…
God.
This man really, really loved me.
“Well!” Martha exclaimed impatiently. “Isn’t anyone going to stop Jacob from blooding the courtyard with what comes gushing out of his future father-in-law’s nose?”
The Angels started dashing out the door.
Knox jogged to my bedroom and jogged out sans sling (gah!), tugging on his tee.
I jogged out after him completely forgetting I was wearing nothing but his shirt.
Jacques jogged out with us.
You would not think Knox had a healing hole blown through his thigh just eight days and some change before with the way he caught sight of what was happening outside Jacob and Alexis’s apartment, and he started sprinting.
I hastened my step too, as did all the Angels (and Jacques, though sadly, my wee boy’s legs were very short, so he had no hope of keeping up with his guy), but Knox passed them on the stairs in order to get to Jacob, who was bumping chests, nose-to-nose with an older man.
Linda was holding onto a sobbing Alexis just outside their door.
