Page 122 of Against The Tide

“Me too.”

We head back downstairs, and it dawns on me that I locked the door behind me when I came in earlier. But I don’t bother saying anything about it. It will only make things tenser than they already are. The best thing to do right now is talk to Rowan about it and see what he says about it while I make sure my girls remain safe.

CHAPTER 33

AVERY

“You need a haircut,” I tell Iris while combing through her hair in the bath. It’s the longest it’s ever been, and where she’s been surfing with Rhett over the last month, it’s got the same sea-bleached and coarse wisps at the ends like his hair does.

The smile that tugs at my lips is impossible to contain as I slather some more conditioner on her hair.

“I like my hair long like this. I look pretty like you, Mommy.”

“You are prettier than me, baby. You’re beautiful.”

“Doc says you’re beautiful all the time. Do you think he is too? Is that why you love him?”

Oh my God, this kid never ceases to amaze me with how forward and perceptive she is. I haven’t broached the moving in together subject yet, mostly because my mind is all over the place and it’s something I want to be able to talk her through if she doesn’t take it as well as I believe she will.

Besides that, Rhett and I had this massive blowup about the whole telling Mike thing, and since then things have been tense. But still…

“I love him…I love Rhett because he’s a good man. And when he smiles, my heart beats so fast that I can hardly catch my breath. I get all dizzy and giggly. Just like you,” I snicker while tickling her.

“Are you going to marry him one day and have more babies?” Iris turns to look at me with curious eyes glowing a deep mossy green as she awaits my reply.

With my heart stuttering in panic while I look for an answer, I keep smiling shakily. Trust her to put me on the spot like that.

“I-I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

“I don’t want you to break up.”

A lump forms at the back of my throat as I tell her, “We’re not.”

“You had a fight.”

“We had a disagreement. That means that we think different things on one thing, but it doesn’t mean we’re breaking up,” I manage to tell her while I rinse her off.

My heart is so heavy that I almost rush through the process of drying her off and getting her pajamas on so I can take a moment to get my head together before I put her to bed. The more I think about it, the bigger the argument feels to me. It goes from an argument to a fight, and I begin to wonder if when he walked out of the house it was something more.

The number of times Carl walked out after we had a fight… The lump in my throat swells some more as my heart leadens somewhere between my gut and my chest. The queasy feeling that refuses to go away returns with a vengeance, until I have no choice but to purge my stomach.

By the time I get to her bedroom, she’s already tucked into bed with Breeze cuddled into her. To my surprise and relief, Rhett is already sitting in his chair with her favorite Dr. Seuss book in his hands. My heart swoons when he leans forward and brings her hand to his lips, planting a kiss on the back of it before sitting back and reading her to sleep while I lie beside her and listen to the soft gravel of his voice.

It’s okay. Everything is going to be fine. It will all work out in good time. It’s all I keep telling myself as I stroke through Iris’s hair, and before I know it, I’m being carried to my own bed half-awake and half dreaming of what the future could hold for us.

“I’m gonna go lock up the house,” he tells me with a light stroke of his thumb over the side of my face. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be up after I return Rowan’s call.”

“Has something happened?”

“Nothing worth worrying about. We can talk about it tomorrow.” His reply is calm enough that it doesn’t rouse me any further from my sleepy lull while I peek at him walking away.

“I love you,” I call after him burrowing deeper into the blanket he covered me with and taking a long inhale of his pillow beside me.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” Rhett rumbles, and the sound warms all the way through me, from the inside out.

“I don’t want to fight.”

“We didn’t have a fight, it was an argument,” he tells me as he disappears out of the bedroom with a glance over his shoulder. “Now go to sleep, sunshine.”