Page 74 of From the Embers
Oh, my sweet Eason. After everything, he still felt like he didn’t do enough.
“First of all, you did not fail Jessica. Jessica failed Jessica. Despite what she led us all to believe, she was not some helpless dandelion blowing in the wind. She could have gotten a job, but she chose to spend her free time with Rob instead of taking care of her family. You don’t get to carry her failures as your own.”
“Babe,” he whispered, emotion thick in his throat.
“Secondly,” I continued, “you have been taking care of us. Since day one. And that has not one damn thing to do with who was paying the mortgage. The kids and I would not be here, so damn happy and loved, without you. You have the biggest heart of any man I’ve ever met, and given how many times that thing has been ripped from your chest, that’s saying a lot. I don’t need you to take care of us. I’ll still have Prism. I just won’t be the one running it. But if that’s something you need to do for yourself to finally see all your hard work paying off, I’ll transfer all the bills to your name tonight. I don’t need money, Eason. I need you. That’s all I’ll ever need.”
“Dammit, Bree. How do you always know exactly what to say?”
“It’s a little skill I picked up from you. Now, if that was the bad news, tell me the good.”
The side of his mouth hiked, so much love blazing in his eyes I could feel the tangible heat through the screen of the phone. “I’ll be home tomorrow.”
My heart leapt into my throat. “Seriously?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. I’ve got a week before they have time for me in the studio. So I am coming home to my woman and my kids. I swear I’ve never been so excited in my life.”
“The kids are going to flip. Let’s make it a surprise.”
“And what about you? You excited?”
I teasingly slanted my head. “Why, superstar Eason Maxwell, are you fishing for a compliment?”
“I don’t need a compliment. I need my kids, and then after they go to bed, I need you in some seriously scandalous lingerie. If I’m going to be gone for a month, we need to spend the entire week filling my head with enough naked memories to get me through.”
I nodded, biting my bottom lip. “I can do that.”
And oh my God, I could soooooo do that.
“Good.” He winked. “I’ll send you my flight details. Now, I have to go before everybody comes back and I’m sitting here hard as a fucking rock. Love you, babe.”
“Love you too, Eason.”
EASON
I had an Uber drop me off at the pool house, and I stashed my bags just inside the door. Armed with a huge stuffed unicorn, a stuffed cat, a plastic Minecraft pickaxe, and a jar containing every red M&M I could find in San Francisco, I snuck around the back of the house. As planned, Bree had the kids outside, drawing on the patio with sidewalk chalk. Just the sight of their three little heads all huddled together caused a wave of contentment to crash over me.
Bree stood up as I walked through the back gate, her hair blowing in the breeze. As if it were the first time I’d ever seen her and not closer to the millionth, my stomach knotted. Two weeks didn’t seem like a long time, but after living together and spending every day with one another for going on two years, holy shit, I had missed that woman. FaceTime was not cutting it.
“Hi,” she mouthed, the pure joy on her gorgeous face transferring to my chest.
I put my finger to my lips in a silent Shh!
Retrieving her phone from her back pocket, she called, “Hey, kiddos, look at me. Let’s send Eason a picture of our chalk drawings.”
“Mine’s the best!” Asher exclaimed. “Take a picture of mine.”
The girls giggled, sword fighting with the chalk, but with the hundreds of pictures Bree had sent me while I’d been gone, they were trained circus animals and lined up for a photo.
“Say cheese,” Bree directed.
“Cheese,” they all sang.
After dropping all the toys and carefully setting Bree’s M&M’s aside so nothing got ruined, I snuck in close, squatted low, and said, “Cheese.”
After that, it was a chorus of the most beautiful shrieks of my life. Asher’s face was priceless as he spun around, his mouth wide open, his eyes the size of saucers.
Madison crashed into my arms first, screaming, “Eeeeee-sin!”
My sweet baby Luna just stood there clapping and cackling, “Daddy home. Daddy home.”
I was a man. Like the consummate example of pure, unfettered masculinity. Or at least that’s what I told myself when I looked in the mirror. But in truth, I teared up like an onion factory had moved in next door when they all tackled me. Falling back on my ass, I became the happiest guy to ever find himself at the bottom of a dog pile.
