“But what about work? You can’t just take off to baby me.”
“The hell I can’t! I own the place. I can do whatever I want.”
Sloane looks aggravated for just a second before she sighs and rolls her eyes. “You forgot to mention that little detail. I thought you were just the manager.”
“Nothing but my truth, right?”
Her smile is slow, but it comes. “Right.”
“Then come home with me. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. And probably a lot you don’t.”
Her smile turns soft and she yawns. “Bring it on, big boy,” she says sleepily.
“You got it, little girl,” I whisper, leaning forward to kiss her cheeks and her nose, her chin and her drooping eyelids. “But tonight, you rest. We’ll all be here when you wake up.”
I don’t tell her that, until then, I’ll be planning ways to fill her days with happiness and adoration and every wonderful thing her beautiful mind can ever think of.
If she’ll just say yes.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE - Sloane
I wake to the smell of frying bacon. My appetite is coming back and I mentioned last night that bacon sounded good. Hemi wanted to go get some and make it right then, but I was tired, so I told him not to bother. Obviously, he didn’t forget.
He has been absolutely wonderful these last four days.
Although my father wasn’t too happy about me coming home with Hemi, he didn’t put up too much of a fight, which surprised me. It makes me wonder what kind of conversation they had while I was out.
My mouth waters reflexively when another burst of delicious aroma comes wafting into the bedroom. I roll over in bed, sliding my hand over the rumpled sheets where Hemi slept and burying my face in his pillow. I could wake to this every morning for eternity and be the happiest girl on the planet.
I feel the tickle of the sheet receding and I smile into the pillowcase. I don’t move a muscle until I feel Hemi’s lips at the base of my spine. Finally, I turn my head, opening one eye and fixing it on him.
“Good morning,” I mutter.
He smiles warmly at me, his eyes holding mine for a few seconds. Then I see them drop down to where I feel his fingers moving over my hip.
“You ever gonna tell me what this tattoo really means?”
I roll slightly onto my side, exposing more of my hips and ribs to Hemi. “Dad told you about me being sick when I was little, didn’t he?”
Even before Hemi nods, I knew what his answer would be.
“I figured.”
“How did you know?”
“You’re treating me like glass, like Dad and my brothers always have. I’m too familiar with it not to notice.”
“I can’t apologize for wanting to take care of you, Sloane. Or for wanting to make sure you’re around for a long time, and that I get to treasure every minute of it with you.”
My stomach leaps at his words. He’s made several references to the future lately. But I don’t want his desire to spend it with me to have been colored by the uncertainty that lies ahead for me.
“I don’t want you to. I’m just saying that I’m familiar with it. That’s all.”
“Just like your dad and your brothers, I do it because I love you.”
I smile. It spreads across my face like the glow that’s spreading through my heart. “I love you, too. That’s why I don’t mind.”
He leans forward and brushes his lips over mine. “I’m glad,” he says. I feel the stir of desire, but I don’t want to act on it just yet. I need to let Hemi get this babying out of his system first. I don’t want him to baby me. I want him to love me and touch me and treat me like someone he wants to live life with, not have to cater to and care for forever. “So, the butterflies…”
“Ever since I was sick, my family, for all intents and purposes, kept me locked away, protected from the world like I was in a big oyster shell,” I explain, reaching down to trace the shell that Hemi inked on my skin all those weeks ago. “But when I turned twenty-one, I drew a line in the sand. I was going to live. Despite my family’s insistence that I have to walk through life like I’m fragile, I was going to live. Like a butterfly, emerging from a cocoon, I was going to spread my wings and live what time I had left flying high, bathed in beautiful colors.” Silently, Hemi touches each butterfly, dancing his way along my ribs. “A butterfly only lives for two weeks, but in those two weeks, they flutter all around, spreading their incredible wings and bringing magnificent color to the world around them. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Just like my mom did, I want to bring happiness and beauty to the world while I’m here. I want to smile and laugh and make a difference to the people I love. I want them to carry those good thoughts of me in their heart long after I’m gone. However long I have, be it two weeks or two years or two decades, I want to really live.”
Hemi says nothing, just nods slowly as he trails his fingertips over my skin.
“I can understand that. Death has a different effect on everyone. Whether it’s because they’ve seen it or they dread it, or that they’re simply ignoring it, everyone reacts. That’s why I got this,” he says, tugging up his shirt on one side so that I can see his tattoo, the one he let me shade for him. “These are my brothers initials and the date that he died. I had a string of wire inked around it each year the date rolled past and I hadn’t found his killer. For me, death put my life on hold. I wasn’t living at all until I met you. You brought color and beauty and life back to me, even when I didn’t know it was missing. I got lost inside these letters. But even so, Ollie was always speaking to me. He’s the one that used to say, ‘Live, no regrets.’ Even in death, he was finding a way to help me get over the loss of him. Over the guilt and the pain and the regret. That’s why I wanted you to do the letters for it. As early as that was, that first night at the hotel, I think some part of me knew that I had to move on or I’d have even more regret. Regret over letting you go. Regret over letting something that I can never change rob me of the only future I’ll ever want now.”
Once more, I feel the twitch of my muscles, reacting to what he sometimes says without coming out and saying.
“I love that philosophy! It’s why I’ve never made promises. We’re humans. Frail and short-sighted. We don’t have the right to make promises we have no way of keeping. Until I met you, I didn’t really want any. No promises meant no regrets. No lies, no broken hearts. But now I see what a promise can mean, what kind of life they have, weaving in and out of the words. Some promises are hope. Like my butterflies were hope.”