“Groundhog Day,” Dad mutters, but buttons his lip when I shoot him a glare.
“You’ve promoted Declan to a paid intern, from unpaid, and his duties now include acting as interim CEO while you and Julie travel the world.” A pause. “For three months.”
Dad shoots a finger gun at me. “Got it! Great plan, hey?”
Declan grabs my hand, tangling our fingers together, and I look at him, finding him smiling. “This is a good thing, baby,” he murmurs.
“Is it?” I ask, unsure.
“Yes.” He presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth, eyes happy. “Grant gets to step away from the company, and I get to continue to prove myself, using everything he’s spent the last half a year teaching me.”
“As an intern,” I add in, unable to help myself.
“Hey, I’m the best intern that Hi-Tech has ever seen.”
From his chair, Dad scoffs rudely, “Well, I don’t know if I’d say that.”
Declan
Every day that we spend together is filled with a series of victories, some big, more small, showing us that we’re making progress to a new normal. It’s in the tiny details, like her fingers brushing against mine or the way she looks at me and just smiles, like I make her day just by being there.
It was the way she stopped pulling away when I would take her hand, letting me tangle our fingers tightly as we strolled through a Sunday market. Or how she let me carry her bag of new books, her giggle sweet and high when I hunched over, acting like the weight of them made my knees buckle.
As we get into the car, Lily’s thrown by Grant’s announcements, but she holds her silence until we’ve pulled away from the house, her expression contemplative.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks quietly, and I reach out to grip her thigh.
“I should’ve,” I admit. “I promised no more secrets, but I was worried about getting in the middle of you and Grant. I didn’t want you to go after him for me, especially when it didn’t matter.”
“Didn’t matter?” she squawks. “You’ve basically been a glorified slave for him!”
I smirk at her dramatics. “I wouldn’t go that far. This was something that needed to happen, Lily. It went a long way to repairing my relationship with Grant.” I ease the car to a stop at a red light, sliding her a look. “He needed to learn to trust me again, just as much as you did.”
“But now you’ll effectively be the CEO, with all the responsibilities that come with that. You don’t think your pay should reflect that?”
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter.” And I’m not lying, the monthly interest from my invested trust fund is more than enough to support my familyand Lily. It’s why she never noticed my lack of income, even after I moved in with her.
She scoffs, rolling her eyes. “You’re Declan Masters. Of course you’d say the money doesn’t matter.”
I eye her again, but the light goes green, so I face forward, pressing my foot down on the accelerator. “It doesn’t matter,” I insist, my tone turning cheeky. “I have a sugar momma at home to keep me fed and watered.”
There’s a moment of silence before she’s cackling, the sound bright and loud between us. “I can’t believe you just called me your sugar momma.”
“What?” I ask silkily. “Would you prefer I call you something else?” I slide my hand up her thigh, my pinky running dangerously close to the apex of her legs. She snaps her thighs closed around me, trapping my hand.
She doesn’t release my hand and I don’t fight her on it, my hand warm where it’s trapped between her denim-covered legs. The silence that falls on us is quiet, thoughtful.
About ten minutes later, she blinks, sitting straight and looking out the window. “This isn’t the way home.”
My heart thumps nervously, even as I smile.Home. I love how the word sounds on her lips, especially when I know she’s not talking about a mausoleum pretending to be a house, or a clinically cold condo with no personality. She’s talking about the space she owns, full of laughter and warmth. It’s the place that she let me into, a home filled with memories that we add to each day.
It’s something I’ve never had before. Not until her.
Before our wedding, I didn’t truly understand everything she was giving me, but I knew now, and I wasn’t giving it up for anything.
“Declan?” she asks again, but I’m already pulling into the parking lot, edging the car into a space that faces out over the lake. I kill the ignition, the lights fading and leaving us in darkness. There’re no clouds tonight, and the moon shines brightly, its reflection rippling over the calm surface.
The car is quiet, the silence broken only by our breathing.
