“Luke Sunday, have I told you recently that loving you is the greatest gift of my life?”
Luke blinked. “I… well, not in so many words, but?—”
“Our life together is worth every meddling Hollowan trying to commandeer our hand fasting, every icy dunk in the pond?—”
“Easy for you to say when I was the one who got dunked,” Luke laughed, though his eyes were shiny.
“Every pint ofmyice cream you stole from me?—”
“It was at the grocery store, Webb! By definition, it wasn’t?—”
“Every scroll-reading we endured, even the one that used the word ‘borderethed’—”
Luke laughed harder.
“Because you love me as I am, even when I’m not strong, even when I’m terrified. And you make me feel safe. You make me feel free.” I kissed him gently, then pulled back and smiled. “And right now, I’m going to show you exactly how much I appreciate that by taking you upstairs and doing something you really love to do.”
“Yeah?” Luke grinned through his tears. “You gonna show me your bugle, Webb Sunday?”
“Who, me? No way. I figured I’d watch you crochet while we ate ice cream and talked about baby names.”
Luke made a noise like a pterodactyl and launched himself into my arms, twining his arms around my neck and kissing me until I forgot my own name.
“Why, Luke Sunday!” My dramatic impression of Hawk was a bit breathless since Luke continued peppering my face and neck with kisses. “This is so unexpected! I can’t imagine what’s gotten into you! Youmustbe under the influence of the rooster!”
I pointed at the table by my office door, where Pecky sat.
But to my surprise, Pecky wasn’t there.
“Uh, Luke.” I pulled away just slightly, though Luke gripped my neck harder and kept kissing me. “Baby, whereisthe rooster?”
“What?” Luke glanced at the table and blinked uncomprehendingly. “Dunno. Someone must’ve moved it, or maybe Hawk took it home.”
I frowned. “Hawk didn’t have anything with him when he left. And I swear it was right there when we went outside?—”
Luke gripped my face with two surprisingly firm handsand forced me to look at him. “Webb, do you want to find the Cock of Good Fortune right now? Or can we go upstairs and make another cock really happy?”
Luke’s voice suggested there was only one good answer to this question, and as usual, my husband was right.
“Lead the way, baby,” I said.
PORTER AND THEO
CHAPTER SEVEN
PORTER
They saylove makes you do crazy things, and I believed that wholeheartedly.
One might say that love (unrecognized, at the time) had led me to recite angry sonnets at my former English professor’s cabin on a snowy night. Love had made him give me shelter when he could’ve left my drunk ass out in the snow. And love had turned our one-night stand into a capital-Rrelationship, despite the potential complications from Theo dating a student.
But standing in a walk-in closet, sweating like a sinner at a revival while trying to hide a possibly magic rooster behind a stack of Theo’s old sweaters?
Thismightbe a bridge too far down the path to crazy-town for even love to excuse.
“Porter?” Theo’s voice called from the living room. “Babe, where’d you go?”
“Coming!” I called. I draped Theo’s old cardigan over the chicken… which made it look an awful lot like a cardigan-draped chicken, so I pulled it off again.
