I rolled my eyes, but giddiness pushed like a drug through my sluggish bloodstream, reinvigorating me. Combined with the strong pain pills, I barely felt the injury on my cheek, and my left hand was down to a dull throb.
“I’mma drive you to and from work from now on, and you’ll live here with me, yeah?” he said, laying out the plan for our life like a kid giving out Christmas presents. “Curtains lives next door, and we share the loft. You okay with that?”
I nodded, hoping that the time together would endear Aaron’s best friend to me a little more. Truthfully, I liked the redhead. He was handsome in an approachable kind of way with a crooked grin and bright, clever eyes. I wanted to hear about his history as a red hat hacker and listen to stories about what this terrible twosome had gotten up to over the years.
Plus, he was Aaron’s brother in all the ways that mattered. I’d never separate them.
“Good,” he continued happily, stroking a hand down my back soothingly as I ate. “I got no doubt Hazard and Rooster’ll regroup, but that gives us time to shore our defences against them. They won’t catch us off guard.”
I believed it.
The operation at the Furry Creek farm that night had been a well-oiled machine like something military. I didn’t doubt The Fallen’s ability to care for its own and defend its territory. I was just grateful they’d come for me, that they considered me part of that fold.
“You wanna change up the house, just tell me. It’s your home now as much as mine, okay?”
I dropped my spoon into the half-empty bowl, too wired to eat any more. I put my hands on Aaron’s face, thumbs moving over the sharp, short stubble of his beard.
“There’s only one thing I want to add,” I confessed. “I want you to teach me to make one of your neon signs so we can have one together. Maybe even hang it in the bedroom.”
Aaron’s whole face softened to an expression of love that took my breath straight from my lungs. His hand was tender as he cupped my abused cheek and gently ran his thumb along my jaw.
“Why don’t we do that right now? You got the energy?”
A little trill of excitement shivered down my spine.
I was utterly exhausted, and I knew Aaron must’ve been too, but it felt right to make something with him on this first night of our ever-after together so I nodded, already getting to my feet and collecting his sketchbook.
“Nah,” he said, drawing it from my grip and leaving it on the table. “I already got one started in the studio. We can work on that.”
He took my hand in his to tug me through the living space to the room he’d created in the corner behind the bookcases. It was dark back there, the windows blocked out. He took a remote from a wooden table strewn with paraphernalia and turned off the lights in the rest of the house so only the ones in this room remained.
“Come here,” he said, already pulling me in front of him at the work table.
A large piece of grid paper was laid out in front of us, a design carefully sketched and measured out in precise lines. It took me a moment to look beyond the specs and read the backward letters to discern their meaning.
A heart filled with the words “electric hearts.”
“The kinda love I got for you is electric. It lights up my soul and vibrates my bones. I can’t fucking live without it. Without you,” Aaron whispered in my ear before kissing my neck. “Never wanna know what it’s like to go back to a life without your light.”
“Same,” I whispered, turning my head to kiss him. “I love this. I love you so much it terrifies me.”
“Don’t be scared, Blue baby.”
“Not of you. Never of you. Just of losing you.” Fear flickered at the edges of my full heart. Knowing Hazard and Rooster still existed in this world, knowing they’d come for us both with an unceasing determination to end both our lives, wasn’t something that could fade until they were both dead and gone.
But Aaron’s love was enough to keep the panic at bay.
My faith in him and his was enough to make me feel safe enough to take a risk on our future together.
“Tell me how it works,” I asked, wanting to return to the present moment instead of worrying always about the next.
Aaron reached for a set of protective eyeglasses and fixed them carefully to my face.
“How do you even manage to look cute in nerdy glasses?” he asked incredulously.
A true smile tipped the right side of my mouth, and I knew in my bones that however the wound on my cheek healed, Aaron would find me just as beautiful as he always did.
“So the design is done backwards so the letters will lay flat at the front,” he explained, pulling glass tubing in front of us and flicking on a burner that produced a small, powerful flame. “You take every section of glass separately to control the bends.”
