Page 88 of Hearts of Fairlake

His eyes lit up at the reminder, and he grinned. “Oh yeah, I remember. I didn't know you'd been hiding your gray hairs, though."

"You should know better than anyone else that I don't deal with everything as gracefully or as calmly as I'd like to have people believe," I said with a shrug. "I'm not immune to feeling the passage of time creeping up on me."

"Time is very much linear," he said with a snort, reaching up to slip his hand over the top of my head. "For the record, I do love your gray hairs."

"I gathered as much," I said wryly, trying not to focus too hard on the memory of the first time he'd expressed appreciation. The uniform pants were nice, but they weren't exactly the best at keeping secrets.

"No, I mean," he glanced around and saw no one close but still dropped his voice. "When I wasn't so busy hating you for what happened."

"Which I've repeatedly apologized for."

"We're married, pretty sure I'm over it," he snorted. "The point is, even when we weren't together, and I wasn't stuck on being pissed off at you, sometimes all I could think about was the future I’d wanted with you from pretty much the third month of dating you. And then it started all over again when you showed up in Fairlake, taking me by surprise. Even when I was furious at seeing you again, I still thought about what it would be like to wake up next to you."

"Which sounds romantic in theory, but I recall you made Ayla laugh earlier this week by threatening to strangle me in my sleep with the socks I leave on the floor every night."

"I also threatened to whip you to death with the wet towels you kept leaving on ourwood furniture."

"A threat you'll note, I took with the seriousness intended. The socks, though? Not so much."

"My point," he said with enough emphasis that I didn't need to be told to shut up and stop ruining his moment, "was that I also dreamed of moments like that, where I could see proof that we were getting older,together. And that morning, when I saw those gray hairs on you, I remember thinking, 'Wow, it happened. We're together, and I'm seeing this happen.' And honestly? It ranks right up there with you making me cry at our goddamn wedding with those vows of yours."

"You were the one who insisted on writing our own vows. You wanted them to mean something."

"Yeah, well, I guess I wasn't expecting you to pull that shit out. I think I made the ugliest noise when you whipped out, 'I didn't realize how badly I'd broken my life until I broke your heart, but you gave me a chance to fix it, and now I find my life and my heart have been healed,’ and then looked me dead in the eyes. Thanks for that, asshole."

"Of course, you remember it word for word," I chuckled, cupping his face. "I meant every word, then and now."

"Stop," he complained, but I could see the smile on his face and the color rising on his cheeks. "Don't get me going in public. Bad enough that I got all emotional in front of everyone at the wedding."

"Yes, yes," I said, knowing full well that my tone would make him scowl because I was clearly trying to placate him. Kyle would forever be the man who needed to be placated sometimes but despised knowing he was being. I had to be more subtle about it. Ironically, purposefully trying to irritate him with obvious placation was an effective tool at mydisposal, as long as some of his sense of humor was still alive and well. "I'll behave."

"For the moment," he said, then looked around, sighing. "I guess today hasn't beenthatbad. Just a lot thrown at me at once when, in all reality, I would have wanted it to be with all of us out there with everyone else. Except you're out there on a mandatory shift, and I'm locked away in here."

"Ayla seems to be enjoying herself."

"Well, that's good, at least."

"She's been getting hit on by a guy I'm pretty sure is old enough to drink."

Kyle's eyes widened. “What? And you did...nothing?"

"I had a bit of fun," I chuckled. "But she was handling things just fine."

A complicated set of emotions warped his features before he let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You know...I'm aware that I was the one who said we needed to dial things back for her and start letting her have a true taste of freedom, but that's...I don't like that."

"I wasn't exactly clicking my heels together," I admitted in a grumble. "But we've trusted her to take care of herself up to this point. And we can't change our minds now. Especially when she hasn't done anything wrong."

"Can I just say how weird it is that she was getting hit on by someone probably the age you and I were when we first met?"

That made me back up mentally and stare at him. “Well, I was more focused on the idea of a college-aged man hitting on my daughter, but thank you for making me even more aware of the passage of time and how I’m getting older."

That made him laugh because, of course, it did. "It is kind of weird to think about, isn't it?"

"Weird isn't the word I’d use. Uncomfortable. Horrible.Terrifying. Dread instilling. All those words work a lot better, but weird? No, it's not weird for me."

"Careful," he warned with a warm chuckle. "I don't need someone trying to take the crown of most dramatic person in this relationship from me."

Which wasn't exactly fair considering I wasn't immune to being dramatic, though only when I felt utterly overwhelmed by things happening in our lives. Kyle was dramatic whenever he was stressed but refused to operate like I did and instead let his displeasure at life's events be known in the most direct and easily understood way possible. In many ways, his being expressive, even as often and sudden as it could be, was far healthier than my tendency to lock things down tight inside my head and deal with them when I had the chance...if that chance ever came, because sometimes things just stayed locked up.

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