Page 56 of Everywhere You Look

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that it happened. It could have been during the first time we had sex or the night we spent together after. It could have been last week when I watched him sit perfectly still for an hour while Lemmie and Mellie practiced drawing daisies with nail polish on his toenails, or later that night when Ollie sighed “Deeeee” as she fell asleep in his arms, and I had to take her so he wouldn’t wake her up with his tears.

Hell, it could have been when he laid in a hospital bed with me after my knee surgery, or even a decade ago when we were just two know-nothing kids playing football together.

All I know is that I love Dean with a ferocity I didn’t know I was capable of feeling, and when he holds me? When I sink into his warmth and let him wrap himself around me? That’s the closest I’ve ever felt to something holy in my life.

“Are you going to stand there and stare at me all night, or are you going to come back to bed?”

Dean’s raspy, sleep-drunk voice coats me like honey, warm and sweet and sticky. I crawl into the bed, straddling his thighs and resting my hands on his chest.

“I thought you were sleeping,” I whisper, tickling my fingertips through the coarse hair that coats Dean’s chest and trails down his stomach, dipping into the waistband of his pajama pants.

“Mmm, I was. And then I started dreaming that I was a gazelle in the zoo being watched through the glass by a hungry lion.” Dean grips my hips and pulls me forward so I’m straddling his lap, and I feel his dick hardening beneath my ass.

“Do lions typically prance around the zoo, admiring the other animals in their exhibits?” I ask, and Dean swats my ass cheek.

“What are you doing up, corazón?” He asks, and I feel my cheeks flush. I finally looked that word up a few days ago, when Lemmie and Mellie asked me for pancakes and eggs in Spanish and I decided it was time to get on the language learning apps if I was going to keep up with my nieces.

I should be embarrassed at just how giddy I got when I realized Dean has been calling me “my heart” all this time, but I’m not.

“Ollie woke up, needed a diaper change. She was a little fussy so we hung out in her rocking chair for a bit until she fell back asleep,” I say as Dean kneads my ass, ever so slightly grinding me on his dick. I lean forward until our chests are pressed together and work my lips over his jaw.

“And now are you going to rock me back to sleep?” He murmurs as my lips find the shell of his ear, where I tease and nip at his sensitive skin.

“Mmm, since you’re such a good, sweet husband, I think I will,” I say, pressing my own hard cock down against his. “But I need to tell you something first.”

“Fuck, corazón. Tell me after I come.”

“No, I have to tell you now. I don’t want to wait until we’re all cum-drunk and loopy.”

I also don’t want to wait until the morning, when I might chicken out.

Dean sighs dramatically, then bucks his hips to flip me off of him. We lie face to face on his pillow, our legs tangled together as we stare at each other in the darkness.

“What do you need to tell me, baby?” Dean asks. I swallow, my breath as unsteady as my racing heart.

“I love you, Dean. I’m falling in love with you.”

As soon as the words leave my lips, I feel a thousand pounds lighter. Like the weight of my feelings has been crushing me all this time I didn’t even realize it. Emotion swells in my chest—relief, fear, love and pain mixing together and lighting my insides on fire, but I don’t regret it. Not even as Dean stares blankly at me across the pillow. Even if my truth makes the tangled web Dean and I have spent the last six months spinning that much more complicated, I know that I did the right thing just now.

“Luke,” Dean says softly, and I shake my head, cutting him off before he can continue.

“You don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to say anything at all. I know this isn’t what you signed up for. You thought you were just coming here to help out, and now you’ve got three kids and a husband declaring his love for you. It’s too much, and it’s probably not fair, but I couldn’t not tell you.”

Dean rolls on top of me, pinning me to the mattress with his hips and bracketing my face withhis strong forearms. His scent washes over me, and I whimper at the tornado of sensations.

“Luke, baby, I am so in love with you that it feels like I can’t breathe. I can’t remember a time when I haven’t loved you. You are my everything.”

He presses his face into the crook of my neck, running his nose over my skin and inhaling like I’m a drug he’s trying to get high off of.

“You love me,” I whisper, testing the words on my tongue.

“And you love me,” Dean murmurs against my throat.

“And we’re married,” I say, and he chuckles.

“First comes kids, then comes marriage, then comes sex and then comes the declaration of love.”

“Leave it to you and me to do everything a little bit backwards,” I laugh, sliding my hands up Dean’s chest and wrapping them around his neck. “So, it feels stupid to ask what happens now? I feel like we’ve been husbands with benefits for the last few weeks, but if we’re in love…”

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