Page 174 of Mess With Me

Along with other plans Chester dreamed of.

In her expensive-looking suit and pearls, Leila sticks out like a sore thumb outside the city, but then again, Sasha used to as well. Now, as Sasha chats jovially with the few guests at our second wedding—the real one she made me promise we’d have the minute the weather warmed up—she looks like a natural. She invited several town fixtures to the wedding, including, quite literally, the butcher and the local baker. I wouldn’t be surprised if she already knew the local candlestick maker. Ford’s here, too, of course, and Gloria, who followed us here a few months after we moved, saying there was nothing keeping her in Quince Valley, beautiful as it was, after we left. Last night she told us over dinner that she’d heard from Vivian—her sister had gone into remission and appeared to be doing well even now, several months after she was given only weeks to live.

I can’t help thinking about Chester and how arbitrary life can be when she tells me that.

We’re meeting up with them again at our new place. But not before I take my wife home after our vow renewal-disguised-as a wedding and do what I did that night she told me she was moving here with me.

I’m going to tell her she’s made me the happiest man in the damn world.

And then I’m going to fuck her silly.

She laughs as I take her hand and tell everyone we can’t wait to take all their blessings at six o’clock tonight at our brand-new house right here in town.

“Until then, we’ve got things to do,” I say.

“What kind of things?” Ford asks loud enough that everyone laughs.

I glower at him, but now Sasha does the pulling toward where my Bonneville sits on its kickstand on the edge of the park.

It’s the only thing I still have from Quince Valley—that and my truck. Everything else went up in flames. Losing the workshop was the biggest blow. But I don’t care about it or the bike even an iota as much as the woman holding on to me now. In my rearview, I see her dress flying in the wind. She looks like an angel.

But she always looks that way to me.

* * *

When we get home, I’m surprised to find the door to our new place unlocked.

“Oh shit,” Sasha says. “I think I might have left it unlocked when I rushed out of here earlier.”

“That right?” I ask. I’m not upset. I’m so rarely upset when it comes to Sasha.

And in this town, no one knows who we are. They don’t know what we do. No one’s got any reason to target us or our idyllic little house.

I pray I can keep it that way.

Ford and I are already working on some troubling cases, but we’re going to be saving lives, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I pull off my suit jacket, tossing it onto a pile of unassembled furniture boxes. We took possession a few days ago, and our furniture arrived yesterday on pallets.

“Listen, planning a wedding and moving all in one week? I was a little distracted!”

She sighs, twirling around. She loves this house. I love it, too. Almost as much as I love her walking around it sighing happily, which she’s been doing between all her running around.

She was surprised when I brought her to see this place. “Isn’t it a little big for just the two of us?” she asked. Most of the houses we looked at were tiny—two bedrooms or a bedroom and a den.

“Maybe,” I said casually, though my palms were sweating as we walked inside.

From the moment I saw it, it felt like home—and it had nothing to do with the huge workshop out back. But that was the moment of truth. “But maybe it doesn’t always have to be the two of us.”

She paused in the entryway, not getting it at first. When she did, she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Wait…you mean…?” she let out a little laugh. “I thought you didn’t like babies.”

“I never said that. They just scare me.”

Her eyes were big and beautiful. Filled with possibility. “We could always start with a puppy.”

“Or an older kid?” I already knew we were going to encounter lots of those needing a loving home in my line of work.

We talked all night about the ways to fill this house, even if one of those was just us two making it ours.

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