Page 12 of Always Be My Baby

We lay on top of the bed, a tangle of limbs and heavy breathing. It took me a while to get my thoughts together, but when I did, only one stood out. “You ready to give up your lease yet?” I asked.

“My…lease?” she asked, sounding confused. If her brain wasn’t addled by what we’d just shared,I’dbe confused as to how she could forget that she continued to pay rent on a place that she hadn’t spent any time in since December. Why? Because she was so afraid that by letting the lease go, she’d jinx us and this great thing we had going would end up spiraling down the toilet? Here was what she had to understand—I was all in.

“Yeah, sweetheart. Your lease. It’s time. Cancel it. Officially change your address. Anything you want to bring over, we bring it over. Anything you want to get rid of, we’ll donate it to the secondhand store.”

“Don’t you think it’s too fast? What if you wake up a week from now and are like, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ What then?”

I rolled onto my side, propping my head up on my hand, then I reached my free one over to trace a finger down her chest, running it between her cleavage.

She shuddered again. “That’s not fair,” she murmured.

“What’s not fair?”

“I can’t think straight with you touching me.”

“Good to know.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Lee, sweetheart, I’m not a psychic. I can’t tell you if in thirty years we’ll have let this go bad. But I will do everything in my power to keep that from happening. I know what my life was like without you in it, and I know how it’s been since you became a part of it.”

“I—” she started to answer, but her phone ringing cut her off. Lena. Lena, who should’ve been showing up for work about now, not bothering Lee.

But in true Lee fashion, she answered. “What’s up?” Lee asked.

Lena’s voice came loud but steady through the receiver. “We have a little situation. I’ve already called the emergency number for the county.”

“Emergency number?” Lee squeaked.

“It seems a pipe burst outside on the far end of the parking lot. They’ve got people on the way. Though the county will have to turn off the water until the pipe’s replaced.”

“We can’t open without water.”

“And that would be why I’m calling. I put up a sign on the door explaining to customers why we’re closed for the day. Then I sent the staff home. Was that okay?”

“Uh… yes. That’s exactly what you should’ve done. I’ll be there in a few.”

“No. Lee, I’m already here. I can handle things.”

After they hung up, Lee looked at me, eyes wide. “I take it you heard all that?”

“Hard not to.”

“I should go. It’s my business.”

“Sweetheart, she’s got it. This is what you’re training her to handle. Let her handle it.”

I got her in the shower and then feeding Floyd his lunch before I lost her. Lee looked down at her phone screen every two minutes as if willing it to ring with an update from Lena.

At this point, I knew I wasn’t getting any lunch downherand I gave in. “Get your coat. Let’s go.”

The reasonable part of me knew that by giving in, I made it one step harder to whisk her away without a fight. But the part that found it impossible to saynoto Lee, especially knowing she’d worry herself sick over this until she heard from Lena, simply didn’t care. Lee giving herself an ulcer helped me not one bit.

She smiled and it got me right in the feels. Lee knew she could leave at any time. She stayed for one reason; she was trying for me.

We lived less than ten minutes from the bistro. They’d had to block off the road at the far end due to the foot of water covered by a layer of ice washed over it. The parking lot fared the same as the road.

There were a couple of white vans parked closer to us and they already had an excavator out digging up the sidewalk, the grass, and a corner of the bistro’s parking lot.

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