Page 31 of Tripped By Love
“Whenever I’ve asked, he’s blown me off. We don’t sit around braiding each other’s hair and telling secrets.”
“Remember that time you started braiding your hair?” I teased, trying to draw his attention away from Marco and the secrets I’d almost spilled unknowingly.
Brady rolled his eyes. “One time. It was one time.”
I laughed.
Hannah skipped into the kitchen. Her paisley shawl flew out behind her, and one hand balanced the top hat on her head, making her look exactly like a miniature version of her musical hero, Stevie Nicks.
“Mom wants to know if we should walk home without you or if you’re coming?” Hannah asked.
I wanted to laugh. There was no way Brady was letting his very pregnant wife walk home without him, regardless of the fact that they lived a mere two blocks away.
Which had me thinking of Marco again and the way he protected everyone around him. And I wondered what had happened in the military to make him believe he had to be alone, shielding the world.
“I’m coming,” Brady told her. He side-hugged me, kissed the top of Chevelle’s head, and then they left with Chevelle shouting, “Bye, Nanah,” after his cousin.
I washed my hands, finished cutting the vegetables, and then took us home.
???
The weekend flew by as it always did with me working and Chevelle spending more time with my parents. With spring term officially over, he’d be spending most of his days with them now instead of Tristan and Brady.
The only thing different about my weekend compared to the rest of my days was the flow of text messages that had gone back and forth between Marco and me. We’d continued to check in with each other, asking about the things in our lives that had gone slightly off the rail. I’d ask about Maliyah and Jonas. He’d ask if I’d heard from Clayton?which I hadn’t.
I’d just put Chevelle down and gone to put the latest trial batch of my salted-caramel apple cookies in the oven on Monday evening when I saw Marco driving into my parents’ yard. My heart skipped a beat, and my body came alive, tingling as if he’d touched me. As if we were side by side with his penetrating gaze looking into mine.
I desperately wanted to run across the yard, fling my arms around him, and hug him until he lost his breath. I wanted to take the pain I’d heard in his voice when we’d talked and turn it into laughter. I needed him to know he had someone at his side who wasn’t going to hold his past against him.
In truth, I ached to take the friendship we’d somehow crafted and grown over the last week and turn it into something more so that maybe, by the time Clayton Hardy showed up again at my door, Marco’s words would be true.
Even as the hope blossomed inside me at the thought, I pushed it aside, reminding myself that Marco deserved more than the edges of my day. He deserved someone who put him first.
Knowing that didn’t tame my body’s reaction to him as he stepped out of the car with his dark hair gleaming in the last rays of the fading sunlight. His tan skin shimmered bronze even over the distance, calling to me just like his muscles did by rippling under a black T-shirt that gave a glimpse of his tattoo. Even when he wasn’t on duty, Marco almost always wore black. I wasn’t sure the man had another color in his wardrobe. Even his workout gear was the same shade.
I finished washing the bowl as the passenger door opened and another body emerged. Another male. Almost as tall as Marco but unlike him in any other way. He had light-brown hair, pale skin, and a lean frame. When he turned toward my house, I could see his face was much younger than his tall build would have you assume. The teenager, who had to have been Jonas, said something to Marco, and Marco laughed. An actual laugh. The ones that came so rarely that I kept them cataloged inside my heart like diamonds.
I ripped the dish gloves off my hands. Then, I grabbed one of the completed boxes of cookies and the baby monitor and headed out over my back lawn that needed mowing to the gate we’d installed leading to my parents’ drive.
“Hey. Welcome home,” I said softly, and both males’ eyes settled on me.
Marco’s dark ones took me in from head to toe, making my stomach swirl with need. Making my skin light up as if he’d touched me instead of just lingered over my workout gear hidden behind an apron. I flushed when I realized that, from the front, I might have looked like I had nothing on under the apron. A glance in Jonas’s direction proved I was right, because his deep-green eyes widened, and his cheeks turned almost as pink as my own.
Marco took a step toward me, and his gaze was heated as it met mine. It was a steamy look that I wanted to be followed by him wrapping his strong arms around my middle and his firm mouth landing on mine. I wanted that so much the ache felt like it would leave my chest and brand itself on my face.
“Cassidy.” Marco’s voice was deep as always, maybe even a notch lower, and it made my skin break out in goosebumps. But it wasn’t the ‘Angel’ he’d accidentally called me on the phone. That had been like hearing the gods call your name from on high.
“I made you cookies,” I said, thrusting the box out. It wasn’t really true. I’d made the cookies for the restaurant. It was my third batch that I was still trying to perfect. Caramel and apple dusted with salt instead of sugar. Using apples in cookies was always a challenge. They could end up too moist, doughy, but Marco was used to trying my experiments. He was my number one guinea pig, often arriving at night for our workouts after I’d just finished one of my test runs.
Marco took the box, and our fingers touched, sending spirals of awareness through me and increasing the heat that pooled in my veins.
Jonas came around to the driver’s side, crossed his arms, and stood shoulder to shoulder with Marco. There was a mere inch or two difference in their height. Jonas’s lips quirked. “Who’s this, Marco?”
Jonas’s voice seemed to pull Marco from whatever spell had been cast over us. I sent the teenager a smile that caused his cheeks to flush even more.
“Cassidy, this is Jonas. Jonas, my…friend, Cassidy.”
He hesitated over the word friend that we’d barely laid down between us. A word that should have been there long before this but was still new and had us trying to figure out how to fill in the meaning behind it.
