Bryant

 

I hear footsteps on the cement driveway, coming toward me. A quick lift of my head finds two sneaker-covered feet framing mine beside the truck. I slide out from under the engine to be met by an amused Faith looking down at me. She stands her ground, not fazed that I’ve slid out between her skirt-covered legs.

“Nice view?” she asks.

“Best I’ve seen in at least nine hours,” I say with a huge smirk.

Faith shakes her head, her lips twitching. “Smooth talker.”

“That’s not the only thing that’s sm—”

She shrieks and sits on top of me, her legs straddling my hips. She covers my mouth with her hands, but her grin is unmistakable. “Mr. Cook, that is offensive.”

I give a quick thought as to how annoyed she’d be if I ruined her outfit and the next second, I knife up, wrap my arms around her back and pull her down on top of me. Her narrowed green eyes shoot daggers at me but tangling my fingers in her hair and crushing her mouth against my welcoming lips soon solves that problem.

When we finally come up for air, she braces her hands on either side of my head and glares at me.

I lift an arm and run the pad of my thumb down the middle of her mouth, dragging her swollen bottom lip with it. “You’re cute when you’re trying to be mad at me.”

Her eyes flash. “You ruined my shirt.”

“Give me five minutes and that won’t be the only thing.”

Her eyes drift down before she closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I will not succumb to your wicked words and dirty imagination.”

“Oh, it won’t just be my imagination for long,” I say, earning me a laugh.

“You’re rather pent-up today, aren’t you? Does working with your hands get your motor running?”

“You and the fantastic view up your skirt does.”

She dips her head and kisses me of her own volition this time, something she’s been doing every chance she gets lately. I tighten my arms around her back, holding her to me as her tongue languidly strokes mine. My hips lift as she presses hers against me and a low groan rumbles in my chest.

When we finally pull apart, her cheeks are satisfactorily flushed. “You’re home early,” I say roughly, lifting a hand to hook a loose tendril of hair behind her ear.

“I couldn’t do much more today, and my mind is mush, so I decided to surprise you and maybe help with sanding or painting or something. But you’re out here, which means you’ve finished?”

Damn, I got lucky with this one.

I brace my legs and push up into a sitting position, taking Faith with me and lifting her legs up before wrapping them around my hips.

“I definitely like where this is going,” she says.

I wink at her. “Later, babycakes, and to answer your question, Jamie snuck off to pick up Axel from school and told me to take the rest of the day and weekend off since we’re ahead of schedule. He said, in no uncertain terms, that I’m not allowed to work on the house until Monday. So, I worked on the bike then decided to check the truck while I waited for you. I thought we could go for a ride to Starved Rock.”

She bites her lip, indecision written all over her face.

“Well…?” I give her a gentle squeeze. “Look, we can just go grab an easy dinner somewhere and have a quiet night.”

She brings her hands to my jaw, shaking her head. “No, it’s not that. I was actually going to ask if you wanted to go back to the zoo with me so I can show you where I work. I wasn’t sure if you would be interested, but we can totally go anoth—”

I stop her before she can finish. For a woman so sure of herself, and with a history of going after what she wants, I haven’t missed the fact she’s been deferring to me a lot these past few weeks. Cooking what I want to eat. Doing things I like to do. And now, when she wants to share a part of herself and her work with me—something I’ve wanted ever since she told me about her job there—she’s trying to give me an out.

“Baby, you wanna give me a chance to answer?” I ask.

She draws her brows together adorably, and there’s nothing more I want to do right now than kiss her breathless, but just this once, making my point takes priority over that. “I just mean we don’t—”

“Uh-uh,” I say, meeting her eyes. “I know I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, but I also know that you’re giving me an out when I don’t need one.” I dip my head so there’s no room for misunderstanding. “I’d love to go see where my wife works. I’ve wanted to ever since you told me about your new job the day you moved in.”

Her mouth drops open, and I can’t help but grin. “We can still take the bike to the zoo, as long as I get to ride and you’re my passenger.”

There’s my girl and that spunk I like so much. I’ll give her anything she asks when she does it like that, except when it comes to my Harley-Davidson Fat Boy, aka my pride and joy.

“Do you have a motorcycle license I don’t know about?”

She bites her lip. “Does a scooter license from Fiji count?”

“You went to Fiji?” I ask, narrowing my eyes. If she went there with another man, I’d definitely have to fuck her right here in the driveway just to wipe that thought from my brain—neighbors be damned.

“Calm down, Hulk. I went with a few of my friends from the zoo. Strictly a girls’ only trip. Well, except Kelly hooked up with this Kiwi tour guide on our last night there. She fell pregnant, and now they’re living it up on an island resort. But it is kinda hot when you get all jealous.”

“I wasn’t jeal—”

She arches a brow and grins, shaking her head at me. “Riiight. But in answer to your unasked question, I’d love to go for a ride, as long as I can help you do something house-related sometime before we have to move out of this place.”

Something I’m trying not to think about just yet. We’re in such a good place now that having to talk about what comes next makes even me—someone who always has a plan—nervous. So we move back to my place? I don’t doubt she wants to be with me now, but beyond this house flip and the little newlywed cocoon we’ve created, what comes next?

“You’re looking awfully serious there, Bry. What’s wrong?”

I’m not proud of it, but I don’t want to spoil this moment or the three weeks we’ve got left here before any decisions about the next step need to be made. I’d planned the proposal, planned our life in this house, but beyond the flip? I don’t know what will happen.

I’m happy, enjoying finally having the love of my life with my ring on her finger, where it always should’ve been. I don’t want to ruin the mood now.

Speaking of moods…

“Bry?”

“I’m thinking… unless you’re willing to give the old lady across the street a live-action sex show, we should get inside so I can dirty you up even more before cleaning us off.”

“Or dirty me up before getting me off?” she asks with a salacious smile and dancing eyes.

“Even better.” I bring my hand down on her ass and give it a light tap, half encouraging, half a hint of things to come. She squeaks and jumps off my lap, looking down to my now tented shorts before smirking and running down the driveway and out of sight.

Yeah… who needs to worry about what comes next when I’ve got her right where I want her now?

Or I will do in about two minutes flat.

“It’s definitely different from when we came here as kids,” Faith says as we stop at a park bench by a large pond.

We’ve been here for a few hours now, and we’ve seen almost every animal at the zoo. We even briefly went into the lab, but because it’s a controlled environment, we didn’t spend too much time there.

She takes a seat, and I follow her lead, still holding her hand. I love how easy things are between us now that we’ve settled into our new life together.

Obviously, we’ve talked about long-term plans in the past. We’d agreed that ideally, we’d have three kids, we’d have a big home we’d renovate ourselves, and we’d take turns being the at-home parent, not wanting either one of us to give up our careers. That was until everything came to a grinding halt.

My biggest fear until now has been that it could happen again. She did it so easily once; what was to stop her from doing it again?

But you haven’t told her that yet, have you?

I’m going to talk to her about it though. She’s been nothing but honest with me, so I owe her the same courtesy at the very least. The thing is, having thought hard about it in recent weeks, I do trust that what we have now is built on more than before. We have a commitment—a vow—to love, trust and support each other, till death do us part. Before now, I’d forgotten that. I owe her the truth—to tell her what I want, how I feel, and to make sure she knows that we’re in this together, wherever the future may take us.

“Remember that time we said we were coming here, bought tickets we never used, and instead snuck down to have a romantic picnic of hot dogs and Dr Pepper at the fountain so we could make out in peace?”

“And we got ratted out by one of the brothers.”

“It was Ez. He saw the hickey on my neck before I could hide it and his protective big brother instincts reared their head.”

I snort because that’s totally something Ez would do. He was always giving me little ‘talks’ back then about honoring his sister and threatening—half-jokingly—to take me out if I took it too far with Faith. “I knew it.”

“Not that he was one to judge. Together, he and Jamie worked their way through the senior girls in their class like nobody’s business.”

I laugh at that. It’s almost comical that Ezra is still the same now, except he falls in love too easily and—as his two divorces prove—with the wrong women.

“So, what are you working on this week?” I ask, wanting to hear her talk more about her work because I know she truly loves what she does. One of the things Faith and I were always good at was talking shop—or in this case, biology.

“We’re extracting hormones from different samples collected from field research that we do but also from our other research partners.”

“Where from?”

“Our field sites in Africa and locally in the US. Right now, one of the things the lab is doing is analyzing fecal samples to ascertain the stress levels of endangered animals.”

My eyes widen because that sounds freaking cool, and the biologist in me is jealous as hell. It’s important work, and I can tell from how animated she is that this is truly a passion of hers. It’s not just a job—it’s a vocation, and I’ve never been prouder.

Without any more prompting from me, she continues. “But my boss has asked me if I wanted to shift sideways and work on something new.”

“Really? When did this happen?”

“This morning. I was going to tell you. She’s so impressed with the work I’ve done so far. The new position would be for an initiative that uses genetic and demographic data to help with population control and planning for different species.” She looks to the pond we’re sitting in front of and sweeps her hand out in front of us. “Including swans.”

Her eyes meet mine, and the intensity of her gaze rouses a memory from the past.

“Did you know that swans mate for life?”

He looks up, his eyes widening. “Like, forever?”

“Yeah. I just read it in this book.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“When I get married, that’s going to be me.”

“You’ve got a few years before you’ve gotta worry ’bout that, Faith.”

“I know. But I thought it was important, you know.”

“Know what?”

“That I’m only ever going to get married once. My husband will know that I mean it. He’ll be the only man I’ll ever love from that day forward.”

I’m stuck on that memory, kicking myself for not remembering it sooner. We were just kids back then, but there’s one thing about Faith that’s never changed. If she says something, she means it. She was never one to say what she knew someone wanted her to hear. It’s always the truth with her.

I’m lost in my thoughts, wondering if she remembers saying that, when she speaks again.

“Did you even think about lab work? Or was it always teaching?”

“I kind of fell into it,” I say before falling quiet again. I’m lost in my head, still stuck on the swans.

Faith gives my hand a gentle squeeze as if urging me to continue. I don’t like bringing up the past, especially since our talk a few weeks ago, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

“Are you looking forward to going back?” she asks, angling her body towards me.

My lips curve up. “I am. It’s been good to work with Jamie and the rest of the guys, but these hands,” I say, holding one in the air, “aren’t designed for hard labor.” I grin at her.

Faith returns the smile as she reaches up and cups my jaw, leaning in to touch her lips to mine. “I like your hands, pushing a pen or wielding a hammer.”

She settles into my side, toying with an old cotton friendship bracelet around her wrist. I recognize it from when we were kids.

It hits me that despite everything we’ve shared and been through as a couple—from kids to teenagers, to college kids with big dreams, and now to being married, I’m still living like it could all end tomorrow. That’s on me. It’s how I entered this marriage, and it’s how I’ve been living in it.

I’ve been focused on getting to know each other again, learning how we’ve changed and loving the slow but absolute certain discovery that Faith is still the same person I grew up and fell in love with as a wide-eyed eight-year-old kid. But what I’ve failed to see—and what is so abundantly clear to me now—is that she has come such a long way in the twelve years we were apart. She’s grown, she’s come into herself, and she is so damn ambitious and talented.

I can’t say that she wouldn’t be the amazing woman sitting in front of me today if we’d stayed together, if she’d accepted my proposal at twenty-two, but a big part of me knows now that she needed the space to spread her wings, and in doing so, she was able to fly right back to me. God, I sound like a lovesick fool. Maybe I am, but that’s okay.

We sit in comfortable silence. My mind is a whirl of emotions and memories.

“Do you want to see the new Cotton-Top Tamarin babies? They were born last week.”

I laugh and pull her into my lap, running my fingers through her gorgeous dark hair and holding her close as I brush my lips against hers. I deepen the connection for a deep, slow, languid, and thoroughly satisfying kiss. “Lead the way, babycakes,” I say against her smile. “Monkeys are my favorite.”

She leans back and narrows her gaze. “You’re totally fucking with me, aren’t you?”

I laugh and give her waist a gentle squeeze. “Maybe a little, but as long as I’m with you, and we’re at the zoo, there’s nothing I don’t wanna do.”

“Oh my God, that was horrendous. Cute, but terrible at the same time,” she says, giggling as she moves off my lap and stands in front of me. “Let’s go see the monkeys then, dork.”

I push up off the bench and press my body close to hers. “At least I’m your dork.”

“Always,” she says. As she laces her fingers with mine and leads me back down the path towards the enclosures, one thing is cemented in my brain.

With Faith Cook, forever will never be long enough.

And I intend to make sure she knows that.