by Mj Fields
“A greenhouse?” she asks curiously.
“Yeah,” I answer, opening the stairway door to the fourth floor. “The first two floors will be covered parking, which is a rarity here, for tenants. We’ve already installed electric vehicle charging stations in it.”
“And you get a tank?” she jokes, and I smile.
As we enter an open space, I push forward, not wanting to slide back into talk of Chaos and why Dad thought I should stick with a larger vehicle.
“To the right is where I’ll live. It’s the larger section of the building. Left is where I was thinking Keeka and the baby could live, once it’s finished.”
“Show me?” she asks, more interested in the place I want Keeka to call home.
“It’s not done yet, but it will be,” I tell her, squeezing her hand a bit.
I open the door and motion her inside. “After you.”
“Wow.” She smiles, trying to take it all in at once.
“Three bedrooms.” I point left. “The master and the other two are on the opposite side.”
“I love the windows. So many of them.”
“Natural light saves energy,” I tell her.
She walks over and runs her hand over the large island.
“It’s poured cement.”
“It’s handsome,” she says. “And so smooth.”
I point beyond the counter to the stainless-steel appliances. “All energy star appliances.”
“Beautiful.” She turns then walks toward what will be a shared living and dining room.
“Open floor plan. Lots of space for couches, electronics, and—”
“Baby gear?”
“Yeah.” I nod. “Baby gear.”
“Four flights of stairs with a stroller?”
“There’s an elevator,” I tell her. “Dad said the inspector should be here today or tomorrow to give the thumbs-up.”
“It’s amazing.” She points to the walls. “Original brick?”
“Yes, I think it works with the industrial look of the place.”
“Sure does, and with the right furniture, it’ll feel less industrial.” She smiles as she turns back to me. “You did this?”
“Dad and I.” I nod.
“Wow.” She looks around again. “Impressive, Links.”
“Wanna see something more impressive?”
She looks back at me quickly, eyes widening by the second. My mind immediately goes...there.
“I’m not gonna fuck you.”
Relief floods her face, and then confusion follows.
“I want to fuck you,” I tell her, hoping to ease the confusion.
She looks at me slightly shocked and a little repulsed.
“Make love to you?”
She crosses her arms in front of her, waiting for me to continue.
“Both.” I nod, deciding I don’t want to go into this with her by not telling the truth.
She seems to be waiting for me to elaborate, so I do.
“I love you, London.”
When she blushes, it takes me off guard.
“Why does that embarrass you?”
“It doesn’t. It’s just...” She shrugs.
“It’s just what?” I step forward and take both her hands.
“We said it in Chaos, literally, in anger. I’ve heard you tell my dad. I’ve told my dad, my mom...” She sighs.
“But it’s never been the way it should be,” I acknowledge.
“Is there a right or wrong way?”
“I suppose I should have taken you out to dinner, maybe even bought you flowers.” I pause and think of the ones her parents always had set out on her birthday. “Those colorful, swirly ones that appear to be dancing. Buttercups?”
She smiles and nods. “Ranunculus.”
“Sure, those.” I pull her in closer to me. “I could have made sure there was a place for us to dance, but I’m not sure I’d ever want to dance with you. I prefer to watch you dance. Then maybe I could have taken you to the top of a building on a starry night and told you that I’ve loved you in some form or another since the day I met you.”
She rests her hands on my hips as she inches her way a little closer.
“I could tell you, regardless of the things you’ve said to me that annoyed the fuck out of me,” I lean in and whisper, “Or may have turned me on a bit...”
She giggles, and I lean back, knowing I want to kiss her, but thinking about how I wanted to do this when the time was right. I didn’t think it would have happened so soon, but now, now I’m thinking about all that could have been. I’m so glad she asked, “Do we love each other?”
I lift her chin and look into her eyes, not allowing my fear of loving her overshadow the fear of not being able to love her enough, as I finish telling her, “… I love you, London. Always have. Always will.”
“Promise?” she asks sincerely.
“No matter what.”
“No matter what,” she whispers, smiling.
I lean down to kiss her, watching her ready her lips by licking them.
I’m on the line, waiting for the snap. I want to take her down, but there will be no flag on this play. She’s worth the wait.
I kiss her forehead. “I love you, and it may kill me, but I have to do this right.” I step back and look down at eyes that are so fucking heated yet confused.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that we are not going to fuck, London.” I grab her hand and pull her behind me. “Let me show you my place.”
When she laughs, I look back, shake my head, and smile.
“I’m no bitch, pretty. This is all new to me, too.”
Her blue eyes are dancing, and I can’t help standing back to watch the show.
“Logan?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re making me a little uncomfortable. I may need your hat,” she says, still locking eyes with me.
“London, let’s call it rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal?”
“For when you’re laid out in my bed before me, and I’m standing there, looking down at you, trying to decide where I’m gonna start first.”
I expect more blushing, but she smiles and giggles. “Just know, when this genie finally comes out of the bottle, there will be no shoving her back in.”
“Is that so?”
She grins and nods. “I’m going to be insatiable.”
My dick stirs, my heart beats faster, and my mouth goes fucking dry.
Holy shit, I am a bitch.
I break eye contact, but only because I need more strength than I have right now. “God, help me.”
She giggles again, smacks my chest, and then walks past me toward the door. “Come on; show me where all this action is gonna take place.”
“London, you can’t say shit like that to me.” I grab her arm and pull her back against my chest, making damn sure she knows why.
“Oh my!” she gasps.
“I’m gonna do this right,” I whisper, then tug at her ear with my teeth. Fair is fair.
She moans, then clears her throat and smarts back, “Is there a wrong way?”
“Yeah, London, there is. Everyone else before you was a wrong way.”
“Or maybe...maybe it was just preparing you for excellence.” She grins as she looks back at me. “I’m gonna rock your world.”
“London...” I hiss my warning.
“Two can play at this game.” She pops that ass back against me, hitting the intended target, and I groan. Then she leaps forward and turns, grinning at me.
“Jesus L. Christ,” I huff, trying not to let on that she is an adorable bundle of sexy that will in fact fuck up every convoluted idea I have in my head about love. She already has.
She smiles. “I love you, Logan Links.”
“I love...” I swallow back whatever emotions are boiling inside me. “I love you.”
Her full bottom lip pouts out, but she pulls it back in, forcing a smile. I see tears well in her eyes, but t
his time they aren’t because she’s sad. No, these are different.
I walk up to her, wrap my arms around her, and hold her tightly against me.
“We have to promise, Logan. We have to promise that, no matter what happens, no matter what horrible stuff happens tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, we won’t let it get in the way of us.”
“Just told you I haven’t known a day since I met you that I didn’t love you in some way, shape, or form.”
“But we gotta fight for it, or—”
“We’ll fight, London, we will. But there better be a helluva lot more times like right now.” I sigh, running my nose along the top of her head, and then take in her scent.
“Like right now?”
“Times when nothing is fucking right, but we are. Like right now.”
“Okay.”
I am so fucking relaxed holding her that I may fall asleep. Instead, I pop a kiss to her head and step back.
“I’m tired, so fucking tired, and I know you are, too. Can I show you my place without the ass rubbing against my dick?”
When she nods, I sigh, thankful that she’s going to let me behave, and then she says, “For now.”
“You’re something, you know?” I laugh, taking her hand and walking out the door.
“I’m something all right.”
I want to make damn sure she knows what she is.
“You’re mine.”
“Fine by me. And you’re mine.” She squeezes my hand.
“Yeah, pretty, I am.”
I’m just about ready to open the door to my place when I hear the ding of the elevator, and then the very distinct voice of my sister.
“All right, let’s go; we don’t have all day,” she orders.
“We actually do. Mom has the kids,” I hear Luke tell her.
“Right, we do, but, well...Dammit, Luke, we need to-” she giggles, “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” I hear him say. “I’m gonna get you so fucking pregnant, Ava Links.”
London laughs while I tell him, “Wanna do it when you’re alone?”
“Loggie?” Ava’s voice booms before she laughs then sputters curses as we round the corner toward the elevator.
London hesitates briefly, and I look back.
She holds our hands up and grimaces. “You okay with this?”
“Said I love you,” I remind her.
“Ha! I knew it!” Ava wraps her arms around us from behind, hugging us both.
“You always were the smarter one,” I joke as I turn to look at her.
She looks at us both with a shocked expression.
“What?” I ask.
“You both look like zombies,” she tells me.
“We’re tired,” I tell her.
“Well then, you’re going to love us.” She grins. “Luke, Logan’s here, and so is London.”
Luke rounds the corner. “Good. I could use some help. Come on, Logan.”
I look at London and wink. “You think you’ll be okay if I leave you alone with this one?”
She laughs. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
When I walk around the corner, I see an elevator packed full of furniture.
“The rest is downstairs. The sooner we get this unloaded, the sooner they’ll bring more up,” Luke tells me.
“Who—”
“You told Dad what you wanted. He told me,” Ava says as she passes us, dragging London behind. “I like to shop.”
“She does,” Luke says, watching her with what I’m now one hundred percent sure is love in his eyes for my sister.
Always thought it, but now I know.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
Furnished
Logan
When everything is unloaded from the moving trucks that filled the back parking lot and the alley, I look around the apartment.
It’s huge. I guess I didn’t realize what thirty-five hundred square feet on one floor actually looked like as living space.
When entering the apartment, there is a small foyer, with a closet on each side of the door. One for coats and shoes. The other has four rows of hooks where I will hang my...hats. Ten feet from the door to the left are three large bedrooms. All but one has its own bathroom. To the right is a dining area that leads to the double island, chef’s kitchen that uses the same raw materials as the apartment I had already shown her.
Straight ahead from the entry door is a large room that will be my office, or man cave if I somehow can’t watch sports in the living room, which is often. There’s a bathroom next to it.
I watch her looking out the floor to ceiling windows over the city. The Dome and Syracuse University are clearly visible.
I walk over to her, wondering what she’s thinking, because she hasn’t moved an inch.
“Hey.”
She looks up and smiles just a little, then looks back out the window. “Hey.”
“What are you thinking?”
She looks back at me and shakes her head. “I don’t even know. Everything’s a mess. I told them I wouldn’t go back. I don’t want to go back. I want them to know I’m okay, because I need to know they are. But this...” She shakes her head again, seeming to clear the confusion. “My dream, you know?”
I nod, holding back on telling her that she needs to carry on. Just fucking carry on.
“Then Keeka has a baby, and Logan”—she turns to look up at me—“I know she’s my sister. I know she is, and I know that she’s a mess, too. I know...” The tears begin.
I pull her in, wrapping her up in my arms, and hold her.
“People died, Logan,” she whispers; I assume because she’s afraid to upset Ava. “And people were born. And sisters and dreams, and—”
“Life.”
She looks up at me, almost regretful, and then we both look toward the source of the word.
Luke has Ava under his arm as she smiles sadly at us. “Life has no damn guarantees.”
“But love does.” Ava smiles sadly.
“I’m sorry,” London says, looking at Ava.
“Don’t be. I understand. And London, you lost him, too. But as Luke said, life has no guarantees. Still, I have a really hard time believing I deserve to smile when...” She pauses and looks down.
“You deserve it.” Luke pulls her a little closer. “So do I. So do you, London. And what’s this shit about a sister?”
She smiles and shrugs. “I think she’s my dad’s daughter.”
“Troy had another kid?” he asks.
I can’t help laughing, thinking of how the hell Keeka is going to deal with a huge family after being basically on her own most of her life.
London looks at me oddly. “She’s going to be even more overwhelmed when you tell her how many aunts, uncles, and cousins she has.”
I look at Luke. “You have another cousin.”
“I might have another cousin,” he corrects me.
“She’s a beautiful, almost mocha London. Nose and all,” Ava tells him.
London self-consciously covers her nose. I pull her hand away and assure, “It’s a cute nose.”
Ava laughs. “That’s what made you become friends with a girl, Loggie.”
I shake my head.
“She reminded you of London.”
“Not true, Ava,” I correct her without going into details about Trucker.
Ava starts to say something when Luke turns her toward him. “Let’s you and I go check out the rest of the place.”
After hugs and thank yous are exchanged, I take London’s hand. “Let me show you the rest.”
She follows me past the living room where there are three steps down to the west side of the apartment. Then I drop her hand to push apart the double doors to the bedroom, turn back, and take her hand again.
She and Ava were busy fussing with the main living area while Luke helped me put the bedroom together.
“What’s with all the windows?” she asks, dropping my hand as she walks over to
the wall of glass.
“Makes sense environmentally, and I like seeing the city.”
She nods and turns. “The fireplace?”
“Heat.”
Her back stiffens a bit as she looks past me, then she turns and walks farther into the room. I look back and mumble under my breath as I see the California King platform bed Dad and I made from old wooden, recycled palates. Two small throw pillows with the British flag are resting against the pillows.
London.
Fucking Ava.
I walk into the room she is standing in. Initially, it was supposed to be a sitting room; however, half of it has free weights in it.
“Workout room?” London asks.
“For right now.”
She looks at me for clarification.
“When the fitness room downstairs is completed, this will be more of a sitting room.”
She nods then points to the double frosted doors. “Bathroom?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
I open the doors into the bathroom. I have seen it many times—hell, I built it with my dad—yet I’m still impressed every damn time.
“Wow,” she whispers.
I look at her and nod. “Yeah.”
“The tub”—she points at the large soaker tub sitting in front of a wall of glass—“in the window?”
“Soaking your sore muscles while looking over the city will be relaxing.”
“What if people see you?” She pulls her little sweater so it closes across her chest.
“They’d have to be pretty tall,” I joke.
“Well”—she points to the window—“your tenant on the other side of the building could see right in here.”
I can’t help chuckling. “Keeka? I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t look at me through binoculars.”
