Rowdy (Marked Men #5)(74)
It was well into the night by the time everything was all said and done. Ayden was arguing with Asa about going to the ER or at least letting her to ask Saint to give him a once-over, and Rowdy took a call from Jet letting him know he had just landed at DIA. It had been a long, exhausting day and hadn’t ended at all the way I expected after my supersexy morning on the dock with Rowdy.
We were back in his SUV headed toward my apartment when he reached over and grabbed my hand and pulled the back of it up to his lips. He kissed it lightly and then put it down on his thigh.
“Thanks for sticking with me today. That was rough.”
I curled my fingers into the denim. “Of course. It was rough, but it could have been way worse. You have good people on your side and so does Asa.”
His teeth flashed white in the dark shadows of the car. “I have you on my side. I forgot how much that made me feel like I could do whatever I needed to do, whatever I wanted to do.”
That made warmth rush all the way through me. “Oh stop it. You have an amazing group of friends and family here. It’s really touching the way you all just rally around each other and take care of one another.” I sighed a little as emotion welled up inside of me. “You found your family tree, Rowdy, and the branches are stronger and sturdier than most people with blood relatives have.”
“Yeah.” His tone dropped to a lower timbre. “It’s the one time in my life I can actually say I feel like luck was on my side. I was lucky to end up here.” He looked at me in the darkness and I could see the blue of his eyes burning hot. “I also feel pretty lucky you found me after all this time.”
I shifted in my seat as emotion welled up in my throat. “I didn’t even know I was looking for you, but as soon as I saw your picture on the website when Nash called to offer me the job, I felt like that was exactly what I had been doing for ten years . . . looking for you.”
It was a somber conversation, and on the tail of such an emotionally draining day, it left us both spent. When we got to my apartment Rowdy walked me to the door, spent ten minutes wrestling around on the ground with Jimbo, and chitchatted briefly with Poppy while I chewed her out for being on his team instead of mine. As much as I wanted him to spend the night so I cuddle up into that big body and just unwind, I think we both knew it wasn’t in the cards for tonight.
He kissed me before he left and it was almost enough to make me tackle him and drag him into my bedroom, and it wasn’t until he was gone and I shut and locked the door that I realized I had made out with him in front of my sister and hadn’t even worried about it a little bit.
I flopped down on the couch next to her and grunted as the rapidly growing ball of fur that was Jimbo plopped his heavy body across my legs.
“I’m in love with him. Like real and forever.” The words rushed out and I wasn’t even sure that was what I had intended to say to her, definitely not before saying it to him. Poppy nudged me with her shoulder.
“Duh. You think I would have helped him abduct you if I didn’t know that? You were miserable this entire week and for no reason. I want you to be happy and in love, and the only person you’ve ever felt that way with was Rowdy.”
I threw my head back against the cushions and scratched Jimbo hard between his floppy ears.
“For something that sounds so easy, why does it seem to be so hard? Like why can I just blurt it out to you but the idea of telling him makes me want to hurl?”
She rested her head next to mine. “I don’t have the answer to that, but I wish I did. Love is complicated and can hurt so much.”
“You aren’t going back to Loveless, are you, Poppy?” She couldn’t. I don’t think I would let her even if she was an adult and in charge of her own life.
“Eventually.”
I gasped and turned to glare at her. “No way!”
“Calm down, Salem. I just meant I have to go back and get my stuff. I’m not sure how to do that and not have an ugly showdown with Oliver, but yeah, I need to go back to show him and Dad I’m not afraid and that what they did is wrong.”
“Well, I’m going to go with you, then. You aren’t going to face either of those ass**les alone.”
“It was a fight I should have fought a long time ago. Just like you did.” She was quiet for a long minute and then told me in a soft and broken-sounding voice, “I love you, Salem.”
“Back atcha, Poppy.”
I had spent the day surrounded by love, spent it watching family of all different kinds of relations fight for each other and help one another. It made me realize how alone and solitary my life on the move had really been all these years. I was just starting to build a family tree of my own and it wasn’t surprising at all that the roots of it rested at Rowdy’s booted feet. He had always been the one single constant in my life even when miles and memories separated us.
I could stomach the idea of returning to a place I had sworn I would never set foot in again only because I knew he was where I would be going back to. He would always be my lighthouse, guiding me home through any kind of storm, just like that sprawling tattoo on his chest said.
CHAPTER 17
Rowdy
I WAS NERVOUS WALKING into the Bar. I think I had asked her to meet me here instead of one of the classier, more upscale places in LoDo to try and put us on more equal footing and I was never one to squander the home-field advantage.