Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(108)

“I said, if you two stop making out all over the place, maybe I’ll stop hosing you down. I mean, Kona and Keira are bad enough, but you two? It’s embarrassing…Jesus.”

When Ransom finally made it back to the patio, he helped me up, brushing a hand over my ass, and beaming at me, proud that I could hold my own with a trickster like Tristian.

“Tristian, be cool,” I told the now freed cousin. “I mean, I know I took your boyfriend from you.”

“That is not funny,” he said, throwing his middle finger over his shoulder as he walked inside.

“It’s a little bit funny.”





My apartment looked different than it had six months ago. It was not nearly as neat. Oversized hoodies and CPU gyms shirts, all too large for me, draped along my sofa and three pairs of boat-looking tennis shoes littered around the dresser. I set them neatly near the door, though I knew Ransom would move them, he always did.

The faucet sink in the bathroom sounded and I could hear the small little groans Ransom made as he washed his face and cleaned his teeth. But then the track on my MP3 player shifted to something that made me smile and I danced around the room as Rihanna sang about being in nothing but her skin—no heels, no shirt, no skirt—and I moved right with her, shaking my hips, shimming as I picked up after my boyfriend.

I pulled down my t-shirt, smiling at the soft black material and the white letters that read Ransom Groupie. He had the shirt custom made for me a few months back when he’d grown tired of me wearing Keira’s Kona Fangirl tee. Turns out anyone can have a teespring account and my boyfriend used his to remind me I was his girlfriend, not his father’s.

Ridiculous man.

A few more turns, a quick hip shake as I chucked a left over pizza box next to the trash and I stopped in a turn, stilling as I spotted that large linebacker leaning against the bathroom door.

“Now that is a sight.” He laughed at my eye roll and moved toward me, hands lowering on my hips as he pulled me close. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching you dance.” He kissed my neck and I sighed, loving how warm his mouth felt against my throat.

“You might. I can get loud with all the leaping and stepping,” I told him, smiling against his lips when he moved us around, dancing slow.

“Nope. You’re my Fred,” he said, lifting me up to guide my legs around his waist. “I’ll never get tired of you.”

Ransom moved us to the bed, sliding up my body when he fell on top of me and I swear there was something awed in his expression, something that warmed my stomach with just one brief glance. “What?” I asked and he pulled one of my hands to his face, grazing a kiss in the center of my palm.

“I was just thinking maybe Fred isn’t such a good name after all.” The bed shook a little as Ransom adjusted next to me, as he pulled on my waist to get me closer. “Fred seems so informal.”

“Does it? Should we change it to something like Rupert? Or Reginald? Those sound formal.”

That smile didn’t move from his mouth, but he lowered his lips before he shook his head. “I was thinking maybe we just call it what it is.”

“Wi? What do you think it is?”

How long had I waited for him to tell me he loved me? How often did I lie in this bed and wish he was next to me for more than just sex? With Ransom’s expression shifting, I found it hard to believe that this was real. I’d have never thought he’d look at me the way he was just then—like the world somehow moved between us, like one kiss, a single stare could bring a happiness neither of us had ever dreamed could be true.

“Chrysalis,” he said, but it came out so soft that I may have heard him wrong.

“What?”

Inching closer, Ransom brushed his mouth against mine, and a little smile tweaked the corner of his mouth. “You make this thing inside my chest - this little critter I thought had died a long time ago - want to break out his bad ass new wings.” Ransom leaned back on the bed, pulling me closer, and his eyes were so soft, full of what he felt for me, that I swear I glimpsed heaven in them. As he pulled my palm to his chest, holding it steady, he grew serious. “Aly, you make him want to fly. You make me want to fly. I don’t think there’s a better word to describe what we are, sugar.”

There was something similar that lived in my chest. It had been born the day I met him, it had grown, despite being confined. It had been a long time to carry something inside you that you feared may never be set free. But in that smile, those kisses, in every single touch, every single look, he gave me more than a million “I love yous”.

“Wi,” I told him, moving my fingers back to his cheeks. “There’s another word for it.”

Ransom lifted his eyebrows in a silent question.

“Everything. We’re not Fred, cheri. You’re my everything and I am yours.”





Epilogue





Ten years later





I come back to the city at least five times a year. Holidays, of course and any major accomplishment my brother and sister might have are excuses enough to be bring me back to New Orleans. Miami isn’t that long of a flight and this time we had a bye week. Even NFL linebackers need family time, so being back wasn’t a hassle.

Dance recitals, though? That’s a little bit of a stretch. But my mom still has those big, blue eyes that could look sad and weepy, even over Skype and, when that doesn’t work, there’s the Keira Glare that makes me jump like I’m ten and not twenty-eight. The woman never failed to make me feel like a disobedient kid when I didn’t do what she asked.