I probably had puke on the edges of my mouth. Great.
Nodding, I straightened up, pulling one of the many paper towels I'd stuffed into my back pocket to wipe at my mouth. "I'm okay."
Dex's chuckle filled my ears as he wrapped his arms around my chest from behind, his chin resting on the top of my head. "Just okay?"
He was taunting me, I knew it.
I hadn't told him the news yet, but in that same preternatural way he was always aware of what I was feeling or thinking, he could smell my lies a mile away. He was just giving me time to come to him.
To tell him I'd be baking his bun for the next seven and a half months.
I'd just wanted the insanity of these last two weeks to be over. My semester's finals had ended three days before, Dex had been busier than ever with the Widows opening up a new bar, and then there'd been this trip. The trip that had originally been planned for Sonny, Will, and I.
Yet, not so surprisingly, Will had flaked out two weeks before, and Dex had suddenly 'decided' he wanted to come along. It just so happened that I'd taken the pregnancy test the day before he bought his plane ticket.
Right.
This man never did anything without a reason. And this reason had him resembling a mama bear. A really aggressive, possessive mama bear. Which said something because Dex was normally that way. I couldn't even sit around Mayhem without him or Sonny within ten feet.
I leaned my head back against his chest and laughed. "Yeah, just okay."
He made a humming noise deep in his throat. "Ritz," he drawled in that low voice that reached the darkest parts of my organs. "You're killin' me, honey."
Oh boy.
Did I want to officially break the news on the side of the road with chunks of puke possibly still on my face? Nah. So I went with the truth. "I have it all planned out in my head. I already ordered the cutest little toy motorcycle to tell you, so don't ruin it."
A loud laugh burst out of his chest, so strong it rocked my body alongside his. I friggin' loved this guy. Every single time he laughed, I swear it multiplied. At this rate, I loved him more than my own life cubed, and then cubed again.
"All right," he murmured between these low chuckles once he'd calmed down a bit. His fingers trailed over the skin of the back of my hand until he stopped at my ring finger and squeezed the slender bone. "I can be patient."
That earned him a laugh from me. Patience? Dex? Even after more than three years, that would still never be a term I'd use to describe him. And it probably never would. He'd started to lose his shit during our layover when Trip had called for instructions on how to set the alarm at the new bar.
"Dex, Ris, and Baby Locke, you done?" Sonny yelled, peeping out from over the top of the car door.
"Are you friggin' kidding me?" I yelled back. Did everyone know?
The bulging eyes my half-brother gave me weren't apologetic in the least. I wasn't even going to bother asking how he knew. These two jerks knew me better than anyone, including the flake I called my little brother. The same little brother I'd only seen twice. The wuss that had been too scared to come meet his little brother.
Not that it said much considering it'd taken me three years to finally get out to Colorado but Carson, my thirteen-year-old half brother, had been more than okay with our gradual progression into getting to know each other. We'd gone from me sending him a birthday present, to a single phone call as a thank you. Then monthly phone conversations for a year, to weekly emails, and finally, Skype video calls.
Even then, it had taken me a couple months to finally getting around to calling him once life had gotten back to normal after the crap with the man who shall never be named.
It had taken Dex and I another week and a half to get my father's motorcycle sold. That money had been enough to cover the remaining amount he owed the Croatians. Then, getting the money to them had been another tedious process to ensure that the matter was closed and we'd be safe afterward.
Just that easily, after those assholes got their money back, there was never another issue.
With the mafia, with the Reapers, or with my father.
The same father that had never made another appearance in my life, or any of my brothers'.
And I could easily say I hadn’t felt an ounce of guilt over what we’d done on that trip even years later. It also helped that we never did find out what the money had been for. By the end of it all, I didn’t care. At all.
"Ready?" Sonny called out again, tapping the roof of the car with his palm.
"Chill the fuck out," Dex yelled back. Well, their friendship had taken a few months to get back on track but they were fine now.
You know, after they got into a fist fight at Mayhem. And then got into a second fight in Luther’s backyard . Yeah. I missed witnessing both, but I didn’t miss the swollen noses, black eyes and busted lips afterward. Yet I couldn’t help but feel a sense of completion that these two caveman-esque idiots were mine. My proud, loyal morons.
I pulled away from him and slowly turned around, tipping my head back to look at his face. God, he was so good looking. So incredibly perfect. I could see the tip of Uriel's tentacle on one side of his neck, and the multicolored burst of a rainbow on the other side of his neck. The rainbow was my tattoo. The blue dragon Slim had been hounding me about getting for weeks.
Only Dex had beat me to it, weaving my name through the colors in violet, in a way that only Slim was capable of.
My own little blue dragon, a fraction of the size of his, had finally found a home on the inside of my wrist shortly afterward.
Going up to my tippy toes, I kissed the underside of the neatly trimmed beard he'd been growing in over the last few months. "Love you."
That slow, seductive smile crawled over his features. Brilliant and more affectionate than it was possible for me to handle, it sucked the breath out of me. When he palmed my cheeks and kissed each of my cheeks and nose and forehead, slowly like he was savoring the pecks and the contact, I ate it all up. Like always, and just like I always would.
"Fuckin' love you," he breathed against my ear, an arm slinking around my lower back to press us together. "More than anything."
The damn car horn honked, long and low. Friggin' Sonny.
I smiled up at Dex and threaded my fingers through his. "You ready?" I asked him. The question was broad and reached in a dozen different directions.
And he answered the way I knew he would every single time I asked him from them on, the way that told me he would never let me down. That he was an immovable object. That he'd always be there for me to battle the demons we could see and the invisible ones we couldn't. "Iris."
* ~ *
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About the author:
Mariana Zapata lives in Texas with her longtime boyfriend and two oversized children—her beloved Great Danes, Dorian and Kaiser. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, cursing the gym or pretending to write. Or burning experiments in the kitchen.
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