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I mutter, “I’ve been sleeping on it ever since, to remove his cooties so they can’t touch you.”

Her eyes glitter as she holds her fingertips to her lips. “You’re overprotective and possessive to that degree?”

“To a perfectly normal degree? Sure.” I jerk my chin toward the hall. “Bed.”

She pops up. “Yours, or mine? Or…are they both yours and mine, technically? I’m confused about where I’m supposed to go.”

“No, you aren’t.”

She inches closer, seductively. “I could be.”

I’m just so sure she could. “Behave yourself,” I mumble. “I love you.” So, so, so, so, so much.

Standing on her tiptoes, she makes a little distressed sound, so I lean down, and she kisses my cheek. “Love you, too.”

Sipping the rest of my hot cocoa, I watch her sashay over to the hall and disappear into her new bedroom. Across from mine. The ease that fills me feels wrong when, as I turn, I notice her phone lit up on the other couch, ringing silently.

Mood souring, I end the call.

They had their turn. They messed up. They’ll get another chance eventually.

But for right now?

For right now, she’s mine.

Chapter 10

◼

The beginning of the rest of my life.

December

Swishing my hands in my baggy overall pockets, I trot along behind my menacing giant as we find ourselves—after a full morning of taping and painting two giant rooms—once again in Walmart.

Never before have I ever gone up to the deli section in Walmart and ordered food or picked up a ready-made meal. This is thrilling. In paint-stained overalls, twenty-dollar shoes, and a clearance sweater with an entire hole in the side, I feel very pauper. But I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before.

“Sweetheart.” Wynnter calls my attention off the fridge pizzas all laid out in a neat row, and I turn toward his beckon.

Drawn to his outstretched hand, I lace our fingers and beam up at him. “Yes?”

He nudges his chin toward the glass case. “What would you like?”

I point at the sandwich fridge display behind us. “Chicken wrap.”

“Nothing warm?”

I scan the little metal containers full of steaming food beyond the glass. “No, thank you.”

Keeping me tucked to him, he orders a rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and a handful of cheese stick bites, one of which he holds out to me the second after I pull myself and my sandwich up into the passenger seat of his giant truck. Beaming, I take it.

“You doing okay?” he asks.

“Mhm.” I bite into the warm, breaded cheese. “This is fun. I’m sure it’ll become normal eventually, but for right now, everything’s so novelty.”

He puffs a breath, opens his dash, grabs a handful of brown napkins, then proceeds to break into his chicken. “Novelty, huh?”

I watch him dismember and devour the meat like a feral creature, thoroughly certain for the first time in my life that I was born into the wrong class. This display is primal. Filthy. And unbelievably attractive in a way I cannot put into words.