by L. A. Witt
Samir was nodding as I spoke. “Good idea. I’ll look into that. I’ve thought about it for a while, but…” He laughed bitterly. “I was afraid I’d spell out everything going on in my life, and the counselor would tell me I should get my dumb ass out of my toxic relationship. Which, I mean, they’d be right, so I guess—”
“They don’t do that. Not the good ones, anyway.”
“I would hope not. But now that my dumb ass is out of that toxic relationship, talking to someone so I can deal with the aftermath sounds…” He exhaled, some more tension leaving his shoulders. “God, that sounds really good, actually.”
I smiled, stroking his cheek. “Let me know if you need help finding one. Mine can probably refer you to someone.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.” I kissed him again, just lightly this time, and as I drew back, my shoulders brushed something furry. I craned my neck to see one of the cats staring at me. “Oh hello.” I rolled onto my back and scratched the cat’s chin. “This one’s Nima, right?”
“Nope. Mehrang.”
I huffed. “Damn. How do you tell them apart?”
“Besides the fact that Mehrang is bigger?”
“Yes, besides that.”
“See the ‘M’ on his forehead?” Samir ran his thumb over the M-shaped stripes. “Mehrang’s is black. Almost like a Sharpie. Nima’s is a bit lighter.”
Nima jumped up, and sure enough, the M on his forehead was less pronounced. “Oh, yeah. Now I see it. But how do you tell when they’re across the room or getting into something?”
“Eh.” Samir shrugged. “If they’re getting into something, they’re probably doing it together.”
“Partners in crime.”
“So much.”
Right then, Nima crawled up on my chest and plunked down. As I started petting him, he closed his eyes and started purring. “You know, for such a devious little fucker, you pull off sweet and innocent really well.”
Samir snorted. “They both do. Bastards.”
I chuckled and scratched behind Nima’s ear. He scrunched up his face and tilted his head, purring even louder.
Samir smiled as he played with Nima’s tail. “I should have known you were the right guy. My cats loved you from day one.”
“They didn’t like Jesse?”
Samir wrinkled his nose. “Nope. I mean, Shouka likes everyone until they give her a reason not to. But the cats are pretty opinionated about people.”
“So for the dog, it’s innocent until proven guilty—”
“And for the cats, it’s guilty until proven innocent.”
I glanced at the cat, then looked at Samir and smirked. “So you’re saying I passed my CAT scan?”
Samir groaned, burying his head in my shoulder. “Oh my God, El.”
I laughed hard enough to jostle Nima, and he jumped off me and onto the floor. Still snickering, I rolled onto my side to face Samir. “What? It’s true, isn’t it?”
“That was the worst pun ever.” He shot me a playful glare but then rolled his eyes and nestled against my side. “CAT scan. Jesus.”
I just chuckled. It was so good to see him smiling, even if it was because of an admittedly awful pun. Samir truly did have a smile that could light up a room, and I had every intention of finding every reason to bring it to life as often as possible.
He turned a bit more serious, but he didn’t look unhappy as he said, “I’m really looking forward to not sleeping alone tonight.”
“Same here.” I ran my thumb across his lower lip. “But we’re not going to sleep yet, are we?”
“I don’t know.” His eyebrow arched. “Are we?”
We exchanged grins. Then I pulled him into a kiss.
And no, we weren’t going to sleep yet.
But when we finally did, we wouldn’t be sleeping alone.
Epilogue
Samir
A Year Later
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” The grumble came from the bedroom. A moment later, so did the cats.
In the kitchen, I laughed. Elliott hadn’t raised his voice much, and I knew damn well he’d never raise a hand to them, but they knew when they were in trouble. Though I sometimes suspected this was less a retreat and more of a victory lap.
As they leaped over Shouka, who was sleeping in the hallway, Elliott swore again, sounding more exasperated than angry.
I rolled my eyes and wiped my hands. After double-checking that the pots on the stove were simmering, I headed for the bedroom. On the way, I eyed the cats. “What did you boys do this time?”
Nima looked up at me with who, me? in his big yellow eyes.
Mehrang was, as always, a smug little fucker.
At the end of the hall, I stopped in the bedroom doorway. Elliott was leaning over the side of the bed, running his fingers between the mattress and bedframe like he was searching for something.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” He shook his head and continued feeling along the bedframe. “Shit.”
“You need help?”
“No. No. It’s fine.” He glared at the bed. “Don’t worry about it.”
“The cats run off with something?”
“As always,” he grumbled, straightening up. “I just don’t know where it landed.”
“I can help you look.”
“No!” His head snapped toward me, and his features softened into a sheepish smile. “No, I’ve, um, I’ve got it. Don’t worry about it.” He glanced past me. “Is that cumin I smell?”
“I’m cooking. Of course there’s cumin.”
“Awesome.” He grinned, and I was pretty sure I heard his stomach rumble.
“It won’t be ready for a while. I really can help—”
“No, I’m good.” He crossed the room, cupped my face, and gave me a soft kiss. “I’ve got this. Just, uh, maybe keep the cats at that end of the house.”
A laugh burst out of me. “Contain those two? Yeah, right.”
“Eh, yeah. Good point.”
“I’ll do the best I can, but no promises.”
Elliott chucked. He kissed me again, and then while he went back to turning the bedroom upside down, I went to check on dinner.
The kitchen was pretty fragrant. It often smelled like my mother’s kitchen these days—I’d never dated someone who liked Middle Eastern food as much as Elliott did, so I’d been learning to cook a few more Persian dishes. He pulled his weight in the kitchen, too—nobody made pasta like he did. If not for all the walking we did together and all the sex we had, we’d probably have put on twenty pounds apiece by now. Worth it, I decided.
I smiled to myself as I pulled a couple of plates down from the cabinet. Life was pretty damn good these days. Elliott had moved in a couple of months ago, and I loved having him here. The animals did too—I was pretty sure Elliott had stolen Nima’s affections from me forever. Every time I turned around, that cat was in his lap. Well, when he wasn’t causing chaos with his brother.
Things outside the house had been pretty quiet, thank God. After a few miserable months for me and trips to jail for him, Jesse had finally lost interest in me, particularly after a judge had warned him that there was a serious sentence in his future if she saw his face in her courtroom again.
Just to be safe, I still had the restraining order in place. It sort of seemed like overkill at this point, but it gave me some comfort, and so did the self-defense I’d been learning from Elliott and some of the other bouncers. In fact, one of them had steered me toward a Krav Maga class in downtown Seattle, and I was enjoying that a lot more than I’d thought I would. I was even thinking about competing someday.
Elliott still came home with the odd bruise or war story from Wilde’s. I’d accepted a long time ago that it was just part of him being a bouncer, though I still worried about him sometimes. Between that and our opposing schedules, it wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it, especially since we both we
nt out of our way to spend as much of our downtime together as we could. Lunch at the clinic before he went to work. Dinner at Wilde’s before I went home. Long, lazy mornings if we both had the day off. I really couldn’t complain, and it was even easier now that we were living together.
Shouka was pretty thrilled with Elliott living here too. Since his schedule meant he left the house later in the day than I did, he’d take her out jogging with him before dropping her at doggy daycare. And if he was off while I was working, it was not at all unusual for the two of them to take off to the mountains for a hike. I could only imagine what other hikers thought when they saw the giant rottweiler and my not-exactly-small boyfriend coming up the trail.
While I continued cooking, I kept an eye on the animals to make sure they didn’t cause more trouble for Elliott. They seemed pretty subdued at the moment. Mehrang was happily chowing down on his dinner while Nima took a bath in front of the fridge. They both looked as pleased with themselves as ever, and I had no doubt they were quietly plotting their next round of chaos.
Footsteps came down the hall. I looked up as Elliott appeared in the doorway, and I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
He sighed, his shoulders down and expression somewhere between sheepish and defeated. “I need your help with something.”
“Sure.” I dried my hands and came around the counter. “What’s up?”
He gestured for me to follow him, and as we headed for the bedroom, he said over his shoulder, “The cats kicked something under the dresser, and I can’t get to it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
In the bedroom, he knelt in front of the dresser and gestured at the tiny crevice between the bottom drawer and the floor. “I’d move this thing, but it weighs as much as a car. And I tried using this”—he held up one of the wands we used to play with the cats—“but I just can’t get hold of it. Since your hands are smaller than mine, could you…?” He nodded toward it.
I eased myself to my knees. “What exactly am I looking for?”
Elliott swallowed. “You’ll, uh, you’ll know it when you find it.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Elliott…”
He smiled. “It’s nothing that’ll bite you or anything. Just…” He motioned toward the crevice again. “Help?”
Okay, that was odd, but I shrugged and leaned down. I slid my fingers under the dresser, but found nothing, so I pushed my hand a little farther, enough that the dresser lightly scraped my knuckles. “I’m not finding—” My middle finger grazed something. Then again. Something cool and solid.
“It’s the only thing under there,” he said.
I felt around a bit more, finally got enough purchase to pull it toward me, and with a little more work, tugged both the object and my hand free.
“There!” I held it up, grinning victoriously. “Got—” Then I realized what was between my fingers. My jaw fell open as I stared at the slim gold band. When I shifted my gaze to Elliott, his grin told me that I absolutely wasn’t reading too much into what I was holding. “Is this…”
He wrapped his hands around mine and kissed my fingers. “This wasn’t how I wanted to do this, but hey, I’m already down on… Well, both knees.”
I blinked. “You’re serious.”
Swallowing hard, Elliott nodded. “Yes. And I had this eloquent and romantic proposal all planned out, but Nima kicked the box off the dresser and Mehrang got hold of the ring, and then—”
I kissed him. “I don’t think it would be possible to have a more ‘us’ proposal than this.”
He laughed, and I swore there were tears in his eyes. “No, I guess not. What would this be without a little feline sabotage?”
“Right?”
He held my gaze, and though his humor faded, the smile remained. Caressing my cheek, he whispered, “I love you so much, Samir. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” His eyes flicked toward the ring, and he swallowed hard before he met my gaze again. “Will you marry me?”
“Of course I will.” I wrapped my arms around him, gripping the ring tight and not only because I didn’t want the cats finding it again. “I love you.”
He kissed the side of my neck. Then he drew back, and he started to speak, but thundering paws turned us both toward the door a second before all three animals stampeded into the room. Mehrang flew onto the bed, skidding and bunching the comforter up around the pillows before he banked off the headboard and hit the floor again. Nima zoomed under the bed with Shouka hot on his heels, and she narrowly missed crashing into the bed frame.
Elliott and I laughed, both shaking our heads and leaning toward the dresser so the critters might avoid colliding with us. In a matter of seconds, the charging herd of elephants had disappeared down the hall again, Shouka woofing just before something crashed.
We looked at each other, and both rolled our eyes and laughed.
“Another day in paradise,” I said, chuckling.
“No kidding.”
We stood, and I looked at the ring in my hand. “So, we’re really doing this?”
“I’m in if you are.”
“Oh, I’m in.” I met his gaze, and smiled. “And you definitely caught me by surprise.”
“Well, I had planned to surprise you, just, uh, not like this.” He glanced down the hall as if he could see the cats destroying the living room with Shouka. “But I guess you’re right—this is a pretty appropriate way for a proposal to go down in this house.”
“Yeah.” I laughed, wrapping my arms around him. “It really is.”
He grinned just before our lips met, and my heart went crazy as we indulged in a long, sweet kiss.
And of course, at the other end of the house, something else crashed.
We separated, eyed the door, and looked at each other again.
“All right.” He shook his head. “Let’s go see what the children broke this time.”
Chuckling, I laced my fingers between his, and we headed for the living room.
No, there was definitely no proposal imaginable that was more “us.”
And I couldn’t imagine any other man in the world I’d have wanted to marry.
The End.
About the Author
L.A. Witt is an abnormal M/M romance writer who has finally been released from the purgatorial corn maze of Omaha, Nebraska, and now spends her time on the southwestern coast of Spain. In between wondering how she didn’t lose her mind in Omaha, she explores the country with her husband, several clairvoyant hamsters, and an ever-growing herd of rabid plot bunnies. She also has substantially more time on her hands these days, as she has recruited a small army of mercenaries to search South America for her nemesis, romance author Lauren Gallagher, but don’t tell Lauren. And definitely don’t tell Lori A. Witt or Ann Gallagher. Neither of those twits can keep their mouths shut…
Website: www.gallagherwitt.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @GallagherWitt