With my help too.
“Yeah?” he said.
I opened my eyes. I hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but I nodded. “Next time you go there, I’m coming with you. I want to help.” I hazarded a smile. “At the very least, so it doesn’t turn into a bachelor pad.”
He grinned. “Bring your colored pencils. I want it to be a house worthy of someone’s windowsill height chart.”
I nodded. “Then it will be.”
He glanced out the window beside me, scratching his chin as silence settled between us. Sensing he needed time to gather his thoughts, I waited until he was ready. “When I stood in front of the house for the first time since her death,” he said finally, slowly, “I asked myself some things. Where do I want to be? Who do I want to be? Who do I want to spend my days with? The answer is simple, Georgina.”
My heart thumped. I was nearly on the tips of my toes waiting for him to say it, to close this distance between us for good. “Tell me,” I implored.
“I want to be a man worthy of spending his days with you, wherever you are.”
I couldn’t hold back anymore. I started across the room, bolstered by the fact that I had no doubts he meant what he said. When Sebastian cared about someone, he did with all of himself. He fought. He came back. In the end, he didn’t run away. The proof stood in front of me now.
“Wait,” he said before I reached him, and I stopped. He drew an imaginary line between us with his index finger. “I want that gone completely. If you cross this line, it doesn’t exist anymore. Got it? There’s only one side.”
“Between love and hate,” I said, my voice equally soft and rough with unshed happy tears, “I’m on love’s side.”
“Don’t whisper it, Georgina. Get over here and tell me.” I took the final steps toward him, and he held my face in his hands as he added, “And say it loud.”
“I . . . I love you,” I said clearly, overcoming the urge to cry. The confession didn’t scare me like it should. More than anything, I was relieved to say it after weeks of holding it in, trying to pretend it wasn’t true.
“I’m on love’s side,” he repeated. “I love you.”
“I knew it when I saw you with Bruno at the vet. The way you were with him. The way you looked at me.” It’d hit me all at once, merciless and overwhelming. Along with the truth—that I’d lose him. But he was here. I clutched his shirt, keeping him there as he lowered his mouth to mine. “It doesn’t scare me anymore,” I whispered. “I won’t lose myself again because you won’t let me.”
He brushed the tip of my nose with his. “And if you happen to, I will light your way back to ensure you always find yourself. And then you find me.”
I found him, first his lips with mine, then his roughened cheeks with my hands. I lost myself in his kiss, and there, I found something I never expected—an enemy made to love me.
EPILOGUE
SEBASTIAN
Balanced on a ladder in the kitchen of my mom’s house, I tightened the screws of a brass ceiling canopy Georgina and I had found to match our latest purchase, a vintage lighting fixture. I set my tools on the top cap when the front door opened and closed. The familiar click-clack of paws and nails sounded on the hardwood floors as Opal and Bruno came bounding in, wagging their tails and zigzagging around the ladder.
Georgina entered the kitchen in a green Tartan button-down tied at the waist and jeans that made me want to take a bite out of her ass. “Wow,” she said, surveying the ceiling. “That fixture turned out so well. Not only handy, but you have an eye for design too.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “You picked it out.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She grinned.
“Will you test it?”
She flipped the light switch and the lamp lit up. “My work here is done,” I said.
“Not quite,” Georgina said. “But we’re getting close.”
Opal barked at the base of the ladder. Feeling a tinge of nostalgia over what was to come, I brushed my hands off and descended.
“You’d think they hadn’t seen you just this morning,” Georgina said as the dogs jumped on me. She opened the back door for them to sprint into the yard.
“Mmm, speaking of this morning,” I said, taking her hand and pulling her to me. I wrapped my arms around her waist. “I’ve been thinking about it since I left the apartment.”
“Don’t get used to it,” she said. “It’s not healthy.”
“But it’s so fucking good.” I kissed her and could’ve sworn I still tasted the cinnamon bun frosting from our breakfast.
“We’re not in our twenties anymore,” she said. “We can’t eat like that every day. I only got them to celebrate the fact that the house is finally done.”
“Ah,” I said. “I thought celebrating was the reason for the blow job.”
She shimmied closer to me. “I don’t need an excuse for one of those, do I?”
Remembering the real reason for my great morning—Georgina’s smoking-hot smirk a moment before she’d ducked under the sheets—made my jeans tight. She squeaked as I lifted her by the waist onto the counter and made myself at home between her knees. “I think it’s only fair we christen the house before we list it,” I said, nuzzling her neck.
“We have christened it,” she said. “Several times. Once on this very counter, not long after it was installed.”
“I couldn’t help myself,” I murmured into her hair. “The way you haggled over the price per square foot got me so fucking excited.”
She laughed softly, wrapping her legs around me to pull me in. “Then there was that time in the laundry room . . .”
“That’s one thing we’re missing in our apartment,” I said with a sigh. “A large vibrating machine.”
“Ohh.” She moaned. “Imagine if we never had to go to another laundromat.”
I fingered the plaid collar of her shirt. “Does this choice of outfit mean what I think it does?”
She smiled. “Flights are booked for the whole family. We’re spending Christmas in Dublin.”
“The Irish won’t know what hit them,” I said.
“The Irish? We’ll be lucky if we come home in one piece. We’re going to drink our weight in Guinness.”
I chuckled, glancing out back when dog tags jingled. Bruno rolled onto his side as he and Opal sunbathed on the freshly lain concrete patio. “They feel pretty at home here, don’t they?”
Georgina bit her bottom lip as she seemed to get lost in a thought. There was something she wasn’t saying. Before I could pry, she put her hands on my chest. “Should we do what we came to do?” Sensing my hesitation, she added, “We don’t have to do it today. There’s no rush.”
“But we had the cinnamon bun and blow job celebration already.” I helped her off the counter, even though what I really wanted to do was drop to my knees and return this morning’s favor. “It’s been long enough.”
She nodded quietly, then rummaged through her pocketbook until I sighed and said, “What you’re looking for is in your zipper pocket.”
“Oh. Right.” Smiling, she got out a small spiral bound notepad and pen.
Holding her to my side, I kissed the top of her head as we made our way out front.
“Justin will be upset he’s missing this,” she said. “He’s run all the comps in the area and has opinions.”
“Why do you think I planned it for a day I knew he couldn’t make it?” I snickered. Moving hundreds of miles away still hadn’t made the bastard any less nosy. Aside from his daily request for renovation photos, it seemed as if he was crashing on our couch every other weekend.
From behind, I put my hands on Georgina’s shoulders and tried to assess the front of the house with a sense of detachment. When deciding where to list it, it wouldn’t do to see it as a place with history—my history. As my sister’s and my roots, as my mom’s home. I had to see it as a potential buyer would in order to determine the right price, but after seven months of restoring it with Georgina, that wa
s nearly impossible to do. We’d put a lot of ourselves into the property, and our relationship had deepened and strengthened on so many levels right here in this house. “A million,” I said.
She laughed. “We can’t sell it for a million, but we do need to figure out if we’re starting at the high end or hoping to incite a bidding war.”
“What if someone snatches it up right away?”
She looked up and back at me. “That would be great, wouldn’t it?”
“But then what?” I asked. My sister’s husband had e-mailed me a new listing a couple days earlier for a foreclosure a few streets over. It was a bargain, and Aaron kept reiterating what a great team Georgina and I made. He and my sister both thought we should be flipping houses for a living. Somehow, I couldn’t seem to muster the same enthusiasm. Fixing up the house had been a project brought together by a perfect storm—I had the emotional attachment to painstakingly restore it while keeping its charm, and I had good reason to set it free. In the months since I’d sold my New York apartment and had made the leap to living full-time in Boston, I’d made great strides—with Georgina’s help—working through my issues over the house and my mom. It was time to let another family have their turn.
“Did you have a different idea?” Georgina asked.
“No, not really.” I squeezed her shoulders and turned my attention back to the job at hand. “One of the shutters on the right window is coming loose, and the landscaper still hasn’t fixed the hedge.”
She made notes. “We should sic our secret weapon on him.”
“My sister,” I said, nodding gravely. “She’s a beast when it comes to getting contractors in line.”
We walked up the front steps and into the living room. I shut the front door, inspecting the marks on the inside of it. “We have to fix these scratches before the first open house.”
“Mark that under ‘Opal and her separation anxiety,’” Georgina replied.
We’d recently left the dogs at the house alone for the first time while picking up pizza for a long night of cleaning ahead. Opal had done a bit of damage.
Georgina pointed her pen at one corner of the living room. “There are still some spots of blue paint on the hardwood.”
“I tried,” I said. “It won’t come up. Mark that under ‘my frisky girlfriend.’”
Her cheeks reddened, a sexy complement to her chestnut-colored hair and cinnamon-sprinkle freckles. “It wasn’t all me,” she said. “If you hadn’t started the paint fight in the first place—”
“It wouldn’t have ended with what probably looked like Smurf porn?”
She shoved my shoulder. “There you go defiling innocent things again.”
I caught her in my arms. “Like you?”
She shrugged and said in explanation, “I don’t stand a chance against bad boys.”
“Good thing for me. I’m bad at lots of stuff.”
She laughed, wrapped one arm around my neck and smoothed my hair from my face with her other hand. “Sebastian, my love?”
“Georgina, my love?”
She pursed her lips as a mix of pity and sympathy crossed her delicate features. “Are you going to be able to paint over the kids’ height charts?”
My sister and her husband had helped with the house as much as they were able to. They’d brought the kids nearly every weekend, and I’d gotten in the habit of measuring Carmen and José in the laundry room. Although it had always been the plan to paint over the marks before we sold, for some reason I’d envisioned filling the wall with colorful charts, from Libby’s kids to our dogs to our own children. “We have to,” I said. “Can’t exactly list this place as gut renovated minus some random kids’ height charts.”
“Can I say something you might not want to hear?”
I gave her a quizzical look. Something was definitely brewing in that head of hers—something that simultaneously turned down her mouth and made her eyes sparkle. “You could,” I said. “Or we can skip a potential argument and try out those sex positions Justin needs us to test for the next issue.”
“This won’t cause a fight.” She played with the neckline of my t-shirt and took a breath. “I know Aaron is eager to sell, but what if we bought your sister out?”
“For what reason?” I asked. “To keep all the profit on the flip for ourselves? I’m guessing they’re not going to go for that.”
“No, no,” she said. “Come with me.” She took my hand and led me upstairs to the master bedroom we’d completely redone. At the window, we overlooked the backyard where Bruno and Opal had moved to sprawl out in the grass.
“After everything we’ve put into the house, the money would be nice to have,” Georgina said. “But you know what else is nice to have?”
I rubbed my jaw, fairly certain I knew where the conversation was going. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t crossed my mind—I just didn’t know Georgina had been thinking the same. “A yard?” I guessed with extra-Boston-accent since it always made her smile.
“And a laundry room.” Out the window, she scanned the lawn and the addition we’d made to the side of the house to gain square footage and an extra bedroom. “And a place for Justin to sleep that doesn’t fold up when he leaves.”
“Now you’re hurting your case,” I teased. In truth, I was glad Justin visited as frequently as he did. “If we tell him he has his own bedroom, I’m not entirely sure he won’t just move in.”
“He’d be so excited.”
She was excited—I heard it in her voice. I turned to her. “Are you serious about this?”
“I haven’t wanted to bring up staying,” she admitted. “I know how hellbent you are on selling, and maybe it’s the right thing to do. This place holds a lot of bad memories for you.”
I glanced across the room to the spot my mother’s bed had been. Along with a priest, we’d surrounded her as she’d held my hand in one of hers and my sister’s in the other and closed her eyes for the last time. We had since reconfigured the room so it looked nothing like it had then. Even the bathroom had been remodeled. I thought of how Georgina and I had climbed into a tub on the sales floor to make sure it was deep enough for two, then recreated the NC-17 version of that scene a few nights after it’d been installed. I remembered, standing there at the window, lifting Georgina onto my shoulders so she could inspect crown molding. And then the way I’d gone barbarian on her, toting her around the room beating my chest until she’d bumped her head on the ceiling light and fallen giggling into my arms.
“There are good memories in here too,” I told her.
“I know, and for the record, I can live anywhere, Sebastian. As long as it’s with you. The apartment is fine—I’m happy there. I just don’t want you to regret that we didn’t even consider keeping the house.”
I half-sat on the windowsill, putting us at the same height. “You want to stay?”
“I love it here.” She took a small plastic bag of gummy bears from her back pocket. It was unlikely she even realized she’d done it. She ate some, chewing as she paced. I couldn’t keep the smile from my face. I had my answer—she was in brainstorming-mode, and she was serious about this.
“I’ve learned so much about your childhood and your mom over the past several months,” she said. “And we’ve put our blood, sweat, and tears into making it perfect. We have the money to buy out your sister, but would she be okay with that?”
I followed Georgina with my eyes. My life had done a one-eighty in the past year. Each day with her was a gift, an adventure, and a challenge. We bickered as much as we bantered, made love as often as we went head to head. She’d stitched up what I’d thought was a permanent hole in my heart from my mother’s death. It was a wound that would never truly heal, but now it ached less with Georgina around.
“We can even add a sound booth for you,” she said, scribbling something on her pad.
Not only did she have healing powers, but she’d encouraged me too. My final piece in Modern Man’s February issue had gotten me en
ough press to launch a successful men’s lifestyle podcast. We covered everything from sports to health to politics. I was now receiving regular invitations to athletic and entertainment events as a guest star or commentator. I even doled out the occasional piece of advice—which I always ran by Georgina first.
I grabbed her hand, pulling her back in front of me. Running some of her soft, silky hair through my palm, my heart clenched. I loved her. I wanted to spend my life with her. I wanted to make her happy. “It’s a big commitment,” I said, cupping the side of her face and thumbing the corner of her mouth. “It’s not like Opal and me moving into your little apartment, cramping your style. There, we have a landlord, and if things go south, I can just move my boxes out. But getting a house together . . .”
She took my wrist, shifting her face to kiss my palm. “You can’t scare me away, Sebastian.”
“I’m just pointing out—after owning a place together, there’s really only one direction to go,” I said. “If I propose the idea of a proposal, is that the same as asking you to be the future Mrs. Quinn?”
She wrinkled her nose playfully. “You don’t have to worry about that, because my answer would be no.”
I narrowed my eyes on her. She wasn’t going to fight me on this, was she? Because I’d win, hands down. “We’ve talked about getting married. This can’t be news to you.”
“I don’t want to be Mrs. Quinn,” she clarified. “But Georgina Quintanilla? Well, that has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
In the same instant, a sense of possessiveness and a surge of love overwhelmed me. I hoped my mom was looking down on us now, proud of the strong, kind woman I’d chosen to be by my side. A woman worthy of being a Quintanilla. I brought Georgina closer to me, lifting her chin with my knuckle to tilt her mouth up to mine. “I can definitively say I’ve never wanted anything more. Well, except maybe what comes after the wedding.”
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