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“Can you get off work tomorrow for a little bit?”
“I can try. Why?”
“I want to buy you a gun.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, absolutely. And I’m going to enroll you in a private concealed weapons class. I want you to carry all the time.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” His brows arched.
“Yeah, okay.”
“Here I was expecting all sorts of pushback from you, and you were a pushover.”
“I’m scared, Pearce. If carrying a concealed weapon will save my life or yours, then I’m all for it.”
“I want you to understand something, Alexia. If you do this, you have to be prepared to shoot someone. And I mean shoot to kill. Can you honestly say you can do that?”
“You know, when I was bound, gagged, and duct-taped, I thought I was going to die. I kept trying to come up with ways to beat those monsters that had me. The only thing that saved me was their stupidity and drunkenness. If I would have had a gun, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it on any of them in that room. They were getting ready to rape me.”
He grabbed my hands, asking, “Alexia, why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I didn’t really know you back then. But yeah, I would use a weapon and I would kill with it.”
“Okay, I just needed to know.”
He stuck the pizza in the oven because it was now like ice, and he heated it back up. I carried my bag up to his bedroom and hung up my work clothes in the closet. I went to the bathroom and scrubbed the makeup off my face. Afterwards, I put on a comfy pair of yoga pants and a long-sleeved shirt and went downstairs.
He was waiting with a glass of wine in the living room for me. He patted the seat next to him, and I curled up by his side as he handed me a glass of wine.
“What a day!” I said, air rushing past my lips.
“I know, right?”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but regular hours. No call. I want you to stay here until everything is secure at Lisbeth’s. Well, if the truth be known, I want you to move in with me.”
It was the way he said it that made my heart thump and butterflies flutter in my stomach. “You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“One hundred percent. I need to clue you in on something about me. I’ve always been a great judge of character. Not good, but great. And so has Lisbeth. That’s one thing my grandmother always said about her. Anyway, I’m not wrong about you. You’re loyal, honorable, and would do anything for someone you love. You’re kind, considerate, hardworking, you have great integrity, and you’re honest. The bottom line is I love you. I’m thirty-five years old, financially secure, and have been around the block a hundred times. I thought I was in love a time or two, but it never turned out to be the real thing. What I have with you is the absolute real thing. I’m not changing my mind. Like I said before, we can waddle in the water and wade around, but I’m not going anywhere.”
I launched myself into his arms and almost mauled him.
“Pinch me.”
“What?”
“Pinch me,” I told him again. “I want to make sure this isn’t some bizarre dream.”
“Believe me, this is not a dream.”
“Good, because you already know what my answer’s going to be. I can’t do this yet. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. The other thing is you have got to meet Terri. I can’t do anything without her permission anyway.”
“You’re kidding.”
