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“In his defense,” she said, smirking at me, “we’d carelessly left that on the floor when you’d ripped it off of me.”
“True,” I agreed, pulling at the festive paper that was slightly damp from Bolter’s mouth.
I’d already opened a bunch of shit from her, and her from me. There was only one left for me, it seemed. And her final one was nestled in my pocket. Safely in the box I’d brought it home in two months before. Then had to take right back out of the house. Because I learned something new about Cali once we moved in together.
She was a snoop.
She couldn’t help herself. She ripped the house apart trying to find her Christmas presents.
I wasn’t sure how their parents or, later, Clay, had managed to hide her shit when she was little and still believed in Santa.
Luckily for me, I had the clubhouse.
Until, of course, she started tearing that apart as well.
Leading me to be desperate enough to ask Fallon if I could hide all her stuff in the fucking gun safe in the basement.
I opened the box and felt my heart stutter at what I saw nestled inside.
Clay’s watch.
“Cali…” I said, feeling a little choked up at what she was giving me. Not just her brother’s—and my best friend’s—watch. But her family history. And, in a way, her future wishes for us.
“You should have it. I want to see you wearing it,” she said, as glassy-eyed as I felt.
Then she was slipping it onto my wrist, and securing it in place. “I thought about fixing the second hand,” she said. “But then I decided it was perfect just as it is,” she told me, leaning into the kiss I sealed to her lips.
There was no better time, in my opinion, to reach into my pocket, and offer her my last gift.
The best thing I had to give her.
My whole fucking future.
Cali - 11 months
“Cal,” Brooks called as he walked in the door, Bolter’s tags clicking on his collar as Brooks unhooked his leash.
Those two had a ritual. Every single morning, before Brooks went to the clubhouse, the two of them took a turn around the neighborhood. We had a small little fenced in backyard area that was big enough for potty breaks, but Bolter had a lot of energy that he needed to work out. Especially on the days when Brooks wasn’t bringing him to the clubhouse, where he would have lots of room to run around and tons of people to play with.
The past few weeks, Brooks had insisted on Bolter staying with me.
‘For protection.’
There were no active threats on me, mind you. He was just ultra paranoid now that I was into my second trimester.
My version of nesting was doing and redoing the nursery. Brooks’s involved a lot of safety shit.
There was a flashy new security system. Every single cabinet and drawer had child locks.
We had tons of new gates at the top and bottom of each staircase, even though the baby wasn’t even here yet, let alone mobile enough to fall down the stairs.
There were extra smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Fire ladders and slides in each upstairs closet, including the bathroom. He’d even included emergency dog-carrying backpacks for going down a ladder in a life-or-death situation.
My car had been in the shop no fewer than four times in as many weeks because he swore something was making a noise, or something needed to be tweaked. He’d even been looking into the safest cars on the market, and trying to talk me into buying one, despite my car being relatively new.
It was obsessive, but sweet.
And I knew our baby, whenever he or she came out to meet us, was going to have the best daddy in the world.
“Baby?” Brooks called, voice immediately concerned as he rushed up the three steps in the foyer and into the open floor plan of the common area. “Caliana!” he yelled before turning into the kitchen, and finding me sitting on the floor, a bottle of lemon cleaner in my hands, taking little sniffs.
It was the anniversary.
Of the crash.
Of the worst day of my life.
I saw as Brooks looked at me, then put the pieces together.
“Oh, baby,” he said, coming over to sit next to me, then leaning down to take a sniff himself. “I didn’t realize.”
“I didn’t either,” I admitted, sniffling.
I’d just gone about my morning like I did every other day. I made my decaf coffee. I took my shower. I made myself some avocado toast with cucumbers, lettuce, honey mustard, and a sprinkling of hemp seeds, which was my current obsession now that the nausea of my first trimester was gone.
Then, suddenly, I glanced at the calendar.
It took a second, the date nettling at me for a moment until it flashed into my head.
Clay’s headstone.
With this date at the end, minus one year.
