Page 70 of Hunt You Down

I gasped, eyeing the house in front of us—our house. “What are we going to do with all this space?”

“Well, I could have an office. You can have a full studio, and not just one you’d have to share with guests. Maybe—I mean eventually—we could fill it up with a couple kids.”

I smiled up at him. “I thought you didn’t want kids.”

“I never thought I’d be in love with someone who might.” Mulling over his response, he added, “I never thought I’d fall in love.”

I wanted to kiss that man silly. I tried my best, but my legs just weren’t strong enough yet. Thankfully, André got the hint and came down to my level.

“I love you,” I whispered, when our lips parted with a quiet smack.

“Mwen renmen ou.”

There it was, that flutter I knew that André could stir up in me.

“Aren’t I supposed to carry you over the threshold or something?” he asked when I came up for air.

I laughed. “That’s when you get married, silly. I think I can walk it.”

André led me by the hand but as soon as I placed my foot on the bottom step, my knee buckled.

“Okay, I think I may need a little help,” I confessed.

With a smile, André instructed me to wait there. He unlocked the door and turned on the light that illuminated the porch. When he returned to me, asking me if I was ready, he swept me into his arms. The embarrassing sound that came out of me was somewhere between a yelp and a squeal.

André dusted a kiss across my lips, and took the three steps with ease. There, he carried me through the threshold of our new home—and our fresh start.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ten months later

Mardi Gras hit a little different the following year. Dylan wasn’t there. Emmeline would have murdered him if he so much as thought about leaving her alone with an infant.

André had taken the entire week off of work and got us a five-star suite on Bourbon Street, only blocks away from Mama’s place. It was a big trip for us. It was the first time I felt well enough to stay away from home.

The trial ended the week before Thanksgiving, and Regan was sentenced to thirty years, and immediately transferred to a high-security federal facility in Atlanta. He took his own life a month later, naming me as the reason why.

We spent Christmas in Georgia with my family, and my Dad passed soon after from complications of his Parkinson’s. Although he was pretty advanced, I was glad that André got the chance to meet him. When Dylan and Emmeline found out they were having a boy, then named him after both me and our dad—Harrison.

The visit helped me tie up all my loose ends in Georgia and with that, I made the permanent move to New Orleans—into the house that André had bought for us. I found a job that I loved teaching an art class at a local community center. André turned one of the empty bedrooms in the house into my studio and filled it with the best supplies I could possibly ask for.

He also surprised me with the week away for Mardi Gras. After everything, we needed something that was just for us. We didn’t have Regan to worry about anymore, but looking over my shoulder at every turn was a hard habit to break. André, however, took it in stride. He’d been my world over the last year, and now I could finally love him the way he deserved. He had become everything to me.

I could enjoy Mardi Gras this year. André showed me off with pride. He caught strands of beads, looping them around my neck and punctuating his claim with a kiss. He took me back to Mama’s restaurant, and the food tasted better now—brighter. As we left, she whispered a quiet, “Good luck” to André that they likely thought I didn’t hear.

That night, I was the one to pull André out of the booth and out into the streets. I wanted that magic back. But this time, I wouldn’t just be pretending. I wouldn’t be escaping from something. I could run toward something new. I was finally free to figure out who I was behind the timid little boy who was simply fighting to stay alive.

About a block away from Mama’s restaurant, I looked over my shoulder—André had stopped walking. He’d paused about a foot behind me and was just staring at me. He’d been acting strange the entire night… the entire week for that matter.

“What’s going on?” I shouted over the music.

His answer was instant. “You scare me.”

Confused, I closed the distance between us. “Come again?”

“You scare me,” he repeated after a deep, shaky breath.

Taking his hand, I tugged him to the side of the road where there were less people. “Care to elaborate on that?”