She snuggled into my arms and I could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I guess Fatty Rab will have to make room for me then.”

“There’s no way that dog is sharing a room with us. You only get one dog in your bed, baby, and that’s me.” I had half a mind to call up Rebecca and beg her to take care of Fat Rabbit for a few days more, giving Perry and I plenty of time in this faux-honeymoon period, but I knew I’d start missing the stinky bastard sooner or later.

“And you’re one bad dog,” she teased.

“Woof, woof. Give a dog a boner.”

She giggled and smacked my arm. And that’s why I loved this woman. She let me say the stupidest shit, and on occasion, actually found it funny.

There it was again. That word, that feeling of sinking, falling, drowning. Good, wonderful, delicious, scary. I was going to have to get used to it. I was going to have to start being okay with being in love and hope to hell she’d start to catch up with me.

“Hey, Perry,” I said, kissing the top of her head. Fuck she smelled amazing, like sex and vanilla.

“Mmmm?”

“What are you doing tonight?”

She turned her head and smiled up at me.

“Besides you?”

I grinned. “Baby, doing me is always and forever a given. It’s like Newton’s law of gravity, or Amazon taking over the world.”

She pursed her lips playfully, as if she had no other option, as if she’d ever turn down my cock again. “Good to know. Then I don’t know what else I’m doing tonight. I was thinking about unpacking…”

“Unpacking here, right?” I didn’t know if it was a stupid question or not, so I had to ask.

She stared at me for a few beats. “Yes, I’m unpacking here.”

“And here, in this room, our room…not the den?”

She nodded. “If you’d like.”

I sat up and adjusted myself so I could look at her better. “Perry…you know what I’d like, what I want. I want you to stay here permanently. I wasn’t joking with that making me your home business. As cheesy as it sounded, I fucking meant it.”

“I know,” she said, her eyes softening, sky blue in the morning light.

“I don’t want you in the den. I want you in this bed, forever. I want to be with you. Not just as a partner, not just as a friend. I want us to be together, to be one, to be…I don’t know, a fucking couple.”

She rubbed her lips and I had the urge to kiss her hard enough to make her see just how I felt. Finally she said, “I want those things too, Dex, I do. I just…I want to take it a bit slow. I’m just…” She trailed off and exhaled loudly. I could see the worry on her brow and knew I was coming on too strong for her right now. Perry had other things to consider instead of just me. She was my everything at the moment, a challenge to overcome. But she’d just been uprooted from the only home she’d ever known, been ostracized from her family on account of me, and was dealing with the ever-looming threat of becoming someone like her grandmother. In my impatience, I had forgotten all that.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking her head. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Seriously. I know you’re going through so much shit right now, and if I could carry all of it for you, baby, you know I would. Take all the time you need. You know I’ll be here.”

She gripped my arm hard and looked up at me with questioning eyes, as if she didn’t really believe that.

“It’s fine,” I reassured her. “Let’s just start with you, right here with me, and go from there.”

A smile slowly spread across her lips, her eyelids lowering seductively.

“I’ll go first,” she said. What a fucking little horndog she turned out to be. She started running her hands down my chest and stomach, marveling at my muscles, before groping my dick. “You’re hard again.”

“I’m always hard,” I told her, leaning back and closing my eyes, succumbing to her touch. “Another constant you’ll have to get used to.”

She began stroking me back and forth, her grip enticingly firm. If she wanted to take it slow, I could think of a million ways to make the time pass.

***

It was around noon when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed. We showered together, another slippery session that had me coming in her mouth, before she booted me out, telling me she had to beautify herself. When I was with Jenn, the beautification process usually took half the day—shaving, waxing, scrubbing, sanding, welding—so I let Perry be and went about tidying up the apartment.

There was a knock at the door that had me puzzled. I knew Perry and I could be pretty vocal, so I hoped it wasn’t a prudish neighbor, irate that I was getting some and they weren’t. But then I heard a snuffle and a scratch at the door and knew the person on the other side was the opposite of a prude.

I opened it and saw Rebecca in the hallway as a white devil darted through my legs and scampered into the apartment, his claws scratching up the hardwood floors.

“Hey sweetheart,” I told her with a grin as Fat Rabbit tore about the living room in circles.

She smiled tightly, looking a bit off. Oh, she looked as fucktastic as she usually did—tight dress, fishnets, Betty Boop shoes, a Louise Brooks bob. But she wasn’t wearing her trademark red lipstick, and that was strangely troubling. It was like seeing Homer Simpson without those two squiggly lines on the top of his head.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” she said, her English accent sounding clipped, and stepped in and walked past me. She heard the shower running and raised her brow. “Perry’s still here?”

I looked at her askew. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

She shrugged. “So I guess everything went fine in Canada?”

“Yes…kind of. Sorry I didn’t call you, I didn’t have time to recharge my phone yet.”

“When did you get back?”

“Late last night…”

Her eyes drifted to the shower again. “Everything okay between you guys now?”

I folded my arms as Fat Rabbit sniffed around my ankles. “What’s with the one hundred and one questions, Miss Rebecca?”

She rubbed underneath her eyes and it was then that I noticed her black as death eyeliner was gone too. Who was this imposter?

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Are you okay?” she asked right back.

We stared at each other. Fat Rabbit flopped down to the floor, bored with us.

I said, “I told Perry I loved her” at the same time that she said, ‘”Em and I broke up.”

Then she smiled and I frowned. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“You told her you loved her?”

I waved my hand. “We can talk about that later. What happened?”

She exhaled loudly and walked over to the couch, sitting down in a similarly dejected pose like the dog.

“She wanted different things than me,” she mumbled, her face in her hands. “And I knew, I knew this day was coming. I knew I’d have to choose what I wanted over her, even though, fuck Dex, all I ever wanted was her.”

I bit my lip, unsure of how to comfort her. I’d never seen Rebecca rattled before. “I’m sorry. You wanted to get married, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes. I mean, I wasn’t pressuring her, at least I don’t think I was. But I feel like I drove her away. We could have compromised…maybe I could have been more understanding. But you know, I wanted to adopt children one day, blimey, maybe even have one myself. I wanted a family and she…she doesn’t. I knew from the start that she wouldn’t come around, I knew we were going to crash and burn. The last year I just let myself keep falling for her, tricking myself, like a bloody tailspin and there’s that little voice telling you to ‘pull up, pull up’ and I didn’t.”

She was making airplane analogies. This really wasn’t good. I came over to her and sat beside her, putting my hand on her shoulder. It was bonier than I remembered and I wondered if she’d stopped eating.

“I wish I knew what to say,” I said, feeling stupid. Usually I had tons of shit to spew, but this, what she was telling me, was hitting a little too close to home. In some ways, I knew how she felt. The need to start a family, to finally have a fucking family, was something slowly creeping up on me, day by day. I wondered if that’s why I’d been coming on too strong with Perry, if instinctually I wanted to get started on something that I’d secretly wanted for a very long time.

And then the thought of Perry’s miscarriage hit me in the gut and I swallowed away the pain, trying to focus on Rebecca.

“I know,” she said. She lifted her head and wiped away a tear. “There’s nothing anyone can say because there’s no good and bad or right and wrong here. It’s just bloody life and it really, really sucks sometimes.” She shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Dex, I know you know that more than anyone.”

I smiled gently. “True. But it doesn’t mean it won’t suck for anyone else.”

The shower turned off and I heard Perry sliding back the curtain. Rebecca straightened up and plastered a smile on her face. “So tell me about Perry before she comes out here and we have to speak in code.”

I grinned and got up, fishing a handful of Kleenex out of the box on the coffee table and handing it to her.

“I’m pretty sure Perry would break that code,” I told her, my voice a bit lower.

“Let’s try,” she said, and after dabbing at her tears, she made an “O” with one hand and jabbed her other finger in and out of it. “Any of this?”

I laughed. “Oh, there’s been plenty of that.”

She smiled, no longer fake, her eyes looking brighter. “That’s excellent! And you told her you loved her. That’s so…I’m so proud of you, Dex. Finally. So what did she say?”

I raised my brows. “Uh, well, here’s the thing…”

“Rebecca!” Perry exclaimed. Our heads swiveled over to the bathroom where she was stepping out with soaking wet hair, her towel barely covering her breasts, and looking shocked.

“Hi, Perry,” Rebecca said, tearing her eyes away from mine. I couldn’t have been interrupted at a better time.

Perry grinned uncomfortably. “Let me go change before I flash you.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem,” Rebecca said, just as I was thinking it.

I cocked a brow at her. “You perv.”

She shrugged as Perry disappeared into the bedroom. “I’ve been hanging out with you too long, Dex.”

“Well, now that you’re a single woman, I’m sure we could make room for you in bed,” I said teasingly, a depraved part of me kind of hoping she’d say yes. But then her face fell at the mention of her newfound singledom and I felt like a complete asshole.

“Dex,” she said, sounding disgusted.

“Sorry. I guess I should keep my threesome fantasies to myself, huh?”

She gave me a small smile. “Just pick your timing better.” Then she put her hand on my knee and squeezed it. “Glad to see you’re still a bit of a jerk, though. I was worried there for a second.”