Fuel the Fire

“Is it quiet to you in here?” I ask.

“No, darling,” he says.

“What do you hear?” I take another sip, and I reach my hand out so Jane can play with my bracelet on my wrist. She immediately takes interest in it.

“Alarm clocks beeping during school days, in multiple rooms,” Connor tells me. “They keep ringing at different intervals.”

I smile, imagining teenagers pressing the snooze button. “Who wakes them up, me or you?”

“We take turns.” Of course we do.

“What else?”

“The slam of bathroom doors and the turn of faucets. Music from bedrooms and laughter—always laughter.”

I rest my chin on his shoulder. “I must be laughing at your smile.”

He immediately breaks into a full-blown grin.

“I wasn’t joking, Richard.” I glower.

“You don’t laugh when I smile, you do this.” He pinches my chin so that my head rises off his shoulder. I’m carving my name in his forehead with daggered eyes. “You do know what a ‘laugh’ is?”

I give him a look of zero amusement. “I’m going to cut off your tongue.”

His grin spreads. “Then the house will be literally and figuratively quiet.”

I face-palm him, and he kisses my hand…and then he kisses me

she approaches Ryke.

“Whoa thar, pirate,” she says with half-laughter, half-tears, unable to contain her sadness like she usually can. She covers her face with her hands to hide it.

Ryke hugs her to his chest and kisses the top of her head. Daisy rubs her face and then whistles. Coconut leaps off the couch and sprints to her side.

“She’s not dying,” Loren reminds Lily. “And I can put in a pop tart for you.”

“It’s not the same thing.” Lily sniffs, hesitantly leaving my side. “You like pop tarts, and you’d eat mine.”

He sighs, wishing he could fix her sadness, knowing he can’t. The best he does is tuck Moffy to his chest and then Lily springs onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist. They head through the archway and towards the door like that.