I smiled.

He smiled back, dipped in, touched his mouth to mine and let me go.

I walked him to the door, stood in it and watched him walk out.

He was two steps out before he twisted his torso my way.

“Need to wear that dress when I can take it off.”

Wet flooded between my legs and I latched onto the edge of the door with my hand in order to remain standing.

“Yeah, baby?” he prompted.

“Yeah, Mickey,” I replied breathily.

He gave me my favorite grin of his, the one filled with heat and promise, before he turned away, lifting a hand in a short wave.

I lifted mine back before I looked to the truck and waved at Cillian.

He returned it.

Unsteadily, I closed and locked the door.

Moving into my dark house, I walked to the kitchen and turned on the pendant lights.

I looked across the space I created that was all me and I did it feeling something I’d never experienced feeling.

Light and airy, like I was floating above the ground and didn’t have my feet solidly under me.

It should have felt scary.

It was exhilarating.

The weight of my life had been lifted. The weight of my upbringing. The weight of the mess I’d made of my family.

All was not right in my world, but I’d discovered me and found that I’d done something right along the way.

I’d built a support network, new and old, of people who cared about me and were generous enough to take care of me, listen to me, understand me. And I was able to build this because I was me.

And that said everything. Everything about me.

Not the me I wanted to be.

The me who had always been.

Not to mention I was walking on air because Mickey liked my dress.

As in, really.

Chapter Fifteen

Soaring

“Marriage counselling?” I asked my phone sitting on the kitchen counter beside where I was working.

Lawr was on the other end and we were talking on speaker so I could continue to make my chocolate chip cookie sandwiches stuck together with chocolate buttercream frosting. A double delight. A real winner. And something I was making because the next day was Mrs. McMurphy’s ninetieth birthday, and she might think I was a Nazi, but I was going to be a Nazi bringing her birthday treats.

“Marriage counselling,” Lawr confirmed.

I slathered buttercream frosting on the back of a cookie and asked, “Are you crazy?”

“No,” Lawr replied with a smile in his voice.

“Okay, you think that then I’ll ask, is it working?”