But he’d just told me not to hold back so I figured I should go with that.
“Well, there’s me not recognizing you,” I reminded him carefully. “There’s also me pitching a drama after you made love to me for the first time. Then there’s me accusing you of treating me like a charity—”
He interrupted me by suggesting, “Maybe you should stop.”
I shut my mouth.
He stared me in the eyes then suddenly asked, “Did you really crush on me back then?”
I nodded and answered quietly, “Yeah.”
He closed his eyes, shook his head, and ended the shake looking away from me.
I lifted my hand and pressed it to his smooth cheek, forcing him back.
When he opened his eyes, I told him, “Your hair looks nice but I miss the beard.”
I barely finished speaking before he made a noise that I felt rip through me. It was full of pain, which I didn’t like, and something else I couldn’t read.
He didn’t hesitate to give me that something else. “Fucked up.”
“How?” I asked.
“Shoulda taken you for a Blizzard.”
He remembered. He remembered me asking him to go to Dairy Queen the day he disappeared.
My eyes started stinging.
“Take me tonight,” I whispered.
He closed his eyes again but this time dropped his forehead so it rested on mine.
I slid my hand from his face to wrap my arm around his shoulders and did the same with my other arm around his back.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you.” He opened his eyes and lifted his head but he didn’t go very far. I took that as him not pulling away so I kept speaking. “I even knew it when you showed me your drawings. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.” I forced a smile, my eyes still stinging. “I got your sketch of me. I still have it. I even had it framed and I used to keep it in my bedroom. But when we got married, Aaron wouldn’t let me put it—”
“Stop talking.”
I again shut up.
Joker didn’t.
“It’s was always you. Only you. I was into you back then, Carissa, in a big fuckin’ way.”
I felt a tear slide out the side of my eye.
Joker watched it before he looked back to me.
“And that hasn’t changed.”
Oh God.
I could take no more.
I burst into tears.
Joker gave me his weight for a moment so he could roll us to our sides and gather me close in his arms.
I held him back and did it tight as I shoved my face in his perfect chest and bawled my eyes out.
“I… I… c-can’t believe I didn’t recognize you!” I cried into his skin.
He held me with one arm and stroked my hair with his other hand, ordering, “You didn’t. The minute I looked like me you did. Get over it. I am.”
I tipped my head back and declared loudly, “I hurt you!”
“Just fucked you, Butterfly, gonna do it again as soon as I can, so I think I’m over it.”
I blinked through my tears.
Then I slapped his arm. “We don’t fuck,” I hissed, making it plain I did not like to be forced to use the f-word. “We make love.”
My breath stopped when his face all of a sudden was close and his voice dipped low to say, “Yeah. That’s what I just did to you. I’m glad you finally get that. And that’s what I’ll keep doin’ to you. But prepare, Carrie, ’cause I’m also gonna fuck you and from what I just got outta you, I know you’re gonna like it.”
I started breathing, but erratically, and said nothing.
I apparently started breathing erratically and doing it visibly because he asked, “You want me to do that now?”
I totally did.
Unfortunately, I had to answer, “I’m moving today.”
He looked perplexed for a second like he forgot our plans for the day, which was cute and sweet. I’d never seen Joker be the former, and I liked it, but I had experienced him being the latter, and I’d always liked that.
Then his face cleared and he muttered, “Fuck.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“We better do that,” he said.
I didn’t want to do that. My exhaustion had been swept away in the drama and lovemaking but now, especially after the drama, and most especially after the lovemaking, all I wanted to do was curl into his heat and go to sleep.
I couldn’t do that so I repeated, “Yeah, we better do that.”
He gave me a squeeze but didn’t let me go.
He looked deep into my eyes and said gently, “I should say I’m sorry I didn’t give you that after givin’ you a nice night out like you deserve. But I’m not sorry. Just in case shit twists for you, I wanna be sure it’s clear. I like that it went down in a way that I’ll never forget. I hope you’re over the shit that warped it for you because it’d mean a lot to me you feel the same.”
I closed my eyes, pressed closer, dipped my head, and pushed my face in his throat.
“I’m over that warped stuff,” I whispered there. “And I feel the same.”
“Good,” he murmured into the top of my hair. “Now, sucks, but we gotta move you.”
“Yes, it does suck.” I tipped my head back. “But then I’ll be moved. Travis and me will be safe and in a nice place. And that’ll be that.”
“Yeah,” he replied on a grin.
“So maybe you’ll kiss me so we can get on with that and get it over with,” I suggested.
“Yeah,” he repeated on a smile.
But he didn’t kiss me.
So I called, “Joker?”
“Carissa Teodoro in my arms in my bed askin’ me to kiss her,” he said quietly like he wasn’t talking to me and he couldn’t quite believe his words were true.
I felt my body grow still.
Then I forced the stillness out and rolled Carson “Joker” Steele to his back, with me on top, murmuring, “He won’t kiss me, I’ll kiss him.”
And I commenced in doing just that.
Lucky for me, Carson “Joker” Steele liked it.
So he kissed me back.
*
I stood in Tyra’s house—my house—dead on my feet but still taking it all in as Joker closed the door on the last to leave, Tabby and Shy.
I was in.