When I got home from Austin after Tro sent me away, it only took Children and Family Services a week to find me at Lilah’s. But instead of sending me back to the group home in the city, they found me a foster home only a few towns away from her.
But today is my eighteenth birthday—the day I’ve been dying for since Tro bought a house in a little town in the mountains near Yosemite, about twenty minutes from Lilah’s place, and asked me to move in with him. He picks me up at eight in the morning and we make a beeline for his place. He scoops me into his arms, bride style, then kicks open the front door and carries me through.
“What are you doing?” I ask, struggling in his arms.
He grins, his whole face lighting. It’s been a long road back since Lilah and I found him half-dead in his apartment three months ago. He’s started taking care of himself again, and there are times he almost seems back to his old self, but this is the first time I’ve seen that reckless spark in his eye since before everything happened with Kate. “Practicing.”
My insides turn to cement and I squirm out of his arms, my feet thudding onto the hardwood floor. “Don’t make me change my mind and move in with Lilah instead,” I warn.
The spark fades with his grin, and instantly, I hate myself for saying that. His gaze grows intense and searches mine. “You don’t ever think about it?”
I shake my head slowly as I step into him, my fingers caressing down the three-day growth along the line of his jaw. “Right now, all I can think about is what it will take to get you naked.”
My diversion works. The devil is back in his eyes as he rips his T-shirt over his head. He toes off his shoes and a second later, he’s stepping out of his jeans and boxer briefs. And then he’s got me in his arms again. He lifts me by the ass and hooks my knees over his hips, taking the stairs up to his bedroom two at a time, as if I weigh nothing.
This is the room that sold the house. The master suite is the only thing on the second floor: a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides that look over the woods to the mountains beyond—a view that would make even birds jealous. For miles all there is is serenity. Which has been good for Tro.
I’ve been here before, of course. Tro has fucked me on this bed at least a dozen times since he bought this place last month. But this feels different. I feel his need in the pound of his blood under my hands on his neck, and in the hard heat of his cock between my legs, as usual. But what’s overwhelming me, making it hard to breath, is the intensity of his gaze. He holds me in that gaze as he lays me back on the bed and undresses me, and right here, in this instant, I understand that there is such a thing as a soul mate. Suddenly, I feel closer to him than I ever thought possible to feel to another human being. I see him, hovering over me. I feel him as he enters me. But I know him in every cell of my body. And as he takes me, mind, body, and soul, I know in my heart that I’m finally where I belong.
Home.
It’s dark by the time Tro is done with me, but I’m not tired. I’m wired. Being with Tro is like being plugged in. We lay in a pool of sweaty sheets, catching our breath.
“You hungry?” he asks.
I left the foster home without breakfast this morning. Not that they weren’t good people, but I wasn’t going to waste a minute getting here. “Sure.”
Tro peals himself out of the sheets and snags his boxer briefs off the floor, tugging them on as he moves to the door. “Think I’ve got a box of mac-n-cheese downstairs.”
I’m suddenly freezing without him, despite the heat the summer sun through the windows has left behind. I pull on my underwear and one of his T-shirts, then pad down the stairs behind him. I slip onto a barstool at the long island separating his kitchen from the large, open living room. Down here, the floor-to-ceiling windows are painted green by all the cedar trees just outside, making me feel fresh and clean despite all the dirty things Tro just did to me in his bedroom.
I watch him knock around the kitchen, and a few minutes later, he’s scooping mac-n-cheese onto two plates. He sets them on the island in front of me then goes to the fridge, coming back with two beers.
“I’ve been working on something the last few weeks,” he says, watching his plate as he stirs the food around with a fork. “I’m stuck on this one spot.”
My heart skips. I haven’t pushed him, but I know getting back to his music will help him so much. “Tell me about it.”
We sit and eat, and he takes me through where he feels like it’s not quite right. When we’re finished, he pulls his guitar from the corner near the window and we settle onto the couch.
“So, it’s right here,” he says as he strums through a progression leading back to the chorus.
I slip the guitar out of his arms. “How ‘bout if you just do this?” I say, modulating it up a chord.
“Shit,” he says with a shake of his head. “That’s fucking brilliant.”
I give him a look. “It’s not brilliant.”