Page 32

“Seriously, Val, I don’t give a fuck. Just do it.”

“I don’t want to cutyou,” I argued.

And then there was a knock at the door. He turned to stare at it.

“Probably Mom. My mom,” I clarified needlessly. As though there were somebody else’s mom who was going to show up on his fucking door step.Stupid, Val. They were early, but it’s the upper Midwest, so of course they were early. By about a half hour.

Elliot pushed off the stool and padded to the door, opening it to the sound of my mother’s sympathetic coos.

I could still hear her when my dad came into the kitchen, holding a garment bag, which he held out to me. “Taavi ironed this for you,” he told me.

Of fucking course Taavi had ironed it.

“Thanks, Dad,” I murmured. “Coffee?”

“I’ll get it,” he replied, and I was reminded that my parents had probably spent as much time here as I had. Maybe more, since my dad knew exactly where the mugs were. Like me, he usually took his coffee with cream and sugar.

“There’s no creamer,” I told him, and he just nodded, adding an extra spoonful of sugar.

Elliot led my mom and Taavi back into the kitchen, Taavi carrying a basket of stuff and looking tired, but definitely less like shit than either Elliot or I.

I immediately went to make his coffee the way he liked it, because that was about the only fucking thing I could do for him at this point as my mother directed him where to put the supplies for the reception.

I wordlessly handed it to him when he came back into the kitchen with his hands empty, and he took it, but then stepped into the space between my outstretched arm and my body, and I automatically pulled him against me, resting my chin on his hair and breathing him in.

God, I’d fucking missed him.

One hand settled on my hip as he leaned into me. “Morning.”

I tightened my arm around him. “Hi.”

And then Elliot and my mother—who wasstilltalking, despite the glazed-over expression on Elliot’s face—came back into the kitchen, and I let my arm fall, feeling almost guilty.

Taavi didn’t say anything, although he set his jaw for a moment before taking a sip of his coffee.

I made myself busy brewing a second pot.

“Val.” Elliot’s voice was tight.

“Yeah?”

“My hair?”

I blew out a breath, my hands trembling a little again, causing the glass of the coffee pot to rattle against the machine.

“I—”

Taavi reached out and took the scissors off the counter. “He’ll take your ear with it,” he said softly, his voice even. “Val, would you get a brush for me, please?”

I stared at him. Elliot’s hazel eyes focused on my boyfriend’s face.

“Mypapácut mine when my mother disappeared,” Taavi told him. “And I did it myself when he did.”

My mother sucked in a breath, but—for once—said nothing.

Elliot studied him for a long moment, then nodded once.

I went and got a brush out of Elliot’s bathroom, which I handed silently to Taavi, trying to thank him with my eyes for doing what I couldn’t. He gave me a tiny nod, which I thought meant that he understood, then brushed out Elliot’s thick, dark hair, white stripe and all.