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And most of all, she wanted love.

To give love, and have it.

She loved Daughtry. She just did. There was no half-assed way about it. That man was fundamentally lovable.

He didn’t think so, she realized. But she wasn’t quite sure how to untangle all the threads that had caused that.

It just meant they were going to have to have another honest conversation. Just not today.

She wasn’t a coward, after all, but she also wasn’t a fool.

They had a good thing going right now, and she didn’t want to disrupt it. She wanted to get just a little bit more. Just a little more.

Once they got a for-sale sign put on the van, they went to dinner at Denver’s.

Justice and Rue had gone out to Smokey’s and Landry and Fia were at home. Which left her, Daughtry, Arizona, Micah and Denver.

She caught her reflection in the glass on a framed photograph. It made her heart stutter. She was glowing. The joy and admiration on her face was so intense it... took her breath away. She looked like a woman who cared. And when you cared you had so much to lose.

She knew why it scared her.

Because you’re afraid to be happy. Because they’re going to hurt if you lose this.

Well. That was the truth. And she was afraid to lose them. All of them.

But him most of all.

She was afraid of losing his touch. Losing her place in his bed.

That was strange. Because with hope did come quite a bit of fear. A sense of scarcity. A desire to defend. It tapped into all of her other emotions. Fear, anger, longing.

It wasn’t comfortable.

She had always assumed that people who had a lot of things were completely comfortable. But she was beginning to understand that the more you had, the more you wanted to guard it all jealously.

But this was great. This night. This dinner. She felt so far removed from the girl she had been that first night. That first dinner. And yet she also felt her, right there with her.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked at the spread of barbecue that Denver put on the table.

“Hey,” said Denver. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, wiping at her eyes.

“You look sad.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sad.”

She did wish that Daughtry would come in and defuse the moment. But everybody else was lagging behind. And it was weird to have her boss catch her in a vulnerable moment.

“I’m just really grateful, to be here. Your family is the best.”

Denver got a strange look on his face. “That means a lot, Bix. Given our history, that means a hell of a lot.”

She saw his wounds then. The things that he cared about.

He was trying to atone. He might be different than Daughtry but he had a very similar wound.

Finally, everyone else came into the kitchen, and they all sat down at the table, serving big portions all around. And when they were done, they lingered in the living room chatting. It was the single most domestic experience of Bix’s life. Then she went back to the house she shared with the man that she loved. They ate cookies. They made love, and they went to sleep.