FORTY-ONE

COURTNEY

The onions are making my eyes sting.

That’s the story I’m sticking to, anyway, as I stand barefoot in Auguste’s kitchen, apron tied at my waist while I chop up the veggies for the shrimp pasta primavera and my phone on loudspeaker. I scowl at the olive oil bottle propping it up.

“I’ll do it,” I say, the words thick in my throat. “I’ll sell you my half of the property.”

I can’t call it a house or a home. Because I’ll chicken out. I’ll think about all the memories I have tied into those walls.

There’s a beat of silence before she says, “Thank you for being reasonable. Martin will be relieved.”

Good for him. I hack at the broccoli with more gusto than it requires.

“We can get the papers sorted quickly, but it might take me a little longer to get the funds… maybe we can come to an arrangement between us?”

“An arrangement,” I say quietly. “Like a payment plan?”

“Yes? It’s just that the value has gone up and… and until we find a buyer?—”

“You’re going to sell it?” My insides clench at the thought.

That’s my house.

The door clicks open ahead of me. I don’t even look. I just know—by the way the air shifts, the way my breath instantly hiccups in my chest—that it’s him.

“Hey,” Auguste mouths when I finally look up.

I blink back the burn in my eyes, still pretending it’s the onions when he steps closer to the kitchen island, Samson’s leash looped over one arm and a paper bag from the Caribbean store clutched in the other. Our soda.

He glances at the phone, then me, and mouths again, “Are you okay?”

I nod and tell my mom, “We can work out a payment plan or just sell it right away.”

“I was thinking we could work on a payment plan based on the house as it was when your father signed it to you. Before we renovated and modernized the place…”

Auguste’s brows pull together, his mouth snaps shut as he takes Sammy off his lead and then drops into a stool opposite me.

“Maybe we should get a surveyor to give us the appreciated value of the property without the changes you and Martin made, and we can agree on a payment plan based on that.”

That’s it. That’s all I can give her. She picked Martin over me, and now I’m picking myself over her. Over them.

“Okay, Mom, well… I have to go and finish dinner. But you get better and let me know when you’ve figured out how you want to go about the property. Bye now.”

“Courtney…” I hang on the line, waiting for her to say whatever she has to say. Hoping that she’ll change her mind. That she’ll choose me this once.

When she does nothing more than stutter, I end the call. “Bye now.”

“That didn’t sound like mom chat.” I look at him and he leans closer, taking the knife from my hand. “Court…”

“I’m an idiot.”

Auguste comes around the counter and tips my chin up. His eyes find mine, and I’m gone. Just like that.

“You are my love… my girl, my princess… you are not an idiot.”

I nod, then shake my head. “I called her to make sure she’s getting better and… and she just spoke about the house.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Apparently I’m letting it come between us.” The sob I’ve been holding onto rips from me in a loud snort that warbles into manic laughter. “The house. The good memories are the problem.”

He leans in and presses a kiss to my temple. “Do you want to sell your half?”

I hesitate. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.” He gives me that Auguste look that’s all intensity and softness wrapped in this hulking body of his. “If you want to keep the house, if you want to protect what it means to you, we’ll buy your mom’s half.”

My head snaps up. “What?”

“She’s going to sell it. So we buy it. We keep the memories. For us.” The earnestness in his voice kills me. “For our future. For our kids.”

The breath whooshes out of me. “Our?—”

“One day,” he says, brushing his knuckles over my cheek. “The good parts of your childhood? We’ll pass them on and we’ll fill every inch of the place with our memories. The best memories…”

I let out a watery laugh. “You’ve got it all figured out, huh?”

“If you said yes right now, we’d be on a jet to Vegas tonight. You’d have my name in a matter of hours and?—”

“I want a real wedding.” I grin, even as the tears threaten.

“Oh, yeah?”

“With slow dancing and dirty dancing and every kind of dancing with you.”

Auguste pulls his phone out and taps on a playlist. A slow, lazy beat flows from the speaker, thick as honey as he offers his hand and I take it.

“What are we doing?”

“Practicing.”

We dance, barefoot in the kitchen. My cheek against his chest. His hand warm on my waist.

“This is our first dance,” he murmurs. “And after this?”

I smile up at him. “You carry me to bed.”

He spins me slowly, pulls me in closer. “And I peel your dress off. Real slow. And then…”

“I’d get on my knees and worship every inch of my husband like he’s my religion.”

One move and I’m over Auguste’s shoulder. He carries me straight to the bedroom and tugs the apron loose before he peels his t-shirt off my body. Leaving me in just my soaked lace panties.

Auguste curses under his breath. “You’re killing me.”

“You started it.”

I yank off his shirt while he strips his sweats. As I told him before, I drop to my knees, hands roaming his thick thighs, his strong hips, his hard abs.

“Court,” he growls, voice already ragged.

“Shh, baby… I’m worshipping.” I kiss his hipbone, then the base of his cock. He’s already hard… thick… heavy. Fucking beautiful—light brown skin flushed and glistening with his need for me .

When I wrap my lips around the tip, his whole body jerks.

“Jesus… fuck … you fucking ruin me, Snow.”

I suck him deep, tongue swirling, lips tight. Swallowing him inch by inch like he taught me.

When I can’t take him any deeper, I open my mouth wider and wait for him to fuck my throat. Auguste doesn’t move. His large hand fists in my hair but doesn’t push. He just holds me there, staring down with his reverent, possessive eyes.

“Your mouth is a fucking miracle,” he rasps.

Then he pulls me up onto my feet and pushes me onto the bed. With slow promise, he crawls over me, trailing kisses up my legs. When he gets to my panties, he tears them off me.

“I’m not going to have any left.”

“Great, you can stop wearing them.”

“But they’re pretty,” I moan when he blows a hot breath over my slit.

“Not as pretty as your cunt, Snow,” the reply is low and ragged.

His tongue ghosts over my belly, between my breasts to my jaw. All while his cock lines up with my pussy.

Then he’s inside me. Thrusting slow and deep, like he’s got all the time in the world and he wants to make me feel it.

“Your cunt is mine. You’re mine.”

“I’m yours.”

“Mine,” he groans, licking the side of my face.

“Yours,” I mewl, pushing my heels into his ass with the desperation to feel him come apart for me.

He rocks into me, angle perfect, eyes locked on mine as he braces over me with one hand and the other trails down my belly. His thumb finds my clit.

“Auguste… yes, baby…” I meet him thrust for thrust, arching my body into his.

Nothing exists but us. Nothing matters but this. This heat. This safety. This need.

Our love.

And nothing feels so fucking good. And… “God. God… baby…”

My whole body lights up. So bright… too bright… I’m burning. I’m aching. I’m…

His. All his.

I breathe for him.

I hurt for him.

I yearn for him .

And as he owns my body, I break for him. Over and over. And over.

“Good girl. Good… fucking… girl…” Auguste groans, and then he’s coming hot and hard, buried so, so deep.

We stay tangled for a long time. Heartbeats syncing. Breath slowing.

“I love you,” I whisper.

“I really would marry you tonight if you let me.”

“I know.”

Auguste smiles into my chest, and as he plants a kiss over my heart, his thumb scrolls across my hip bone.

“Mine.”

I don’t know where the week goes. But I’m clinging on to every second we have left in LA. Together.

My chest hurts at the thought and I pause part way through emptying a drawer when I hear Auguste’s deep voice grumble from the bedroom.

“C’mon, buddy…” I peer through the gap in the door and my heart does that sad, awful lurch that stops me from breathing every time I look at him and our boy today. “You can’t hide in mommy’s suitcase forever.”

I chuckle to myself when Samson’s tail sticks out from the duffel.

“I know,” Auguste continues when gives him a gravelly yip. “It sucks. But we’re a family and your mommy will always come back… we’ll go visit her…”

Samson sighs, flopping on my packed clothes when Auguste scratches behind his ear.

“I’m gonna miss her too… fuck, I miss her already…”

This is the worst. When we planned the next ten months, it didn’t feel like this.

Hopeless and daunting. Leaving him is going to hurt unlike anything else, and I’m not ready for tomorrow evening when he takes me to the airport and we kiss goodbye…

see you soon… or whatever we’ve told ourselves it is.

Opening the closet door, I rush to him. I can pack tomorrow. Tonight we can just be. Eat take out, fuck and love and cuddle in his fresh sheets so that they smell like us when I’m gone.

Auguste catches me as we fall onto the bed, next to my case. I can’t stop myself from kissing him again. I won’t. I want to make the most of each of these moments we have left.

Then we come up for air and Auguste’s watching me with those green eyes that make all sense and will go out of the window. He smiles that smile that says he’s aching and dying like I am.

“I don’t want to leave,” I whisper over his lips, curling into him when Samson plops himself over our heads.

Auguste nods, cradling me deeper into him with a kiss to my hair while breathing me in. He says nothing for the longest while.

Then his hand caresses my face, fingertips memorizing every line as he murmurs, “I know… I know, Princess. But you have to.”

“Do I? I don’t want to go back to not having this. To not having you.”

“We’re not going back, Court, we’re forging ahead. Making a future.”

My fingers twist into his t-shirt and I pull his mouth back to mine. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“Impossible.”

He grins. “Try me.”