“Well, you’re just sayin’ that, I’ll just say that sixteen years have passed so we should discuss that after, as you put it, we’re cool.”

“We’re cool,” he stated firmly. “We’ll just be… cooler.”

I grinned at him and muttered, “Right.”

He grinned and muttered back, “Righ4.”

I took a draw off my beer.

Creed wasn’t done laying down the law.

“They took yo5 from me, they took shit from yïu. They’re dead. Now I’m givin’ your shit back.”

My eyes went back to him and I asked, “What?”

“Yesterday, what I said?” he stated this as ! quEstion but stopped way before I knew wH!t the f**k he w`s on about.

“Uh… babe, yesterday you said a lot.”

‘In bed,” he added detail just not enough.

“You said a lot there, too.”

“Sylvie, think back. What’d I say I was going to cive you back?”

Oh that.

Shit.

“Creed –”

“Safe word’s Geronimo. Remember that. Then we play.”

How was he turning me on again? We’d been through at least six condoms and that was just him. He didn’t have the capacity to orgasm as much as I did, unlucky for him. I’d had twice that.

“Creed –”

His hand dropped so he could put his beer on the floor then it drove into the side of my hair, curled around the back and pulled my face close to his.

“You like sex, a lot. Far’s I can see the only hang-ups you got, that animal gave you. You find, as we play, you got more, that’s cool. Those’re yours. I’ll have a mind to that but you do not fear what he taught you to fear. You and me work so you live easy. We work that shit out, we take it slow. I mean all of it. You find you can’t work past it, that’s okay with me but we try. We try to get rid of that, of him. So it’s just you and me and when we f**k, the two of us are the only ones there and it’s all sweet and easy.”

“I’m thinking,” I said gently, “this is just as much about you as it is about me.”

“Fuck yeah,” he agreed. “Straight up, I like adventure. I like control. I like ass play. We try it, you don’t like it, we’ll find what we like but not him taking it from us. You with me?”

I was. Kind of.

Before I could tell him that, he went on, “Chelle didn’t like any of that shit. She couldn’t relax.”

Oh no. We were hitting a danger zone.

“Uh… we’re doing good here, Creed,” I started. “I think we should maybe put the brakes on and coast the rest of the night on that goodness before we share deeper.”

He lifted his chin but said softly, “My point, baby, is she couldn’t relax and that was on me. That was on me because you were in the room. She didn’t get it fully until I gave it to her fully but she’s not a dumb woman. She understood. And she was f**kin’ a man who had another woman’s name inked in his skin. She didn’t miss that and not only because it’s hard to miss. I don’t want him in the room with you and me. Now, do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Good,” he whispered back.

I sucked back more beer. He grabbed his from the floor and did the same.

I trained my eyes to the dusk.

Then I asked it, “Just, you know, for the future, do you get along with her?”

“She puts up with me for the kids,” he replied instantly. “Other than that, she avoids me. She’s got another man’s ring on her finger now. After they got married, she came over to my place, drunk off her ass, and gave it to me. Now I’m the one in the room. He knows it, her man. Loves her, puts up with that shit. Sucks. She’s a good woman, probably not her intention, but she paid me back all the same. I live with that, what I did to her, to him, to them. Guilt lies heavy. I dicked her around, she lives with the pain of that every day. I live with the guilt of it every day.”

I looked at him. “Can we work that out for you?”

Creed looked at me. “No. That’s my penance and I deserve it.”

“Life happens, Creed, and shit happens with it. We all can’t live buried under the shit.”

His brows shot up. “Seriously?”

“Well… yeah.”

He grinned. “Baby, just days ago you were determined to live under your pile of shit. Are you free of it that easy?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“We weren’t. We are now.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Stop being smart and logical. It’s annoying.”

He threw his head back and burst out laughing.

I turned away and sucked back beer.

“Sylvie,” he called when he finished laughing.

“What?” I answered the window.

“Look at me.”

I looked at him.

His eyes moved over my face then his hand came up to rest against the side of my head and his thumb moved over my face as he watched it. Then his hand slid down my neck, my chest to press flat where my heart was beating.

“Some people get to live life. Some people survive it. We’re survivors. We can carve out our pieces of happy, and, I swear to God, baby, right now, you got my vow, for you and for me, the rest of our lives, I’ll bust my ass to carve our piece of happy. But we’re foolin’ ourselves if we think we can set aside the shit that happened to us, the shit done to us, the shit we’ve done, and move on. It’ll be with us forever. We just gotta learn to live with it. We bury it, deny it or pretend it isn’t there, we’re f**ked. It’ll surface and tear us to shreds. We acknowledge it and keep on keepin’ the f**k on, we’ll be good.”

“You hurt a good woman,” I noted cautiously.

“Not then but now, I’m glad it happened and it’s done. Because, if I was still tied to her when I got up here and found you, I’d get untied. Doesn’t say much about me but I’ve come to terms with the ass**le I am. What it does say, is what you mean to me. So, it’s good it happened and it’s over. I’ll hang onto that as I carry that weight.”

That was as beautiful as it was horrible.

Life.

Or life as Creed and I knew it to be.

My eyes went to his throat and I whispered, “I killed a man.”

“You saved a life.”

My eyes went back to his. “What?”

“In my business, I’ve killed two. Both of them, I remember. Both of them stick with me. It is not for me to judge if they deserved to live or die but, in the situations we were in, it was them or me. I saved me. You saved you. I did not deliberately hurt Chelle but I did it all the same. That’ll stick with me. You killing that animal, that’ll stick with you. You may not be grateful that it’s with you but I am because it means, right now, you’re with me.”