Spiced Read online

  Joella nodded. “Thank you.”

  Tony didn’t sleep most of the way back to Bliss, but he didn’t say much either. Pepper couldn’t tell if he was mellow from the alcohol, sleeping with his eyes open, or just contemplating how life looked through bourbon goggles. When she helped him through the front door, Lucky greeted them with a plaintive yowl.

  Tony threw himself face-first onto the couch. “I fucking hate weddings.”

  She smiled and settled on her knees beside him. “You okay?”

  “Shoulda moved to Canada. I’d be a good Canadian.”

  She ran her fingers through his hair. “You’d be the best,” she agreed.

  He tilted his head to look at her. “But I like your boobs. All four of them.”

  “They like you too,” she said on a laugh. Poor man would hurt tomorrow.

  “I was off boobs before I met you.”

  “I was off dicks before I met you.”

  He snorted a sloppy laugh. “Mine didn’t work.”

  “Your boobs?”

  “My dick. It was dead. Ding-dong dead. Until you. You made my dick work again.”

  Yep, he would definitely hurt tomorrow if he was far enough gone to tell stories about his penis not working. “You’re very funny.”

  “Mean it. No wood. No boners. Ever. Tabitcha broke me. You fixed me. Mmm. Boobs.”

  He rubbed a hand over her chest. Her nipples pebbled to attention, and she ordered them to behave. “You need water.”

  “Just need you. You make all of me work again.”

  Her heart swelled to twice its size. “You make me work again too.”

  She didn’t believe for a minute that he’d had equipment problems, and he couldn’t fix her equipment problems, but he was everything else. Her friend. Her lover. Her partner.

  Her everything.

  She didn’t care if he never wanted to get married. If he could never say he loved her.

  So long as he didn’t leave her.

  A snore slipped out of his lips, and his head settled deeper into the couch. “Hey, it’s bedtime.”

  “I love going to bed with you.”

  She loved him.

  The realization hit with enough force to jolt her back. She loved him.

  “Tony, wake up. Just enough to walk to the bedroom, okay?”

  He grunted, another snore emanating from his chest, and her heart swelled again. She’d always expected love to come with a shower of hearts, bouquets of flowers, fancy dinners, long walks around a lake. Not creep up on her while she was fooling herself into thinking she was just indulging in a mutually beneficial friends-with-benefits relationship.

  But she did.

  She loved him.

  She loved the way his eyes twinkled when he was teasing her. She loved the way he hovered his fork over his own dinner when he cooked for her, waiting to see if she liked it before he dove in. She loved the way he slept with one hand curled around his rescue cat. She loved the way he appreciated Gran and her siblings, and the way he got along with her friends, and the way he’d come to treat Sadie as if she were a normal dog.

  She loved that he wasn’t perfect, that he had baggage, and that he might never be whole.

  Because she was pretty much the same.

  “Let’s go.” She disentangled herself from him and pulled him upright. Not exactly an easy feat, but he snore-snorted and startled himself awake. “You’ll be more comfortable in your bed.”

  A glassy-eyed, goofy smile crossed his face. “Pretty lady come to see me.”

  How could she not love him? “Stand up, studmuffin. I’m not strong enough to carry you.”

  “You’re strong enough for both of us.”

  Finally, she got him to his feet and to the bedroom. He stripped along the way and face-planted across the bed, showcasing his perfect butt cheeks in his suit. Lucky hopped up on the bed beside him. Pepper got a glass of water, rummaged through his medicine cabinet for Tylenol, borrowed a shirt for pajamas, and pushed him to the side as best she could.

  He probably didn’t need her.

  But she’d be there if he did.

  19

  Someone had wedged a pizza slicer into Tony’s brain. That bourbon needed a warning label. Or perhaps his family did.

  He followed the scent of coffee into the too-bright kitchen.

  “Morning, sleepyhead.” Pepper’s cheerful voice should’ve been as grating as the sunshine. Instead, it put a warmth in his chest. She was here. He hadn’t dreamed her being next to him last night. Details of when and how they’d gotten home—and what he’d said and all the horrific glory of the wedding—were fuzzy, but she was here.

  She slid him his favorite mug—an oversize number with Pizza is life scrawled in red over the white porcelain—and touched cool fingers to his forehead to brush his hair back. “Feeling okay?”

  He grunted and lifted the steaming coffee to his lips. She held out two Tylenol, and he almost asked her to marry him.

  Toast popped out of his toaster. She snagged a plate from the cabinet, slid out the silverware drawer for a knife, and turned to the fridge, bustling about fixing breakfast as though she’d done it in his kitchen every morning of her life.

  That warmth in his chest swelled almost as big as the pain behind his eyeballs.

  She slathered strawberry jam on the toast. “Belly okay?”

  It rumbled in response.

  Her laugh almost undid him. She was so bright. So happy.

  So good for him. “Thanks.”

  She put the toast on the island behind him and reached up to rub his temples. His eyes dropped closed, and the pain put up a good fight, but it was no match for her cool fingertips.

  “You gonna be okay today?” she asked softly.

  “Gonna live.” His phone dinged somewhere, and he winced without opening his eyes. Probably one of his brothers or sisters checking on him. “Don’t usually drink like that.”

  And he shouldn’t have let Tabitha get to him last night. He needed to buck up and be a man about it.

  Be a man.

  Oh, fuck. He pried his eyelids open.

  Pepper was still rubbing away the pain at his temples, standing close enough to suggest either her sense of smell was dead, or she was a freaking goddess. Her smile was soft. Not mocking, not laughing. Just caring. Warm. Sympathetic.

  To his state this morning?

  Or to his drunken confession?

  “I’m never drinking again,” he muttered.

  “Oh, I don’t know. You were pretty funny last night.”

  Teasing. Definite teasing. He swallowed hard. “Did I compliment you on having four breasts?”

  “Yep.” The extra sparkle in her bright eyes wasn’t good. “We’ll have to work on you being nicer to yourself though.”

  He should’ve laughed. Said something sarcastic. Changed the subject.

  But his brain was moving at the speed of frozen sludge, and his face was getting hotter than the coffee.

  He’d told Pepper he’d been impotent.

  “Yeah,” he said belatedly. Toast. He needed toast. And for her to leave.

  Twisting out of her reach felt wrong, but he had to. Before she realized—

  “You were serious,” she said softly.

  “Go away.”

  “Tony.”

  Her hand settled on his back. He jerked away. Jackhammers exploded in his head, and he had to grip the island countertop for balance.

  Soft arms wrapped around him from behind. She pressed a kiss to his spine. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not.” He looked down at the toast, and his stomach lurched. One more thing he didn’t need anyone else to see. One more way he’d broken himself. “Let go.”

  She ignored him and held him tighter.

  As though she were holding him up. Offering to be his rock. His stability. Patching him back together and keeping him from falling to pieces.

  How could she not know that relying on her would break him? He didn’t nee
d anyone else. He didn’t want anyone else. Not like this.

  Not if it meant giving her the power to crush him.

  “Go—” he started again.

  “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t push me away.”

  Push her away. Reject her. Protect himself from her.

  Do to her what he was afraid she’d do to him.

  His heart thumped under her hand. He didn’t want to hurt her. Hell, he didn’t want her to go. But he didn’t know if he could let her all the way in.

  He licked his lips. Swallowed hard. Set his pulse hammering harder. He’d spent over a year burying himself in work, pretending he was dating woman after woman, he was fine, that he didn’t need anything else in his life.

  Lying to himself.

  The lies were comfortable. But they hadn’t made him happy. Not like she had.

  “Found out the baby wasn’t mine in the delivery room a week or so after Thanksgiving,” he said. “Mom was diagnosed with cancer at Christmas. Died mid-January. I lost my daughter. I lost my wife. I lost my mother. Pepperoni Tony’s was all I had left. It was the only thing that understood me. Nothing else mattered.”

  She rubbed his racing heart. “Lot to go through alone.”

  He pushed the plate across the countertop. “You’re going to be late to work.” Hell, it was Sunday. Did she work on Sundays? He didn’t know.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “For what?”

  “Shush. Close your eyes.”

  He obeyed. Mostly because he didn’t want her to let go.

  “Are they closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. What do you see?”

  “The backs of my eyelids.”

  “Imagine it’s a pile of dirt.”

  “Pepper—”

  “Do it or I’m telling Lucky to pee on you.”

  “My cat doesn’t take orders.”

  “I’ll bring George over.”

  He didn’t mean to shudder, but she’d caught him off guard. “My cat could take him.”

  “As good as that would be for George, right now, we’re talking about you. Can you see a pile of dirt?”

  Sure. He was picturing it on top of the last of the melting snow in his small backyard, piled waist high. A nice, brown, muddy stack of dirt. “Are we getting dirty, Miss Blue?”

  “Imagine every speck of dirt is something someone you love did to hurt you.”

  His teeth clenched together, and the mound grew like a mountain rising out of the ground. “This is stupid.”

  She pinched his nipple.

  “Ow!”

  “Close your eyes. Picture the dirt. Now get a shovel, or a backhoe, or whatever, and shovel it into a box. It’s a Mary Poppins box—it’ll hold way more dirt than you think it will.”

  He grunted, but he pictured it. A massive pile of disappointment and heartbreak, starting with finding out his father was leaving them for his other family and ending with Tabitha leaving him for her other family. The pain. The outrage. The blackness. The impotence. All of it in a big, massive, shitty heap of dirt.

  Him driving a big old yellow backhoe, feeling that power, thrusting the machine into that pile of shit and dropping it into a box. A small box—smaller than his oven—but since Pepper said it would fit, it did. The magic cardboard box took eight scoopfuls of dirt, and even when he tried to miss, the dirt went in the box.

  “Can you drive a backhoe?” he asked.

  “No talking until your pile is gone.”

  “It’s half gone. Box is full.”

  “All right. We can work with that. Put your backhoe away and grab a torch.”

  He started to grin. The backhoe disappeared like magic, and he was suddenly holding a massive flaming torch, the kind they used in post-apocalyptic movies to light dark caves.

  “You’ve got the torch?” Pepper asked.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Light the box on fire.”

  “Dirt doesn’t burn.”

  “Your brain is a magical place, Tony. Light the box of dirt on fire.”

  He imagined himself touching the torch to the box. The cardboard lit and flamed, and the dirt inside it lit on fire too. Sparks shot off it as though the dirt were made of sparklers. Firecrackers shot out of the box. The dirt pile burped, and lava launched into the sky.

  He let out a satisfied chuckle.

  “Burning good?” she asked.

  “One hell of a show,” he said. And one hell of a good time. He hadn’t shot off firecrackers in years.

  “Feeling better?”

  He blinked his eyes open.

  The untouched toast still sat on Mom’s old china plate, Lucky was slinking toward the back door to drop a play mouse in her water again, and Pepper was once again rubbing his chest right over his heart.

  And he felt twenty pounds lighter. “Yeah,” he said.

  But as realization settled in, tension crawled back into his shoulders.

  “Relax,” she said. “This is about you. Nobody else has to know how you feel inside. Just you. You deserve some peace. Let yourself have it.”

  He closed his eyes again and imagined the burning box. It was a low, hot fire now, embers burning to the ground, the other half of the dirt pile still there. He climbed back into the backhoe, found a new box, and tackled the rest of his baggage. He knew he was standing in his kitchen, Pepper still behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist and chest, but he could feel the rumble of the backhoe’s engine, see the pile of dirt getting smaller, the box bulging as he finished dropping all of his problems into it. Tabitha went into that box. His father’s betrayal. The wedding. The moment his mom told him she was sick. Her funeral. All the women he’d brought over so he could say he was dating. His family’s expectations. His brothers laughing, his father too—guess it was your turn for the divorce, Tony boy.

  He grabbed his torch again—now a light saber with fire glowing on the tip, because he was apparently still a kid at heart—and this time, when he lit the box, flames shot a hundred feet high into a dark night sky. Then a thousand. Reaching all the way up to the heavens, pulling the sun to the horizon to chase away the shadows.

  His breathing slowed. So did his heart. Time ceased to exist.

  In his mind, he saw the sun lighting the backyard. Daisies and tulips pushing through the two smoldering piles of dirt. A big maple tree sprouting. A hammock hung between the tree and the house. Cold lemonade. Hot pizza. Classic rock on the radio.

  Happiness.

  His eyes flickered open again, and he realized he was rubbing Pepper’s hand over his heart. He sucked a big breath through his nose, and he let go.

  Let go of the hurt. Let go of the walls. Let go of the darkness.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Helped?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I struggled to make friends when I was growing up. I wasn’t entirely normal, and I took a lot of things personally. My mom taught me that trick. It got me through my teenage years until I figured out most people are inherently nice, and they weren’t out to keep me from my dreams. Even if they were, though, I didn’t have to let them into my mental space. You don’t have to either.”

  He twisted around to wrap his arms around her. “I like you in my mental space.”

  In his mental space, in his house, in his heart.

  She squeezed tight. “Me too.” Her arms relaxed, and she slid out of his grasp.

  Not back.

  Down.

  “And I like that you work for me,” she whispered as she reached for the waistband of his sweatpants.

  Her hands brushed him, and there he went, showing off for her.

  And then she showed off for him.

  And he wondered how he would ever survive without her.

  * * *

  Pepper slipped into her house early Sunday afternoon after a lazy morning of just enjoying being with Tony. Sadie bunny-hopped to her, tongue lolling, and she bent to love on her dog. “Hey, sweet girl.”
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  “See?” Cinna said. “She’s glowing.”

  Pepper glanced up to find not just Cinna, but also Margie—on a video call on Cinna’s phone—scrutinizing her.

  “She’s practically nuclear,” Margie intoned.

  “Time for a plan.” Gran bustled into the living room too, arms laden with candles, a framed eight-by-ten picture of Elvis, and the dead blow-up goat. “She’s got herself a good one, and we’re not gonna let him go without a fight.”

  “What are you talking about?” The glow, she couldn’t deny. Tony did it to her. But a plan? For what?

  “We’re pulling out all the stops to get Tony to elope. With you. Getting engaged isn’t enough. Not with your track record.”

  “I thought we were here for an intervention,” Margie said over the video chat.

  “Definitely an intervention,” Cinna agreed.

  “I’m not eloping.” She shot a what the hell? look at her sisters. “And I don’t need an intervention.”

  Margie didn’t blink. “You’re sleeping with him and you’re attached. You need an intervention.”

  “I do not—”

  Cinna glared at her. “We know a lot more than you think we do. And we like Tony. So, yes, you’re getting an intervention.”

  Unease slithered into Pepper’s spine. “Again, what are you talking about?”

  “Not in front of the troublemaker,” Cinna hissed to Margie.

  “She’s making an elopement ritual,” Margie hissed back. “With the goat.”

  Gran dropped the candle and a rubber chicken she’d pulled from Pepper didn’t want to know where. Then she plopped onto the couch and blew into the goat’s air nozzle. George trotted into the room and growled at the growing white atrocity.

  Pepper lifted Sadie. “You do whatever you need to do. We’re going for a walk.” Back to Tony’s house, where she hoped Sadie and Lucky could find a way to get along.

  Sadie approved. Her butt wiggled, and she twisted to lick Pepper’s chin.

  “Good girl,” she murmured.

  “Pepper, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Margie wasn’t one to dance around a subject, but something in her tone gave Pepper pause. As though Margie knew things Pepper still hadn’t wanted to talk to her family about. As though Margie knew she was broken.