30. Lulu

30

LULU

I wear my heart on my sleeve.

I am the girl who believes in big, messy, beautiful love.

The kind that glows, spills over, and shines like a treasure chest rich with rubies, rife with sapphires.

I’m not scared.

I’m not afraid of feeling love again.

Because this—the way I want to curl myself around this strong, sensitive man, the way I want to smother him in kisses and sling quips in his direction and make him spicy peppers and run my hand over his sandpaper stubble and discover all the things going on inside his head—is new .

I don’t want to compare men. I don’t want to balance and weigh loves.

Leo is everything I thought he would be.

Because I know him.

There’s no darkness to be revealed in the bright light of morning. There’s no madness that’ll seep through the cracks.

Leo is who he says he is. The ingredients that comprise him are the ones I want most in the recipe for a man to love—he’s loyal, he’s kind, he’s funny, he’s caring. And he’s sober.

Also, he’s one hell of a fiend in the sack.

I climb over him, cup his cheeks, and look into his soulful brown eyes. “I’m so in love with you.”

He smiles at me from the inside of his soul. “Yeah?”

I drop a kiss to his nose. “Yes. So much yes. It’s crazy and wonderful, and I’m kind of ridiculously in love with you. How the hell did this happen?” I burst into laughter. “Someone tell me how this happened. It’s fantastic!”

He laughs, threads a hand in my hair, and tugs me close for a kiss. “It was time.”

I furrow my brow, my laughter ceasing like a faucet has turned it off. “What do you mean, ‘It was time’?” Something sounds portentous in his words, and I flash back to my mother’s comment— years in his eyes .

Has he always?

He swallows, perhaps taken aback, then clears his throat. “I mean, we’ve known each other. You know?”

“Right. But not always like . . .” I don’t know how to finish the thought or why it stuns me so much. But maybe it’s because I love the newness of this. I love the us-ness of this. I love that we can be a two-legged stool. Not a three-legged one with one leg sliced off.

I want him and me, and me and him, and no one else. I want this new love to belong to us.

“I just meant, the time was right because we’ve been friends.”

“Oh. Right. Yes.” That feels true and good. That makes sense to me. That’s years . “It’s the same for me. I’ve been friends with you for so long. And now here you are in my life in a new way, and boom. Everything inside me blooms for you. Like a sunflower coming to life. You’ve turned me into a sunflower.”

He chuckles once more, and I love that. I want to catch his laughter and put it in a jar, then sneak a whiff of it every time I need a pick-me-up.

“Kiss me, sunflower. And don’t stop.”

I kiss him madly. Ravenously. I kiss him so much it leads to more and more. It leads to him whispering roughly to me, telling me to sit on his face, to ride him, to fuck him hard.

I’m only too glad to oblige.

And he seems happy to oblige me in other ways too, sliding me under him once more and driving me out of my mind with pleasure.

When we’re drunk on sex and spent, I pat his belly. “You’ve earned your cake.”

“You really made one?”

I shoot him a did you doubt me look. “I take birthday cake very seriously.”

“When did you make this?”

I shrug happily. “I had time after the hunt, so I baked it here, worked on recipes while it cooled, then headed to the shop.”

“You’re a machine.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” I trot out to the kitchen, slice two pieces of the cake I slipped away to bake this afternoon, then bring the plates back to bed. I hand him a fork and his slice.

He dives in and chews. “Best birthday cake ever.” He glances behind him at the clock. “Best birthday ever.”

I look him over from head to toe. “I’d say. And here you are celebrating it in your birthday suit. You’ve always looked good in suits.”

“That so?”

“I remember noticing how good you looked in your Tom Ford suit at the chocolate show.”

He arches a brow. “You noticed my suit at the show?”

“I noticed how handsome you looked in it.”

His smile is an entirely new variety. He lowers his head, grinning like he’s incandescently pleased with this intel.

I decide to make him even happier, because I think I can. I gesture to his naked flesh. “But this one you’re wearing tonight? It’s definitely my favorite suit you own.”

His grin shifts to decadent mode now. “I’m happy to wear it for you anytime.”

“And I’ll be taking you up on that.” I take another bite then shift gears. “Why have you never been big on your birthday? I want to know you. I want to know all the things I don’t know.”

“I never had much growing up. There were years when we had very little.”

“You didn’t celebrate your birthday at all?”

“We did. My mom always made sure we had something, whether it was a small gift like a Matchbox car, or something a little bigger, like a book. But because it was hard for my parents, I didn’t want anyone to ever feel like they had to do something for me. That’s why my birthday was never a big deal to me.”

“I like doing things for you.”

“I like doing things for you and to you.” He finishes his slice and sets the plate on my nightstand. Then his stomach growls.

“Cake not enough for you?”

“I guess I’m still hungry.”

“I’m terrible, since I didn’t feed you dinner. Do you want to order something? Pizza, Thai, Vietnamese . . . there’s a fun place down the street that has sliders.”

“Sliders. When did sliders become a thing?”

I laugh as I take another bite of my cake. “I think it was because of White Castle. That Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle movie?”

“Ah, yes. They started calling them sliders. Why not call them mini burgers though?”

“Because mini burgers doesn’t sound as sexy as sliders?”

Leo’s face straightens. “Lulu, I need to tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Sliders are not sexy.”

I put down my plate. “What’s sexy to you?”

He reaches for me, flips me to my stomach, and kisses my spine. “You. Literally everything about you.”

“Everything? You sure about that?”

“I’m positive, and just because you doubted me, I’ll prove it to you.”

He proceeds to travel up and down my body, naming all the sexy spots.

Back of your knee.

Inside of your arm.

Right there above your belly button.

The shell of your ear.

Your ankle, dear God, your ankle.

The dimple at the top of your ass.

I shiver as he continues his soliloquy, lavishing attention on my hungry, greedy body.

Somehow, he wrings another orgasm out of me, and then I give him one too, and it feels like the world is a string of pearls at our feet.

Like everything is possible if we’re in this together.

That floaty, bubbly sensation carries me into the next day, to Strawberry Fields in Central Park, where we meet the team, grab our clue, and, like super decoder spies, run through options.

Add me up and I’m like a two by two, climb me and you’ll be lucky twice . . . Look inside and you’ll see a famous flyer, look out and you’ll see nearly everything. I’m arguably the prettiest, and I’m inarguably a masterpiece of a movement.

“Is it a Monet?” Noah asks. “Wait. Someplace with a Monet where you have to climb up to it. Monets are pretty stinking pretty.”

“Oh, that’s clever.” Ginny’s tone is straight up admiring. “Is it a helicopter tour? Private plane? Oh, wait.” Ginny crinkles her forehead. “Famous flyer. Please tell me we don’t have to go to Jersey to the Lindbergh monument.”

Noah clasps his face. “No, not Jersey. Anywhere but Jersey.”

Ginny laughs, and Noah nudges her, and all is right in their world.

Leo snaps his fingers. “Lindbergh. He’s on a ceiling somewhere. There’s a mural. Where is it, where the hell is it?”

“I know!” I crack the last clue.

We’re off and flying faster than the famous pilot, en route to the Chrysler Building, seventy-seven floors high, boasting a mural of Lindbergh in the lobby ceiling. The building is arguably the most beautiful skyscraper in the city, and it’s inarguably a masterpiece of the art deco movement. It’s a gorgeous steel invitation to climb skyward and marvel at beauty, inside and out.

Once there, we torpedo through our tasks, confident we’ve made up for some of our lost time yesterday, and I’m hopeful we’re in first place.

I don’t want to win for me.

Or even for Leo.

I want to come out ahead for Ginny and Noah, these new friends who’ve brought me into the fold so easily, and for everyone else at Heavenly who gave me a chance.

Along the way back to Central Park, Ginny and Noah laugh and joke, teasing each other in a whole new way.

“You’re really telling me you’d just lift your pizza?” He mimes eating a slice, flat as a board.

“That’s how we do it down under.”

“And I don’t fold it when I visit my grandparents in Mexico City,” Noah says. “But we’re New Yorkers now. We gotta fold it. That’s how we do it here.”

She laughs. “I assure you, the lift works just fine for a slice.”

“Let me prove the fold is better. I’ll take you out to get pizza and prove it.”

“Fine. You can prove it.”

He pumps a fist. “It’s a date.” He glances at her nervously. “It’s a date, right?”

“It better be a date.”

I smile at Leo, a few steps in front of me, and he smiles back. Yes, all is right in the world as we return to Strawberry Fields. Kingsley stands near a pack of ducks, acting as if she’s tossing her sister’s popcorn to the local waterfowl. Her sister pretends she’s about to chuck chocolate at them. Kingsley grabs her arm before she can throw, then they laugh so loudly it carries to us, neither of them throwing of course.

I try to spot other teams, to figure out where we stand. As I scan the hillside, it looks like we’re the second team to return.

I slow my pace when a familiar face comes into view.

My heart rate spikes.

I squint.

It can’t be.

Am I seeing things?

Specifically, someone I haven’t seen since my ex-husband's funeral.

She’s toweringly tall, beautifully blonde, with carved cheekbones.

Pale-blue eyes somehow contain a sadness that will never be erased, alongside a strength I can’t even imagine.

Tripp’s mother.