It was happening all the time these days.
“Yeah,” I told Creed.
“Wide berth, beautiful,” Creed advised.
I nodded, cheek sliding against his chest.
I could do that. I’d been doing it for years. I could do it for a few more months.
“You know,” I told his chest, “you’ve had this bed since you were a little kid. You should get a bigger bed.”
“I will, in a few months, when we’re gone and I’m buyin’ one for the both of us.”
See?
There it was. Creed making me feel better.
I smiled into his chest.
“Soon,” I began, “we’ll have to open the windows. We lay like this, we’ll hear the crickets. We meet at the lake, we’ll hear the frogs.”
His hand stopped stroking and his arm curled around me as he murmured, “Yeah.”
“Soon after that, no more sneaking. No more driving an hour and a half to have dinner. Just you and me, a big bed, a new puppy then Kara and Brand and a big happy family.”
His arm tightened, he pulled me up and over him so we were face to face again and he repeated a quiet, “Yeah.”
His face was illuminated only by the moonlight but I could still see the hair had fallen over his forehead. I lifted a hand to shift it away and for once, since he was lying on his back, it stayed where I put it.
That almost made me smile but what I had to say made certain I didn’t.
“I have to go back.”
“I know.”
I sighed and felt Creed do the same before both Creed’s arms stole around me. He rolled me so he was mostly on top and he kissed me, slow and sweet.
He was good at good-bye kisses. Great. Fantastic. I’d had a lot of them.
Too many.
I’d be glad when the day came that I got them few and far between.
With clear reluctance, Creed rolled us both out of his bed then he waited until I put my jacket on. We walked, silent, hand in hand out of his house and through the woods to my back gate.
There, as always, he stopped me, turned into me and, as always lately, he bent low, framing my face with his hands and he kissed me light and sweet.
A different kind of good-bye kiss, not as good but just as precious.
“See you tomorrow, Creed,” I whispered.
“Tomorrow, baby,” he whispered back.
I grinned up at him but I knew it was fake.
So did Creed.
But still, with no choice, he let me go and, with no choice, I went.