I sucked in breath and started to shift up. Creed moved to my side, I got up on my ass and, in the dark, I opened it. I didn’t even look at it, not that I could see it if I tried. I just pulled it out, tossed the box aside and my fingers slid along the chain until I found the clasp.
“Will you lift my hair, baby?” I muttered and Creed moved to do as I asked.
When he shoved a hand under and lifted the mass up, I clasped the necklace on and felt its cold settle next to the one I was already wearing.
My eyes went to him. “Love it.”
My hair tumbled down, I felt his hand cup my jaw and there was a smile in his voice when he remarked, “You can’t see it.”
“Don’t care. Still love it.”
For a moment, yet again, Creed said nothing.
Then he said something, he just didn’t use words.
He moved into me, covered me and used body language.
Magnificently.
Thus my thirty-fifth birthday, unlike any of the thirty-four before, except one, started perfectly.
* * * * *
This was it.
The life.
It was evening. I lay on my back in my backyard, elbows in the turf, bare feet crossed, gut filled with Creed’s homemade, shredded chicken barbeque sandwiches, store bought macaroni salad and Charlene’s birthday cake. I was watching Brand and Kara play with Adam and Leslie. Creed was lying in the grass twenty feet away letting Theo use him as a jungle gym while Charlene was in my kitchen. She had put her foot down declaring I was not allowed to do the dishes on my birthday (not that I would, they could wait a day or three) so she was doing them.
I lounged thinking that I loved this. I only ever had a hint of this feeling, spending time with Creed and his kids in Phoenix, but I got it.
This was what family felt like.
This was what friends and family felt like.
This was what it felt like to be surrounded by people you loved who loved you (mostly, Kara and Brand probably weren’t there yet but I hoped they someday would be).
Outside of having Creed, this was the best feeling in the world.
And when he and I made our babies and Kara and Brand got to know me, it would only get better.
I’d had eleven great birthdays, the ones I spent with Creed growing up.
Those were great, but this one was better.
Further, it was official. Creed’s kids were good kids. Maybe Creed gave them a head’s up and some instruction but they didn’t even blink when they met Adam. They also didn’t treat him any differently.
Kara, especially.
I was surprised, considering her age, but she seemed to have a natural ability both to look out for Adam without making it seem like she was while at the same time she included him.
It was pretty awesome.
It had been Creed’s idea to bring the kids up to Denver. He said it would be a before going back to school mini-vacation for them because they’d never been here before. We were going to Elitch Gardens amusement park the next day and the Butterfly Pavilions on Sunday before he had to put them back on a plane.
He said that he also wanted to them to come up because even kids absorb things, witnessing people in their element and meeting the people who meant something to them. So it would be an opportunity for them to get to know me better.
It was my decree that they were staying in a hotel. Firstly, my second bedroom was still a pit and I hadn’t had the chance to clean it out. I also thought it was way too soon to introduce them to the kind of intimacy Creed and I sleeping together would communicate.