Page 65 of Love and Loathing

She cringed. “Oh no. I’m not walking out there if you need those three beams to keep it from collapsing.”

He gave her a withering look. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Uh, you’ve already got a poor record of knocking me into water, so …”

He put his hands on his hips. “I already propped up the deck this morning. These are extra. Come on, help me carry them out of the way.”

“All right, fine, but only because you’re so cute.”

He cleared his throat. “Dogs are cute. Babies are cute. I’m manly or handsome or hot.”

“Oh, sorry.” She came over and grabbed the end of one at the same time he did.

“I’ll forgive you this once.”

From back at the house, their dog, Big, let out a bellowing bark and came charging down the path between the lawn and the deck, leaving a dust trail in his wake. His name had been the only one that had fit. Standing on his back legs, he was as tall as Alex’s six feet two inches. He weighed in at one fifty-five, and he was pure muscle.

Jessie had left him inside when she’d gone next door, but she hadn’t locked it. She only had seconds to regret that decision, remembering how Big had been trying to open the front door with his teeth for the last couple of weeks. Because it was a knob, he’d never been able to, but he’d never tried the back door—the door she’d gone out, the one with the handle—until today, apparently.

He charged them, practically soaring across the deck, went up on his back legs, and jumped on Alex. Big was also a daddy’s boy.

The board they held dropped on the deck, Alex and Big went flying backwards, and then both man and dog hit the water with a splash that sprayed her from head to foot with its tidal wave. She stumbled back, her arms going up to the block the water, then wiped it out of her eyes.

A moment later, Alex and Big broke the surface. Big practically started doing a backstroke in the water—he just loved it—and Alex turned his gaze up at her.

Jessie clapped her hands over her mouth.

He narrowed his eyes. “Did you leave the back door unlocked?”

A laugh bubbled up in her chest. She pressed her lips together, trying so desperately to keep it in.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “You think this is funny?”

She thought of the fountain at the Grand Marina and what he’d said to her when she’d gone in, and it just came out. “Turnabout’s fair play.”

“Why you little …”

She let a laugh escape, then another, and another until she was in hysterics, practically bent over with laughter. Before she knew it, he was pushing himself up on the deck with those gorgeous arm muscles. He’d grabbed her before she had a chance to even think to run, and then they both went into the river.

The water was warm and deep, the silt at the bottom soft. She broke the surface and spewed water, then tried to push her hair out of her face. Alex’s arms were around her almost immediately. She didn’t see where he’d come from.

“Want to repeat that?” he asked.

She pushed her lips tight closed and shook her head.

“Then we’re even.”

She laughed. “You’d better kiss me, then.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said. And he did.

And in the warm water of the Southern Run River, she wrapped her arms around her husband, pushing her fingers into his glorious wet hair. As he pulled her flush against him, she could see their future laid out before them: the house, the dog, the family of their own—so much of it already coming true. And knew where it’d all come from—a past of loathing turned to love. And she wouldn’t change a thing.

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