Page 185 of The Carnage We Keep

Fuck, I love when she smiles.

Bella always has this stunning, dark beauty to her. The hair, the heavy black lashes, the full lips and tan Mediterranean complexion from her dad. It all makes the piercing brightness of her blue eyes just pop.

But when she smiles?

Fuck.

I’m done. Dead in the water.

Smitten.

Yep, that’s the word I’ve landed on to describe the stupidly needy, possessive feeling I get inside my chest whenever she’s near. It gets worse when I’m touching her or she’s in my arms.

Smitten.

Me.

The fuck is the world coming to?

The road that winds up Griswold Hill evens out as we reach the top. I pull into the small parking lot. At the far end of it, I slow to a crawl and ease the car over the curb and into the grassy area at the very top of the hill.

Bella turns to me when she hears the engine die.

“Can I take it off now?”

“Nope. Stay put.”

I can practically hear her eyes rolling.

“Yes sir.”

I stifle a groan.

Bella just grins, knowing what that just did to me.

I walk around the car, stopping for a moment to scowl at a tiny speck of mud on the front fender before I lean down and gently rub it off with the heel of my hand. Then I open Bella’s door and reach in to help her out.

“This way,” I murmur as I guide her out of the car and across the grass. I glance up at the night sky and grin.

The other night, when our weird neighbors Kyle and Kylie invited us over to dinner for roughly the thirty thousandth time, we finally gave in.

In the end they did not ask us to swap spouses or hand us poisoned Kool-Aid and invite us aboard the mothership to meet their glorious cosmic space god. Kylie, did, however, made the mistake of asking my wife what her star sign was.

Honestly, the Kool-Aid would have gone over better.

Needless to say, I doubt we’ll be invited over to the neighbors again anytime soon, and that's fine with me. But one thing that came up in conversation was what was happening tonight, cosmically, and that Bella was bummed to miss it.

Knightsblood isn't exactly smack in the middle of Manhattan. But the entire Northeast, especially the New Jersey–New York–Connecticut corridor, is so saturated with light pollution that when we get a meteor shower, we barely see it.

Tonight’s was supposed to be bright enough that we could, but then of course the weatherman said full cloud cover, which is why Bella was so bummed.

I glance at my watch as I lead her across the grass, a heavy blanket draped over my shoulder.

Any minute now…

I tell Bella to stay put—yes, I know that’s like lighting a match to check for a gas leak—while I unfold the blanket on the grass. I have her kick off her shoes and lead her onto it, helping her lie back across it beside me, our faces turned to the cloudy sky above.

“For the record,” she sighs, “I know where we are and what you’re doing.”