Jesus fucking Christ, if this chick had a bunny, I’d be boiling it by now, getting ready to serve it as a Lapin a La Cocotte.

“The thing is…” Her arms loosened around my neck, and my back stiffened. “This is why I broke up with Darren. I don’t want to get married. And I don’t want to adopt, either. I’m not sure how much longer I am going to be here. And I don’t want to leave more than I already have behind. Having a kid is a terrible idea. Why would I? So they would be orphans in days or weeks or months or, best-case scenario, even years later? It’s not fair for them.”

I didn’t fail to notice that Rosie was the exact opposite of Nina. Nina popped out a kid and said fuck the consequences. Rosie deprived herself from having one so they wouldn’t suffer.

“Listen to me, Baby LeBlanc.”

She squeezed my bicep. “Don’t, Dean. Please. Let me down.”

We were already in front of the car. I jogged the whole way back to make sure she was safe and warm. Carefully, I set her down. She stood before me. The rain grew heavier. I didn’t want her to get too wet. Not like this, anyway.

“Listen, I’m not going to give this up. Us up,” she clarified, pulling me to her, chest-to-chest. Our lips brushed, and our noses touched. Our foreheads stuck together, glued by wet strands of hair. We were a unit. We always were, even when we dated other people. “I’m too selfish to let you go, Dean Cole. Like I knew I would be. I’m yours as long as you’ll have me. The only condition is—no baby talk and no marriage. I can’t give it to you. Not because I don’t want to. I can offer you all the love and devotion in the world, Dean. But just for a fraction of time.”

“Rosie.”

“Hey, listen. I know that you like me…”

“Like you?” My face twisted in abhorrence, spitting the words like they were revolting. Her eyes widened. I shook my head, a dark chuckle on my lips. “You think I fucking like you? Are you kidding me here? I don’t like you. I love you. Even that’s an under-fucking-statement. I live for you. I breathe for you. I will die for you. It. Has. Always. Been. You. Ever since I saw your sorry ass for the first time on that threshold and you fucking poked me in the chest like I was a toy. We’ve been apart for ten years, Rose LeBlanc, and not even one day has passed without me thinking of you. And not just in passing. You know, the occasional she-could-have-been-a-great-fuck. I mean really taking my time to think about you. Wondering what you looked like. Where you were. What you were doing. Who you were with. I stalked you on Facebook. And Twitter—which, by the way, you need to deactivate because you never once bothered to tweet—but you aren’t exactly a social media animal. I asked about you. Every time I was in town. And once I realized you were in New York with Millie…” I took a deep breath, feeling how quickly I was losing my grip on reality and rolling down a very slippery path to irrationality in trying to explain that she couldn’t give up on life just because it was going to end at some point. “Rosie, I bought a new penthouse in TriBeca a few months before you moved into our building.”

“Why are you telling me this?” She blinked away her tears, but fresh ones rolled down to replace them in no time.

“Because I had to sell it and lost a shit-ton of money the moment I realized you were going to be my neighbor if I stayed in my current place. Real talk, Rosie, you are all I ever wanted. Even when you wanted me to be with your sister. She was a comforting candle. You were the dazzling sun. I’d lived in the dark—for your selfish ass. And if you think I’m going to settle for something, you’re dead wrong. I am taking everything. We will have kids, Rose LeBlanc. We will have a wedding. And we will have joy and vacations and days where we just fuck and days where we just fight and days where we just live. Because this is life, Baby LeBlanc, and I love the fuck out of you, so I’m going to give you the best one there is. Got it?”

There was a moment of silence that I really hated, because after this kind of speech, the last thing you want to hear is a half-assed “okay.” Rosie didn’t “okay” me. She pressed her forehead to my chest and breathed me in.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you so much that I hated you for a while. And now that I know that you are damaged, I love you even more. Perfect things are not relatable. Unbreakable is fascinating, but not lovable. You’re breakable, Dean Cole. I’m going to do my best to keep you whole.”

I took her face in my hands and kissed her until she lost her balance. In the rain. In the reservoir. In the middle of fucking nowhere. This mess was our mess. This chaos was where we thrived.

When I pulled away, she growled.

“We’re getting married,” I stated, not asked. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but we are. And we’re having kids. At least two. Maybe more. I haven’t decided yet.”

“You’re crazy, Dean Cole.”

“I am,” I agreed. “And yet, this crazy train is in motion. You can’t stop it.”

“I love you.”

“Forever starts now, Baby LeBlanc. With you.”

THANKSGIVING DINNER WASN’T TERRIBLE.

Or maybe it was terrible and I hadn’t noticed because Rosie LeBlanc told me that she loved me, several times, and I was going to put a diamond on that finger. It was an impulsive decision, but then anything worth doing usually was. When you think about it, anything passionate—lust, love, violence, hatred—is spontaneous. Why not this?

I would have been perfectly happy marrying her on that night we took the elevator up together and I had Kennedy and Natasha by my side. I simply didn’t know it was a possibility. Now that I knew, I was going to put that shit on lock as quickly as possible. Vicious was wrong. He always said I loved the variety too much to settle for one girl. But the truth was, I never loved any of the women in the catalog enough to stop browsing. Once I found what I needed, I dropped the habit of Tinder and threesomes and fucking strangers in sordid bars so I could get off on the danger because casual fucks didn’t make the cut anymore. And unlike alcohol, I didn’t miss it one bit.

Anyway, yeah, dinner was okay.

We ate, talked, did the usual family shit. Rosie’s parents still nagged her about moving back to Todos Santos, even after I confirmed that I wasn’t a total douchebag. That didn’t seem to pacify them, but at least her dad stopped looking at me like I was sodomizing her on an hourly basis.

After dinner, Jaime summoned all four of us and we took Vicious’s Jeep north to L.A. Face-to-face board meetings were always in an office. We couldn’t risk losing our shit in public, which happened more often than not when the four of us shared the same space.

Things got intense in the vehicle before we even broached the topic that brought us all together. I was behind the wheel because I was the only guy who hadn’t had a drink. Vicious sat next to me, looking glum. He must’ve had a general idea what we were going to ask him for—put two and two together, I’m sure—and Trent and Jaime were in the back, talking football.

“How’s Luna doing?” Vicious asked Trent sometime during the last seven miles on Interstate 5. Everybody shut up immediately, and Trent cleared his throat, looking between Jaime and me in the rearview mirror.

“Not terrific.”

“How come?”

“She doesn’t eat. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t walk.”

“Does she know how to walk and talk?” I’d give Vicious one thing, his voice wasn’t hard or rough. Plain conversational.

“She does,” I intervened. “I saw her walking last time we were in Todos Santos in August.”

“Wanna know my angle?” I saw Trent from the rearview mirror scratching his head on a heavy sigh. “I think she’s depressed. I’m not sure what’s happening yet, but we’re having it checked out.”

“Trent’s mom is in Chicago.” Jaime’s eyes met Vic’s in the mirror. “She is helping him out with Luna for the time being, but his dad can’t leave here. He has his own mother to take care of.”

The complexity of life met me in an odd place. We were going to grow old someday, too, and I wondered how the hell I was going to be there for my own folks. Because I definitely wanted to be there for them. Which reminded me that I still had to visit my dad tonight after this was all over in L.A.

We parked in Vicious’s parking space and went into his office. Everything was minimal, cold and impersonal, just like him. When we switched branches a year ago, I refurbished the whole thing and put in new furniture and a bright green wall just to piss him off when he came back.

Now every time he saw the color green, he thought of me.

Vicious and Jaime took a seat on the black leather couch overlooking Vicious’s glass desk. I plopped down on the desk, tucking my hands into my pockets. Trent stood in the center of the room, his hands folded over his chest. We all looked at Vicious. And Vicious looked pissed off.

“Well?” He lifted one eyebrow, even broodier than usual. “Go ahead and fucking ask for it. You’ve been dying to, and you can’t wait to see my reaction, right?”

“You need to switch branches with Trent.” My voice was cut and impersonal. I was always the one to go against Vicious. I think Jaime was helpless when it came to this fucker, and Trent harbored the real dark shit none of us ever experienced, so he ought to slaughter him if they talked about it directly and Vicious refused his request.

“Not gonna happen.” Vicious hitched a shoulder, lacing his hands behind his head and making himself comfortable. He flung one of his legs over the other and looked about as chilled as a motherfucker could be under the circumstances. I leaned forward, a nonchalant smile on my lips.

“We’re not asking. We’re giving you time to wrap your head around it and pack a bag.”

Maybe I was too forward, but there were special circumstances in this case. I was talking full-blown, fucked-up situation, and Trent needed to be here more than Vicious did. That, we all agreed on.