The Sweet Spot (26 page)

“Is Alex having dinner with us tonight?” Raffi asked her father innocently as he scooped up her backup.

“She is,” Jordan murmured quietly, avoiding Ani’s gaze as he turned to go inside.

“Alex?” Ani called after Jordan teasingly.

“She’s a new resident at the hospital,” Jordan replied, turning back to Ani.

“That’s nice,” she said softly. “I’m happy for you.”

“It’s just been a few dates,” he admitted, looking uncomfortable.

“I’m glad Jordan,” Ani assured him as Raffi went inside and left them alone on the steps.

“I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life Ani,” Jordan said quietly.

“I don’t want you to be,” Ani agreed
.

“Our divorce will be final
in a little over a month,” Jordan murmured, gazing at Ani sadly.

“Yes,” Ani whispered, staring back at him.

“I always thought it would be you,” Jordan admitted, running his fingers through his thick hair.

“Me what?”
Ani asked softly.

“I always thought you would be the one I would gr
ow old with. I even have a picture in my mind of what you’ll look like,” Jordan confessed hoarsely.

“When I’m old and grey?” Ani asked tenderly.

“Yeah,” Jordan laughed ruefully.  “And it’s strange trying to adjust that image in my mind to fit someone else.”

“I’m glad you met someone,” Ani murmured.

“We’ll see,” Jordan shrugged. “She’s a young resident with stars in her eyes for the top neurosurgeon. Wait until she finds out I can’t cook and I snore.”

“
I’m really sorry about everything Jordan,” Ani whispered, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder helplessly.

“At least I won’t have to fight a ghost for her love,” Jordan replied quietly, turning away from Ani’s hand and walking into the brownstone.

When Ani returned to the loft, Sawyer and Siobhan were gone and Sebastian was still passed on her bed.

“Hey there,” she whispered softly, stretching out beside Sebastian and snuggling on his chest.

“Hey,” Sebastian replied, blinking at Ani and startling awake as he always did.

“How do you feel?” Ani asked gently.

“Like I drank a bottle of Mexican tequila last night and had a big fight with my woman,” Sebstian replied with a wry grin.

“The house is
two thousand dollars a week, four thousand for the two weeks,” Ani said softly, tracing her fingers gently over the teardrop tattoos under Sebastian’s eyes.

“Hand me my jeans,” Sebastian murmured, motioning to the pile on the floor where he’d dumped his clothes before climbing into bed.

Ani grabbed his jeans off the floor and passed them to him silently and Sebastian stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills.

“
Four thousand,” he said, counting out hundreds onto the bed and handing Ani the stack of cash.

“You were walking around with
four thousand dollars in cash stuffed into your jeans pocket?” she said incredulously.

“
Actually, I brought five thousand,” Sebastian murmured. “I didn’t know how much the house was since you refused to tell me initially.”

“Which paintings did you sell?” Ani asked softly, gathering up the money and sticking it in a shoebox under the bed.

“A few you’ve never seen,” Sebastian replied, his eyes flickering with traces of last night’s anger.

“
What was the subject matter?” Ani persisted quietly.

“Why do you want to know?” Sebastian asked curiously.

“I saw some of your sketches when I was at your apartment last night,” Ani admitted. “They were incredible.”

“The prison yard,” Sebastian murmured with a far
-away look in his eyes.

“Are those the ones you sold?” Ani asked softly.

“Yes,” Sebastian replied, holding Ani’s gaze with an unreadable expression in his deep green eyes.

“Who di
d you sell them too?” she whispered.

“A gallery,” Sebastian replied, his eyes still unreadable.

“Are you still angry with me?” Ani asked softly.

“No
t really,” Sebastian whispered, pulling her into his arms and pressing his lips into her hair.

“I’m sorry I hurt you yesterday,” Ani choked against Sebastian’s chest.

“I’m sorry I ran away from you,” Sebastian murmured.

“Why did you?” Ani asked
, lifting wet eyes up to stare at Sebastian.

“I was so angry at you A,” Sebastian sighed. “I was spoiling for a serious fight with some serious yelling and Raffi was there so I just took off. I knew I couldn’t stick around and let it go
.”

“But you turned off your phone too, when you asked me never to do that,” Ani reminded Sebastian as she blinked back tears.

“I wanted to hurt you,” Sebastian admitted, “But mostly I just didn’t want to feel anything, which is why I drank the bottle of tequila,” he confessed with a regretful grin.

“So do we have a no disappearing policy or not?” Ani asked softly, tracing her name on Sebastian’s neck with her lips.

“We have a no disappearing policy,” Sebastian confirmed huskily, drawing in his breath as Ani continued to kiss her way down his body.

“Are we over our fight?” Ani whispered
, lifting her head up to meet Sebastian’s eyes as her mouth hovered over his waist.

“Definitely,” he murmured back,
giving Ani’s head a gentle push down toward his crotch with a husky laugh.

“You’re sure,” Ani teased, pulling him out of his underwear and running her tongue over the swollen head of his hard dick.
“Cause we can talk about it some more….” she offered with a devilish grin.

“No more talking vixen,” Sebastian murmured
, closing his eyes and sighing with pleasure as Ani took him in her mouth.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The two weeks that Ani and Sebastian spent together in Maine were exactly what they needed. The house was beautiful and secluded, and although it wasn’t Ireland, even Sebastian had to admit that Monhegan Island was stunningly beautiful and the forests were magical.  They spent their days walking through the forests and exploring the island, and their nights wrapped in each other’s arms around the outdoor firepit, and snuggled under a blanket on the porch swing.

“These last two weeks have ruined me forever,” Ani sighed, leaning against Sebastian as they stood on the porch drinking their morning coffee and staring out at the sea together.
“I’ll never be able to go back to my early mornings at the bakery.”

“I’d never be able to get out of bed before dawn and meet my dad at the docks if you were still in my bed warming it
every morning,” Sebastian admitted huskily, kissing Ani’s neck below her ear.

“I love when you kiss that spot,” Ani said dreamily, sighing in contentment as Sebastian wrapped his arms around her waist and continued to trail kisses down the side of her neck.

“I love you so much Bast,” she whispered, turning around in his arms and wrapping her arms around his neck.

“I love you too
a rún mo chroí,” Sebastian whispered back, staring at Ani with his heart in his eyes.

“This is it, back to reality tonight,” Ani sighed.

“But you’re still all mine for the rest of the day,” Sebastian reminded Ani with a devilish grin as he swooped her up and carried her over to the porch.

“On the porch?”
Ani laughed when Sebastian set her down and spread out the blanket that was draped over the swing.

“I promised you I would make love to you on every surface of the house when we arrived,” Sebastian murmured to Ani as he pulled her down on to the blanket
. “I think this is the only spot we haven’t christened yet.” He slid Ani’s sundress down over her shoulders.

When
Ani and Sebastian returned from Maine, there were only a few weeks left of summer and Raffi was anxious to make them last. She wanted to go to every local carnival and 4-H fair in a 50-mile radius, have sleepovers with her friends every night, and never go to bed before midnight.

“She’s killing me Maria,” Ani moaned to Remmi’s wife
as she helped her carry platters of tamales out to the backyard. Maria was a beautiful young woman, the same age as Ani, with long gorgeous dark hair and striking Aztec features. Her petite, curvy frame showed no sign of the four kids that she’d birthed in the last six years since Remmi had gotten out. Bast loved to tease both Remmi and Maria that she’d been pregnant since the day Remmi had gotten out of prison.

“Making up for lost time mijo,” Remmi
always replied, giving Bast a meaningful nudge.

Maria
and Remmi lived in a small house in East Boston with their four kids, Maria’s grandmother and two of Remmi’s little brothers.

“You should send Raffi over here,” Maria laughed, shoving a pitcher of lemonade aside to make room for the tamales. “I’ll keep her busy watching the baby and chasing after the boys.” Maria’s four kids ranged from age five years old to nine months, and they were all boys, which thrilled Remmi and exasperated Maria. She’d put her foot down when it came to naming them though, and even though she allowed their first name to go down on the birth certificate as Hector, they were known by their middle names, Guillermo, who they mostly called little G, Francisco, who they called Frankie, Carlos, who they called Carlito, and Angel, who was anything but.

“I should send her here,” Ani murmured with a laugh. “She’s getting old enough to start mother’s helping. When I was her age, I had my own babysitting club and I
charged two dollars an hour to mother’s help.”

“Yeah, she had a
babysitting sign and everything,” Sebastian interjected with a grin. “The part she’s leaving out though, is that no one in the neighborhood would hire her because they knew about all of the times she’d tried to get rid of her little sister.” 

“It was all a misunderstanding,” Ani protested with a laugh. “I only tried to give Sawyer away three
times, I just got a bad rap!”

“You’re like the Hectors,” Maria said, rolling her eyes. “According to my husband, they’re all misunderstood too.”

“That’s right mama, you know what I’m talking about now right baby?” Remmi said, flashing a grin at Ani as he chugged his Corona and squeezed his wife’s ass when she passed.

It was always bittersweet for Ani
when they got together with Remmi and Maria, partly because it was the only glimpse into Sebastian’s years away from her that she ever got. The man who had come back to her after fifteen years in prison was a man of secrets. He told her very little about his years inside, and the bits and pieces that she did discover came mostly from Remmi sharing a story with her, or an exchange between the two men that she caught out of the corner of her eye. There was an easiness between Maria and Remmi that didn’t exist between Ani and Sebastian. It was an easiness born from familiarity and understanding, and Ani envied it.

Remmi and Maria had also been teenage sweet
hearts. She grew up in a rural village in Mexico and crossed the border illegally into Texas when she was fifteen. She ended up in Boston because she had a cousin there and he let her stay with him and found her a sewing job in a bridal shop. She met Remmi waiting for a bus in the pouring rain. They huddled together under Remmi’s hoody, which he held over them like an umbrella, and they fell in love after that first day. Unlike Ani and Sebastian though, Maria and Remmi only had a year together before Remmi went to prison, but the years that Remmi spent away were not a mystery to Maria. She had shared them with him through visits and letters. She sent care packages and talked to him on the phone. Ani and Sebastian had the familiarity and ease of a shared childhood, but they knew little about the years that had shaped each of them into adults.

They
spent every night together now, whether Ani had Raffi or not, staying at Sebastian’s place on the nights that they were alone, and at Ani’s when Raffi was with them. When they stayed at Sebastian’s apartment, Ani loved to watch him paint. Especially on the Sundays that Raffi was with Jordan. Sebastian always woke with the sunrise, making love to Ani while she was half asleep, so that his kisses on her body felt like a dream, and the warmth of him inside her like a secret. Then as Ani drifted back to sleep, her dreams filled with the teasing memory of Sebastian’s touch. He would quietly slip out of bed and settle in underneath the window with his easel or sketchpad. 

Ani
would wake hours later to the smell of coffee, and she’d slip out of bed and pad barefoot and naked over to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee and sneak a pastry out of the bakery box that she’d brought the night before. As she warmed up her muffin or scone, she’d sip her coffee and gaze across the room at Sebastian. These were the moments that Ani loved the most. These were the private moments when Ani felt like she had a window into Sebastian’s soul.

When Sebastian immersed himself in his art, he didn’t seem to even remember that A
ni was still there with him. His face was stripped naked of its carefully crafted masks, and the vulnerability that he normally worked so hard to shield from his eyes peeked out. Watching Sebastian paint was like going back in time for Ani. The walls that he’d worked so hard to build around him were gone, and with his guard down he looked seventeen again. There were no secrets between them, no regrets, just the innocence of hope and desire.

He was sketching from old photos of his brother a lot lately, and volunteering in
a teens-against-drunk-driving program that their childhood priest, Father O’Brien, had set up in their old neighborhood church. The summer had flown by since they’d returned from Maine, Raffi was back in school, and the nights and early mornings were just starting to hint at the cool days of fall ahead.

“
You’re finally Ani Mackenizie again,” Sebastian murmured, kissing Ani awake as she opened her eyes and blinked sleepily at him.

“What?” Ani asked in confusion as she burrowed into Sebastian’s warm chest and pulled the covers up over her shoulders.
Fall had almost arrived in Boston and the late September nights were chilly, even though the days were still warm.

“It’s midnight,” Sebastian whispered into Ani’s ear, trailing his lips down her neck.
“The 90 days are over since you filed for divorce. It’s official, you are a married woman no longer,” he murmured against Ani’s neck.

“So I’m back to Ani Mackenzie,” Ani replied softly, staring at Sebastian as he raised his eyes to meet hers thoughtfully.

“Were you going to keep Jordan’s name for Raffi’s sake?” Sebastian asked Ani, studying her face with an unreadable expression.

“I was hoping to finally become Ani O’Reilly
actually, but I’m beginning to think I’ll go to my grave a Mackenzie,” Ani murmured back in reply.

“Is that so?” Sebastian asked, reaching into his nightstand drawer and pulling out a velvet pouch.

“Aine Ciara Mackenzie, a rún mo chroí,” Sebastian murmured, sliding out of bed and dropping down on his knee. “I know I don’t deserve you, but I’m asking you anyway.” He took Ani’s hand in his own and stared at her with glistening eyes. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” Sebastian asked Ani hoarsely as he slid the most beautiful ring that Ani had ever seen in her life out of the velvet pouch and presented it to her. It was a traditional Irish Claddagh ring with a brilliant heart-shaped sapphire in the center.

“The s
apphire is for your eyes,” Sebastian murmured as he slipped the ring on Ani’s finger when she mutely nodded yes, tears streaming out of her eyes.

“
It took you long enough, O’Reilly,” Ani choked against Sebastian’s chest when he pulled her into his arms.

“Only thirty-two
years,” Sebastian whispered, spreading Ani’s hand open and pressing the scars on their palms together.

“Only thirty-two years,” Ani echoed, staring down at the ring
on her finger with tears in her eyes.

“No tears
, a chroí,” Sebastian murmured huskily, laying Ani down on his bed underneath him. “I want to make love to my fiancé,” he whispered, trailing kisses across her face.

“I was so mad at you the night of the accident,” Ani confessed, blinking back her te
ars. “And then the police took you away and I never got to tell you how much I loved you. I was mad that you hadn’t asked me to marry you and then I was mad that you weren’t going away to school. I was so confused about what I wanted from you,” Ani admitted, weeping softly.

“Shhhh,” Sebastian soothed, kissing away the tears as they slid out of Ani’s eyes.
 

“And I know the accid
ent was my fault,” Ani sobbed. “I was yelling at you about staying home because I felt guilty about wanting you to stay with me. When Tommy said that you were throwing everything away for me, I felt guilty because I had wanted you to,” Ani confessed, staring into Sebastian’s deep green eyes in anguish. “I wanted you to stay home and marry me and be a lobsterman like your father and brother. I didn’t want you to go away to school even though I knew that it was your dream.” Ani closed her eyes in shame.

“Oh baby,
a rún mo chroí,” Sebastian murmured, kissing Ani’s eyes as the tears continued to seep out of them. “You were barely sixteen and you were pregnant with our child. Of course you wanted me to marry you, of course you didn’t want me to go away.”

“But I never wanted you to go away Bast,” Ani admitted, opening her eyes and staring back at Sebastian. “Ev
en before I got pregnant. All I ever wanted was to marry you and stay in our neighborhood and have your babies. I knew that we should be using condoms the times that we didn’t but I didn’t care.” Ani stared at Sebastian with haunted eyes. “I didn’t care if I got pregnant because I wanted you so much.”

“And what about me?”
Sebastian asked Ani tenderly, trailing his fingers across her salt-stained cheeks. “Do you think I didn’t know what could happen when I didn’t use a condom? Do you really think that I didn’t want to keep you as much as you wanted to keep me?” Sebastian kissed her trembling lips. “We were kids, a ghrá. We did stupid things and we made foolish mistakes, but everything we did, we did out of love.” He trailed kisses down Ani’s neck. “The accident was nobody’s fault baby, it was an accident,” Sebastian whispered, lifting his face up to meet Ani’s gaze. “And I should have asked you to marry me when you told me you were pregnant. Not marrying you when you were sixteen is something that I’ve regretted every day for the last fifteen years.”

“I love you so much and I’m so sorry about everything,” Ani murmured against Sebastian’s lips as he kissed her tenderly.

“No more talking a chroí,” Sebastian whispered, trailing his lips across Ani’s shoulders and easing her legs open underneath him with his knee.

“I love you Sebastian O’Reilly,” Ani whispered again as Sebastian guided himself inside her and
thrust into her with a moan.

“
A chuid den tsaol,” Sebastian murmured back in Ani’s ear, trailing his lips down her neck.

“
A chuid den tsaol, you are my heart and soul, my life,” Ani echoed back with a sigh, closing her eyes and surrendering her body to Sebastian.