Todd instinctively flexed his wrists against the restraints as he awoke. He felt nothing but soft silk sheets.
Shit.
He'd obviously gone crazier than usual and was lost in his mind again.
Images flashed through his brain almost too fast for him to recognize them.
Blair, shining and naked and wet, running her soapy hands over his chest.
Blair, singing one of those stupid songs from forever ago while she lay next to him in bed.
Blair, tangled up with him on the wet ground breathing the jungle air.
None of those memories were part the repertoire he had played over and over for eight years. That meant that either they were new, or they were not memories at all.
The stab of fear brought up two more images: the river that was too wide to be a river beneath the car, and a sign reading Honeymoon Suite.
"Todd? Are you awake?"
"Yes," he said, because explaining that he wasn't sure was too complicated.
Blair was propped up on one arm and watching him closely. The Pepto-Bismol pink sheet was slipping off of her shoulder and revealing delicious curves beneath.
That was a sign that he was here and this was real. His broken mind might well have conjured up a naked Blair and an enormous bed with silk sheets, but he would never have made them such a nausea-inducing color.
"Why do the sheets look like Barbie exploded?" he asked.
Blair made the face she generally made when she wasn't acknowledging his jokes even though she found him charming. "I don't know. I'll ask when I call room service." She waved a menu at him.
His mouth flooded with anticipation at the mention of food, and suddenly it hit him that he was ravenous. He snatched the menu from Blair's hand and ripped the phone from the bedside table. He ordered eggs and bacon and sausage and potatoes and toast and juice and coffee and fruit and at the last minute he remembered to ask if they would put chocolate chips in the pancakes. They would.
"Ten minutes," he told Blair. He started to return the menu to her when the heading at the top caught his eye.
Atlantis Suites
Key West, Florida
Key West.
He slid off the bed and rushed for the window. The sun was shining brightly on the Gulf of Mexico. The Overseas Highway stretched out of sight toward the mainland.
He lunged for the phone again, looking for the room number. It read only Honeymoon Suite.
It was all real: McBain and Lovett blasting into Irene's lair; Blair waiting for him as soon as he made it outside; Jack calling him "Dad;" the long drive over the water to Key West; Blair washing his hair and singing for him; the pink sheets and the rose petals on the floor; and him standing naked in the middle of the room.
He glanced down surreptitiously, wanting to confirm with his eyes what he felt with his body.
No morning wood.
This definitely wasn't his dream. He had his issues with sex and he always would, but it wouldn't occur to him to imagine sleeping with Blair's naked body draped over his and him not waking up hard as a rock. He'd spent most of their first marriage walking around with a constant erection.
"You have access for recreational purposes only." "We'll have to get to that one of these days."
He scowled. Blair would suddenly be willing for them to be together in every way when he wasn't able to do anything about it. For all he knew, he never would. His physical abilities had always returned in full after his past traumas, but that didn't mean it would happen this time.
"Where are my clothes?" asked Blair. The question came out as an angry growl, which was better than a humiliated whimper, at least.
He watched a shutter slam down behind Blair's eyes and wondered if he should have gone with the humiliated whimper.
"Clean ones in my bag." She pointed. "The ones you were wearing yesterday are still on the floor in the bathroom.
Todd ripped open the bag, extracted his clothes, and placed the bag beside Blair on the bed so she could get dressed, too.
He took himself into the bathroom to dress and was immediately hit by more sleepy images of the night before. Blair had been perfect and he had been a mess.
When he emerged, Blair had put on a sundress that showed off her long legs and pulled the quilt over the rumpled pink sheets. The room service cart had appeared and Blair was nibbling at a bowl of fruit.
"You need to eat more than that," Todd said roughly. "Even if chocolate chip pancakes aren't your thing any more." He scraped some eggs from the main plate onto a smaller one and pushed it in her direction. "Protein. You had a long day yesterday."
The rest of the eggs went straight into his mouth, followed by the toast and the bacon. When a blissfully satisfied sensation started to spread through him, he looked up at Blair. She was eating for real now, but she was watching him through her eyelashes as if she didn't know quite what to expect.
"I'm sorry for snapping before," he said. The food made the words come easier. "Yesterday sucked until you showed up."
Blair nodded. "How are you feeling?"
"Better."
He looked hard at Blair as she nodded again. She was fighting back tears.
"You crying because I could have died or because I'm gonna live?"
"Shut up," said Blair conversationally.
"We're in Key West," he announced, though that wasn't likely to surprise her like it had surprised him.
Indeed, she had no reaction to his revelation.
"We're in Key West, where we got married the first time. And we're in the honeymoon suite. You understand how a gentleman whose marriage proposal you recently refused might think he was getting mixed messages?"
"We have a lot to talk about before we make any decisions about that."
"Decisions about mixed messages?"
Blair ignored him and took another bite of her chocolate chip pancakes. Todd was pleased to see that she did seem to like them, still.
"Decisions about getting married?" Todd continued.
Blair swallowed. "There are things you don't know. Things that might change your mind about what you want."
Todd was well aware that there were things he didn't know. He'd spent the past four months learning one secret after another about the time that had been stolen from him. But he was pretty damn sure he knew exactly what he wanted. She was sitting three feet away from him.
"How about we take a walk on the beach and you tell me all about it?" A few days stuck in Irene's laboratory left him anxious to spend as much time in the sunshine and fresh air as possible.
A few minutes later, they were walking barefoot along the edge of the ocean. The sand and water felt wonderful against Todd's bruised feet, and Blair didn't object too much when he took her hand in his. "You checked us into the honeymoon suite," he reminded her. "People expect it. They'll be depressed if they think we aren't a happy couple! It'll be like we committed fraud. You don't want that, do you?"
"I'm not sure how much difference it makes what I want."
Todd rolled his eyes. "Enough with the maudlin defeatist crap, okay? Let's get to the deep dark secrets."
Blair was staring out at the turquoise-clear water instead of looking at Todd. "I don't know how much you understood yesterday when you first got out of there. Do you know that Irene is dead?"
An all-consuming wave of relief washed over Todd. He almost let himself fall to his knees in the water in boneless thanks to any deity that might have been involved. His children were safe. Blair was safe. Viki was safe. He was safe.
There was also the smallest twinge of regret for the woman who had once written a diary about how she loved and wanted her son Todd. But that Irene had been dead for far more than a day.
"That's great news," he told Blair. "Why would you worry about telling me that?"
"She was your mother."
"She gave birth to me. Bitsy was my mother," Todd corrected firmly. "Is the crazy bitch who locked you in the trunk of a car Sam's mother?"
"I still wouldn't want to tell Sam that I shot her."
Todd grabbed Blair by both wrists and turned her to face him. "You killed Irene?"
"I shot her," said Blair uncomfortably. "Technically, it was the crocodile that killed her. You know how when Starr was a little girl she used to go on and on about how crocodiles smell blood and they aren't too shy about approaching people-"
The laugh bubbled up from some deep place in Todd that he barely knew existed. This time, he did let himself fall into the shallow water, pulling Blair along with him despite her protesting shriek. Every muscle in his body shook with the ridiculous genius of it all.
"Tell me more," he instructed when he was able to speak again. "Start at the beginning. Did you shoot her on sight? Or did you talk to her first? Maybe sing Taps while it was eating her?"
"Never Smile at a Crocodile, actually. From Peter Pan. That's the last thing she heard."
Todd was laughing so hard that he couldn't tell whether his eyes were watering or being splashed by the sea. "That's brilliant. You're brilliant." He kissed Blair softly on the lips. He almost wished that they'd had this conversation inside after all so he could have made it a full-blown makeout session. Right this second, he didn't care if he was capable of finishing the job or not.
"Irene said you'd never forgive me." Blair's whisper was almost lost amongst the waves.
"Irene was not an expert on things I want in life." Todd stood up and offered his hands to Blair so he could pull her back to her feet, too. "Were you really worried that that would bother me?"
"No. Not really. I told Irene that I would rather lose you than let her hurt you or our children again. That that was how much I loved you." She leaned against Todd and Todd felt another shock of pleasure at the warmth of her body against him.
"I love you, too," he put in, because he was never going to miss an opportunity to say it again.
"I told Irene that all I wanted was to live happily ever after with you and the kids. Standing there thinking I might have lost you, and looking at the person who took you away, it made it hard to pretend that I'm ever going to want anyone or anything else. But I can't pretend that you're not going to want anyone or anything else."
Todd decided that it would ruin the tone of the whole conversation to tell Blair that she was being stupid, and he never hid behind the first Cord or Sam or Cristian who came along when things got rough between them. "I broke out of a paramilitary facility to get back to you. I risked my life on a raft in the middle of the ocean to get back to you. That doesn't tell you something about who I want?" Blair hesitated, and that pissed Todd off. In the last twenty years, he had made some of the grandest gestures to ever gesture grandly. Blair had no business doubting his love. "Don't confuse me with the other guy. He's not me. It's not fair."
"But I did. Not at first. Not- I want you to know I looked for you. I kidnapped Mitch Laurence and I had him tied up at La Boulaie. I was going to kill him if he didn't tell me where you were."
"And?"
Blair made a face. "Dorian let him go. Something about not wanting me to go down for murder. I went to the crypt, Todd, I did. He- Victor, when he had your memories- he said he heard me screaming for you. Is that true? Did I almost find you then?"
The near miss wasn't one of Todd's favorite memories, but he had held onto it with all the others. "Yes," he said honestly. "You did."
Blair started crying again. Todd tried to gather her close to him, but she shrugged away. "How can you look at me knowing that if I'd worked just a little bit harder, or been just a little bit smarter, none of that would have happened to you? How can you think it's a good idea to marry me?"
"Because nothing else other than marrying you has ever worked for me."
Blair was silent.
"You want me to say it made me angry? It did. It does. Doesn't mean I don't love you. Doesn't mean I think you did it on purpose. I'm not naive enough to think you're never going to hurt my feelings or I'm never going to fuck up and hurt you. I don't even know how messed up I am after everything Irene did."
Blair sniffled and steadied herself. "You do need a real physical, you know. Lab work. Screenings. Tetanus shot."
"Are you going to love me less if it turns out Irene gave me some kind of disease?"
"Of course not!" Blair's eyes widened with horror at the thought, and Todd felt a reassurance he hadn't known he'd needed. He nearly forgot that his point had been that he would always love Blair, not that she should always love him. "If she gave you a disease, we'll cure it. We'll get the best doctors in the world. We'll get the best medicines, whatever it takes. If you can't walk, we'll get you a wheelchair." She looked him straight in the eye. "If you can't have sex, you're giving me massages. And oral."
So she had figured out exactly what had been bothering him that morning. That was both humiliating and comforting.
"If you go blind, we'll get you a gorgeous seeing eye dog," Blair continued, letting Todd pretend that they hadn't just been talking about the state of his penis, and that if they had it had just been a random entry in an exhaustive list. "We should maybe get the dog anyway. Sam and Hope are old enough, and Dorian isn't around to be horrified."
Todd didn't think Dorian should be getting a vote in whether their children had a pet whether she lived in Llanview or Washington or (preferably) Antarctica, but he decided to leave the argument about moving out of La Boulaie for another time. The house was just a house, and if the Crazy Cramer Coven was the price he paid for moving in with Blair and their children, he would pay it.
"If we're making joint decisions about dogs, does that mean you'll marry me again?"
"I pretty much always do," Blair sighed.
It took Todd a minute to work out that she was teasing, but saying yes.
"You could sound a little bit more excited," he suggested.
"You could bring me flowers or something," she returned.
At the same time, they spotted a store on the road above the beach. Blair made subtle work of transferring a wad of bills from her pocket to his.
Todd just barely heard Blair say Starr's name as he charged toward the store, and just barely noticed her tucking her phone away when he returned at a dead run with a bouquet of flowers and a ring made from a seashell.
He dropped to his knee as he broke stride. "Blair," he said, knowing he had no chance of removing the stupid smile from his face. "I promise you I love you. I promise you I love Starr and Jack and Hope and that I will always love Sam like my own. I promise you I will always do everything I can to take care of you. And I promise to love you just a little bit more for the crocodile thing. He held out the ring. Will you?"
"I will." She let him put the ring on her finger, relieved him of the flowers, and tugged him off of his knees.
By now they had circled the beach and were back at their hotel. Todd was happy to see the now-made bed; the long walk and the short run had exhausted him. It took more than a day to recover from a stay at the Irene Manning Facility for Unwanted Sons, even with the undivided attentions of Nurse Blair.
"You talked to Shorty?" Todd asked as he lay down and adjusted the pillow under his head.
"Just checking in. They're all doing fine."
He'd made fast work of getting to the store, but Blair had been talking to Starr long enough for their daughter to say something more than "fine."
"Did you tell her we got engaged?"
"No. Wouldn't want Jack to know yet. We have to break it to him carefully. But Starr says Jack thinks he heard Allison Perkins talking to Irene over at Tea's house the night he snuck out."
Todd sat upright again. That was interesting news. "Where Allison goes, Mitch goes."
"And Allison's the only one left alive to tell us anything. Irene's dead, and Mitch died the night of the prison break."
"Did you shoot him, too?"
"Natalie did."
"So I don't get to do it. There's a reason she's my absolute least favorite niece." He wasn't going to go around praising Natalie, even though he sort of wanted to. It wouldn't be natural.
"She had a close call. That whole family did. But they're all okay. And Cole, too. The hospital fixed him right up and sent him back to prison."
"Poor Starr. Poor Hope."
"Cole's situation has never been easy on them. I'm glad that at least she decided not to marry him. She almost did a few years ago. Had the dress on and everything." Blair rolled her shoulders as if even the thought of Starr and Cole's relationship made her tense.
Todd smiled, not so tired any more. He walked close behind Blair, folded his hands over her shoulders, and squeezed. Her muscles were tight under his hands and she moaned with pleasure. The moan did him more good than the past day's rest and food put together. If he could make Blair moan like that, he knew he wasn't completely ruined.
"What are you doing?" Blair asked as he pushed her toward the bed.
"Let me do it for a while and see if you figure it out."
He wanted to trace over her body the way she had traced over his the night before. He wanted to reacquaint himself with her neck and her arms and her back...
"Why are you doing this?" Blair mumbled after a while.
"Didn't you just tell me you liked massages? Out on the beach?" He let his hand slip down her thighs and between them, just for a second. Then he removed it and whispered in her ear, "I could do that other thing you said you liked, too."
And even though Blair said that she wanted to wait a few more days before doing anything that strenuous, just the act of offering and being so close to giving made his pants tighten in response. He struggled to adjust himself without interrupting Blair's backrub.
All things considered, he was having an epicly good day.