Chapter 7

I must have fallen asleep on the way back from the hospital, because the next thing I knew I was wading back to consciousness with a headache throbbing behind my eyes, an pressing urge in my bladder and a heavy arm and leg trapping me in the gloriously comfortable bed. The limbs, I knew from the sense of safety they provided and the scent of Bulgari that wafted to my nose, belonged to Ranger, but what confused me as I cracked open an eye was what the hell he was doing still in bed with me. Judging by the sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains it was well past day break, and Mr. Early Riser wasn't prone to sleep-ins.

Carefully turning my head without shifting my body too much so I didn't disturb him in case he was still asleep, I was met with a vision of serenity. The hard planes of his face were relaxed, not a wrinkle of worry marring the blissful expression. It wasn't often I had the opportunity to examine his features in such an unguarded state. In fact, I was pretty sure this was the first time I'd woken before him and he hadn't stirred the second he felt the change in my body. I noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the lines around his mouth, the scar healing on the side of his neck, all signs of the suffering he'd been through to make it back to her just as he'd promised he would. He must have been just as exhausted as I was. Though, I acknowledged as the events of the previous day came rushing back to me, his was probably a physical exhaustion compared to my emotional one.

I was distracted from my examination and recollections by the reminder of my bladder's state of fullness and proceeded to achieve the impossible by extracting myself from Ranger's hold without waking him. I silently congratulated myself as I scampered across the plus carpet to the bathroom, glad that I was able to do this small thing for him after everything he'd don't for me over the years. I knew that he'd lost a lot of sleep because of me in the time we'd known each other and being able to let him sleep just a little longer seemed like a big gesture even though I knew the debt I owed him could probably never be repaid. Just the last twenty-four hours alone was worth a million years of gratitude.

I took care of business and washed my hands and face, feeling slightly more human as I swiped a couple of headache tablets from the cabinet and padded out to the kitchen for a bottle of water. Probably, between the lack of water I'd drunk after receiving the news yesterday afternoon and the amount of tears I'd shed in the interim, I was dehydrated. Last time I was sick and dehydrated Bobby had added a sachet of some hydralyte stuff to my water to restore electrolytes and get me back to normal quicker and I briefly wondered if Ranger kept the stuff on hand in his apartment or if I'd need to ask Bobby for some. The thought left my head, though, as a loud rumble shook my midsection.

I pressed a hand to my stomach and groaned. Now that the pain of my bladder's needs was out of the way, and the painkillers were working their way toward the pain in my head, I had to wonder how I had managed to overlook the hunger pangs twisting my guts. A glance at the clock on the microwave told me it had been almost twenty-four hours since the last time I recalled eating anything.

A yawn escaped me and I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and revel in the fact that Ranger was still there after a full night of rest – although I wasn't sure exactly how much of the night was dedicated to rest, having not had the presence of mind to check the time during any of the events of the previous night. All I'd known was that my world was falling apart. Nothing else had mattered.

And then I'd learned that my mother had jumped off the deep end and decided to betray the scant trust I still had for her by lying to me about my own father's death.

I'd put up with a lot of her crap over the years. I'd tried to be the nice, respectable girl she wanted me to be, but nothing I'd done, no matter the level of effort and dedication I'd put in, had ever been good enough for her. Eventually I stopped trying so hard. I knew she didn't think fugitive apprehension was a valid occupation for me, or that I was at all good at it, but gave me a sense of accomplishment every time I solved a mystery and returned someone to the system. I may not be fulfilling her wishes for me, but I was fulfilling my own.

Could I be better at my job? Yes, of course. Did I feel guilty every time I fucked up and my mother got a barrage of phone calls informing her of my latest disaster? Absolutely. But was I going to quit because she thought I should? Hell no.

I'd come close to throwing in the towel for good last night when they guys had confirmed that the person who shot my Dad was one of my current skips, but between their insistence that even with the connection the shooting wasn't my fault, and the revelation that my mother had gone ahead and twisted the events to serve her own agenda, I was more determined than ever. The guys were right, I hadn't been there, I didn't provoke the guy into shooting my dad, it wasn't my fault. I couldn't control the actions of others.

But I could learn from my mistakes.

Jasper Norton had only had the opportunity to call a cab, be picked up by my dad and freak out that it was all a set up because I'd fumbled my attempt at a capture that same morning. I knew I didn't have the best techniques, that a lot of my success so far had been due to sheer dumb luck, but all that was going to change. I needed to start taking things more seriously. I hoped Ranger was serious when he alluded to the offering of training last night, because I was ready to take him up on it and throw everything I had at being better.

My mother could go have a heartache and die of shame for all I cared, but I wasn't going to back down from the one job I'd found that left me feeling like I was making a difference in the world. I was done toeing the line she'd drawn in the sand for me. I was glad she wasn't there when I went to visit Dad last night, or I might have lost control and done something I really regretted. I needed to give her a piece of my mind, let her know that she'd fucked up and I wasn't going to tolerate her attempts at oppression any more, but last night wasn't the time. She might have ended up in a hospital bed right along side Dad if I'd been faced with her right then. The guys had taken steps to provide me a safe space to see my Dad was okay – well, not okay, but definitely not dead because of me – and from the looks they'd been throwing around while we stood outside the hospital I got the feeling that they wouldn't have tried to hold me back if I'd attacked Mom.

My stomach growled again and I realised that I'd been glaring at the refrigerator without opening it for ten minutes. It was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to climb back into Ranger's embrace until I'd eaten something an appeased the monster in my belly, so I pulled the door open, hoping that Ella had hidden some treasure inside. Ranger didn't tend to keep the kind of hearty foods I preferred in his apartment, but he had started keeping a jar of organic, no salt added peanut butter for me. It was good, but it didn't give me the same satisfaction as the salt-filled, oily, non-organic kind I kept at my place.

To my surprise, there was a personal-size pizza box sitting on the second shelf, just beckoning me to dive in. It didn't look like either Pino's or Shorty's, but that was okay. Pizza was pizza. Melted cheese, bread, hell I'd even be okay if it was vegetarian. Thanking Ella for whatever magic she'd performed to get the treat to Ranger's fridge, I pulled the box out and set it on the counter. Grabbing a plate down from the cupboard and flipping open the lid on the box, I froze at what I found, and it wasn't pizza.

I stared at it, my jaw hanging wide in shock as a memory from a few months ago erupted behind my eyes.

I awoke in the middle of the night with an urgent need to use the bathroom and stumbled out of bed without even opening my eyes, navigating the short distance between the bed and the toilet purely on instinct. On my way back, eyes barely cracked open now that my brain had had time to wake up a bit and not trusting my blind navigation skills to get me back under the covers unharmed, a hand had snatched me off my flight path and into a vice-like grip. I screamed bloody murder for all of three seconds, thrashing against the hard planes of my assailant's chest before the scent of Bulgari in my nostrils penetrated my mind and I realised that it was just Ranger, in for another one of his midnight visits.

"Ranger," I breathed against his shoulder, my heart beating a rapid tattoo in my chest. "Jesus. You scared me. What are you doing here?"

"Sorry, Babe," he murmured, a thumb rubbing back and forth against the nape of my neck. "I needed to reset my thoughts." His voice was rough, caressing my cheek and sending a shiver down my spine. This wasn't the first time he'd appeared in my bedroom in the middle of the night because he was feeling unsettled. In fact, it had been increasing in frequency since we'd started seeing each other on a slightly more than casual basis.

I don't know whether it was his quiet confession, or the bolstering confidence that came with the shrouding darkness around us, but I finally found the courage to ask the question that had been on the tip of my tongue for a few weeks now. "Ranger, what are we?"

He was silent a moment, a ripple of tension gliding through his muscles before he forced himself to relax again. "Babe?"

"I know we've been spending more time together for things other than work," I went on, speaking into the crook of his neck, afraid that if I lifted my head I'd be able to see the answer in his eyes even in the darkness and I just couldn't risk that. "I haven't been with anyone else in… and you said you're not seeing anyone else either, so are we…?" I let my question trail off, hoping he'd fill in the blanks and not make me finish it for him.

"Not yet, Babe," he said, sounding like it hurt him to have to say it. "I'm not in a position that I can offer you that at the moment. But someday."

I suppressed a groan. That elusive Someday again. He'd dangled that donut in front of me before. Once again, the anonymity of darkness spurred my tongue into action before my brain could think better of it and lock it down. "And just how am I supposed to recognise this someday when it arrives?" I asked, not happy with the level of frustration that came through in my tone, but unable to pull them from the air and try again.

Ranger grip on me tightened and he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I'll hand you a cookie," he said.

Finally tipping my head back, I narrowed my eyes at his silhouette. "A cookie?" I asked sceptically.

He let out a small chuckle. "Well it can't be a doughnut, Babe," he pointed out. "I've been known to get you those in dire emergencies."

"Good point," I agreed, and then, because I recalled what a health nut he was, had to press for more details. "What flavour cookie?"

I sensed one of his eyebrows raise as he shifted to look down at me and wondered how good his night vision was, could he make out my expression? "Does it matter?" he asked.

"Of course, it matters, Ranger!" I insisted, moving so I was straddling his lap, holding his face in my hand as I stared into the place where I was pretty sure his eyes were. "If you're going to hand me some healthy zucchini and raisin cookie monstrosity to declare our someday, then maybe I don't want someday to arrive, because I'm certainly not going to eat a cookie with raisins in it."

I felt his cheek twitch as he smiled. "What about the zucchini?" he teased.

"I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that one."

His smile grew and he turned his head to press a kiss into the palm of my hand. "Babe," he whispered, and for a long moment I thought he was going to leave it at that as he carried me over to the bed and settled us both on the mattress, my head resting on his chest as he played with my hair. "What flavour cookie would I need to give you to convince you of our someday?"

I scoffed. "Chocolate, obviously."

"Obviously," he agreed, the feel of his chest rumbling with his amusement causing a rush of heat through my body. "Is that all?"

I thought about it for a long moment, letting my fingertips trace tiny patterns on his abs as his hand drifted lower, abandoning my hair in favour of ghosting down my back. "Belgian chocolate," I said definitively. "With three kinds of chocolate chips." I paused, pleased with the direction of this conversation even if nothing would ever come of it, when another thought occurred to me and I added, "And it needs to say 'Someday' on it as well. Just in case."

He hummed contemplatively for just a moment before pressing another kiss to my hair. "You got it," he murmured.

Blinking, I refocused on the cookie in the box. Surely, I'd been imagining things. It couldn't possibly be-

"Babe?" Ranger's voice interrupted my mild panic as he entered the kitchen, shirtless and running a hand through his loose hair.

"There was a cookie in your fridge," I pointed out, gesturing to the item in question.

"There was," he agreed with a nod and a yawn. "But it appears to be on the counter now."

Smartass. How dare he make jokes while I'm stuck between elation and disbelief.

"What is this, Ranger?" I insisted. My heart was beating harder than it had that night in the dark when he'd caught me off guard and dragged me into his lap. Was this really happening.

"Didn't we just establish that it's a cookie?"

The frustrated growl that escaped me must have alerted him to the fact that I was not in the mood to play the evasion game with him this morning. I needed solid answers, and the sooner the better.

"Belgian chocolate," he said quietly, holding my gaze as he leaned a deceptively casual hip against the counter directly opposite where I stood at the island. "With three kinds of chocolate chips: white, milk and dark."

"And it says Someday," I finished for him when didn't say it.

He nodded, his eyes had gone molten, all signs of joking having slipped away. "Just in case," he reminded me.

"Does this mean…?" I couldn't bring myself to say it. My life had been thrown into utter turmoil in the last twenty-four hours and I couldn't believe that something this happy, that I'd been waiting for for so long could happen to me. I was pretty sure I didn't deserve him. Not after the scare I'd given him with my stunt on the roof. I didn't deserve any of the guys to be my friends, let alone this.

"I'm a man of my word, Babe," he assured me, coming around to my side of the counter.

"I was joking about the cookie," I squeaked, feeling a bit like Red Riding Hood when she was cornered by the wolf, only Ranger definitely couldn't pass as anyone's grandma, let along mine. I was pretty sure he was just waiting for a chance to devour me.

"You may have been joking," he said, reaching for my hands and using them to gently coax me into the circle of his arms. I didn't require much encouragement. "But I was deadly serious."

I gulped, heat fluttering in my stomach and sinking lower. "So we're…?"

"I'm whatever you want me to be, Babe," he said, pressing me closer to him with a hand on my lower back. "I'm yours to do with as you will." He boosted me up to sit on the counter, stepping in between my legs as we continued to stare deep into each other's eyes. This was real. It was really happening. Ranger was mine. He wasn't holding himself back anymore.

Elation ripped through me as the heat in my pelvis pulsed longingly. "Mine," I murmured a millisecond before my lips crashed down on his.

"Yours," he agreed several minutes later when we broke apart for air. His eyes were twinkling and lips tilted upwards in an easy smile I'd never been privy to before. "Should we seal the deal by sharing this cookie?" he suggested, breaking off a piece and raising it to my lips.

I didn't hesitate to accept the bite he offered, but when he took the sliver left between his thumb and forefinger and popped it between his own lips, my mouth fell open and the half chewed cookie almost fell out. "Ranger, that's sugar," I reminded him, thinking he'd lost his mind at some point in the night. First the sleep in and now the willingness to sully his temple?

He frowned at me, urging my mouth closed with a gently finger under my chin. "It's our Someday cookie, Babe," he said. "It's symbolic of our lives going forward. I intend to share my life with you the same as I expect you'll do with me. It's only fitting that we should start by sharing this cookie."

"Okay," I agreed, staving off a swoon by pressing my lips to the side of his jaw as I reached over and broke off another piece of the cookie. "But don't go into diabetic shock or anything," I warned, lifting the piece to his lips as he had done for me and not bothering to try to contain the groan that slipped from my throat as he took the whole thing into his mouth. His lips glided over my fingers as he retreated, nibbling off all by the portion of cookie caught between them. While stared at his lips in a lust-induced brain fog, his fingers circled my wrist and he urged the last crumb I held into my own mouth.

"I promise," he vowed quietly, replacing my fingers with his lips the second the tiny piece of cookie had disappeared from sight. If the rest of our relationship was as good as this symbolic cookie, I was pretty sure I'd live out the rest of my days in bliss. "I'm gonna be with you until the world blows up, Babe," he said earnestly. "Whether everything's right, or all fucked up. Until the world blows up."

"That might be enough," I agreed wholeheartedly.