Chapter 188 EPILOGUE

Chapter 188 EPILOGUE
Maverick’s Pov

Rain tapped softly against the kitchen windows while I pretended to study. 
I mean, I was trying to study, I had just been failing for forty-five minutes now. Bodhi's laptop sat open on the table in front of me, a textbook half-highlighted, cursor blinking patiently in the center of a sentence I must have reread two million and one times by now.
Across the room, Bohdi stood barefoot at the counter in one of his old university hoodies, carefully peeling an orange with the concentration of someone transporting a fragile and deadly virus. 
Because, of course, that was how he did basically anything. I watched him curl the peel into one long ribbon. He probably hadn't considered just cutting it up in choppy pieces like a normal person.
That was, indeed, my boyfriend.
It was a small kitchen, just as small as the one in my dorm. Bohdi had surprisingly said he didn't know real apartments came with this small a kitchen when we'd first seen it, and turned his nose up at it. I held in my laugh at the time. Then we'd seen others in his budget and he rushed back here. 
The cabinets didn’t close all the way, and one of the overhead lights flickered whenever the microwave ran for some reason and yet… some of the best moments of the year had happened right here.
Bohdi crossed the room and dropped half the orange into my hand before sitting beside me on the bed. “You've been on this page since I first met you two years ago, baby.”
I swallowed down a chuckle and pretended to be offended. “You think you're funny?”
“Yes, you say I am.”
I rolled my eyes, sighed dramatically and shut the laptop. “I’m taking an academic break, that's all.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Bodhi smiled at me then, in a way that still startled me sometimes knowing he did mean it for me. Such softness, even now.
I worried how all this would affect his mood but he had been fine. He had been so content even though his parents hadn't called. The last thing he received from his mom was a Bible verse that night he had come back to me after I had been balls deep in him. He hadn't read it.
The rain strengthened outside briefly, rattling against the glass as Bodhi finished his part of the orange and went for another.
For a while neither of us spoke as he peeled. The apartment settled around us with familiar little noises of upstairs neighbors talking, maybe arguing, faintly and random pipes clanging. 
Then I stood and reached for Bodhi’s hand without thinking, our fingers fitting together automatically as I pressed myself against his back.
Bohdi turned his head as a smile grew on his face and laughed under his breath. “Hey there.”
Fuck, I thought helplessly. I loved that sound. I loved it with an embarrassing, painful sincerity. “Hi, baby.”
He leaned back against my chest. “Just because you're being cute doesn't mean you don't still have sixty-four pages to review by Thursday.”
“It's fifty-nine actually,” I replied, snuggling my face into his neck. “The rest of the pages are references.”
He laughed louder, and it made me feel so accomplished I wanted to do it over and over again, to remain in this moment where I amused my boyfriend at the kitchen sink. It was wonderful.
There were still hard days, of course. Days where the future looked frightening and expensive and uncertain. 
Bodhi was right when he said his father wouldn't let him find work as a nurse. He was blacklisted from every hospital at least two around us. Maybe more, but Bohdi had stopped checking after a while and gotten a job as a barista, usually taking two shifts a day.
I was still in university, but I did have quite some free time as I only had one course this semester to write. I spent my nights at the club and other hours doing odd jobs for a nearby office, so I wouldn't miss the class I had to go to, two days a week.
We were saving up to move out of the city when I was done, where Bodhi could use his medical license and I could… um—
Actually, I wasn't sure yet. And Bohdi assured me that was okay.
Outside, the rain began to ease. The windows fogged faintly from the warmth inside the apartment, the slight chill welcome.
I hadn't told him about Rocky’s father. It was probably the only secret I had left and I would hold on to it for a long time. There was no need to burden him with it and I was selfish. I didn't want anything to take him away from me, least of all a dead man.
So when I woke up at night, panicked, I took it as my punishment. And when he held me asking me what was wrong, I just told him the future because that was just as scary. Besides, I liked how he would reassure me, kissing all over my face and head.
And we still supported Rocky. I wouldn’t stop. He had become a promise to Stone.
I glanced toward his abandoned laptop, then pressed myself impossibly closer to Bodhi. “You know, I have all this pent up energy. That's why I can't sit still and study.”
I felt his body shake with a laugh. “Oh really?”
“Yes,” I said solemnly, kissing his neck. “Care to help me out, baby?”
“Well… if it helps you study,” he grinned, turning around.
The soft sunlight breaking out of the clouds behind him, almost made it seem like he was glowing. The expression on his pretty face was cute, except for the little naughty smile playing at the side of his mouth.
He was beautiful. And he was mine.
“You are Godsent, my darling.”