Guilt (A Zero Spin-Off)

Epilogue - Kyle

[One Year Later]

I walked in through the back door, rubbing the towel against my hair to keep it from dripping on the floors. We may not be living twenty-first century anymore but that didn't mean we should act like cavemen and destroy these nice wood floors.

Yeah... not my words. I honestly didn't care about the wood floors or how nice they might be. It wasn't like we were having guests over anytime soon. Who the hell did we have to impress? But... I did care about the girl who cared about the stupid floors. Ella had been trying her best to add some sense of 'normalcy' to living in the Inn. And that meant sometimes being asked to dust the non-working chandelier or some other equally ridiculous task. It kept her happy and honestly, it kept us all happy. Made the place feel more like home rather than just somewhere we were staying. It felt more permanent even if we all knew it might not be.

"I swear to God, Joel. I will stab you with this knife if you don't quit it," Ella's threat carried through the house and I grinned making my way toward the kitchen.

"It's just a tiny piece," Joel said sounding too innocent to be truthful. He and Ella still butted heads a lot, but in some ways, she was closer to him than I was. When they weren't threatening each other's lives, they actually got along pretty well. They talked. A lot. If I were the jealous type, it might've bothered me. But Joel wasn't the type to share his emotions with other guys and that left him Zero and Ella to talk to. He needed someone. God knows we all did.

I walked into the kitchen to see Ella holding a knife that was currently pointed at Joel and might have been scary if anyone thought Ella would actually stab him. She still got squeamish over skinning whatever animals we managed to bring in. Even the fish.

"Why don't you put down the knife, baby," I said slowly and she shot me a glare that quickly turned to a confused smile. "I thought you were fishing?"

I shrugged. "No bites. And it was hot so I went for a swim." Her eyes hung to my chest as I walked around the large island in the kitchen. I tried ignore the mild limp to my step that I wasn't sure would ever go away, and wrapped my arms around her from behind. She let out a groan, pretending like it bothered her.

"Get your wet body off of me," she said, a smile in her voice. She made no effort to pull away from me though, so I pulled her closer and then reached around and plucked a piece of watermelon from her cutting board, plopping it into my mouth.

"What the heck, El?" Joel complained. "You threatened my life when I tried to steal a piece."

I grinned at that and stole another piece. "She loves me," I said to Joel as I popped it in my mouth. "Mmm. Best watermelon I've ever had." Ella hung her head, shaking it a little at the nonsense before taking pity on Joel and letting him grab a piece for himself.

The garden had been Jamie's idea and since she helped with it at the church, she knew what she was doing. Thanks to that girl's green thumb we had fresh vegetables after too long and had been living pretty damn good. The fruits had been Ella's idea. We'd had strawberry early in the spring and had been waiting a solid month to eat this damn watermelon. We only had the one, for some reason the rest planted hadn't produced any melons. She was a little protective of it, excited about how well it was growing; the thing had to be ten pounds.

She'd been waiting for the perfect day to cut it, which it turns out was this morning.

"What's the occasion?"

"No occasion." She spun in my arms, smiling up at me. "I just really wanted it today. I was going to bring you down a bowl."

"You're sweet." I lowered my mouth to hers, tasting her lips, a hint of watermelon lingering there. Her hands, that had been resting on my forearms, slid up my arms around my neck and into the hair at the base of my neck. I deepened the kiss as she slid her fingertips down my spine inducing shivers and making my cock twitch while she sucked on my tongue. This was going to get out of hand if I didn't stop it soon.