The Sunshine Project Pt. 15 - Final

"Yes," I say, stepping off the porch. I sigh and shrug. "We want you to stay here with us. We're planning to move into the bunker. There are enough rooms. It's free rent, so you'll have time to figure life out." The words are half-hearted, but I hope they don't come across like that. I will adjust as long as Jess is happy.

"I don't think so, guys."

"Cora, please." Jess pulls her wrist, and Shep whimpers. He wriggles in Jess's grasp, almost getting free, so I step down and help Jess convince her.

"Cora, we don't see eye to eye, but Jess and I wouldn't be together if not for you. Please stay with us. Let us help you."

After much coaxing, we convince Cora to come in the house where we sit as a family and catch her up on everything. It's not perfect, but at least it's over. The worst is behind us and we aren't going to jail.

I hold Jess's hand, grateful for her in my life. If we can get through that, we can get through anything--even her grief. It will be a bumpy road for a few weeks, but it will be okay now. And then, it will be better than ever. Besides if Cora pisses me off, I can just shrink her again.

Chapter 46

Jess

Cora stands and walks to the powder room and after the few drinks I've had I can't keep my hands to myself. I have been touching Allie's leg beneath the table for the entire meal, squeezing her knee, letting her know I am so fucking aroused by her tonight. After weeks of uncertainty and anxiety, I know she's mine, and we can put this whole thing behind us. She's been batting my hand away though, with snickers and smirks. And I'm sure Cora has seen our flirting but said nothing.

"Jess," she hisses, the instant the powder room door is shut. "You're so embarrassing." Allie's smirk is priceless. I push my chair away from the table and turn toward her, angling her chair so I can straddle her. Shep sits at my feet licking my toes.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet." I drape my arms over her shoulders and the back of the chair and bend down to kiss her. She tips her head up and her lips meet mine. I nip at one and playfully grind my pelvis on her lap.

"Jess, Cora is going to come back. We should wait. She's had it rough too. She'll probably want to hang out a while before we go to sleep. It's still early."

I know it's early. It's barely seven p.m. but day drinking has caught up with me. It started as a way to relax, but the celebration took over when we realized that things were finally working in our favor.

"But I miss you, and you belong to me now." I grind some more. This pair of leggings I'm wearing does nothing to mask the scent of my arousal. "We should celebrate having all that bad stuff behind us. Plus I'm drunk and horny, and who am I going to ask to take care of this problem I have?" I kiss her again, and she shakes her head, smiling and rolling her eyes.

"Gross, get a room." Cora's snarky comment as she exits the bathroom makes both Allie and me chuckle.

"Aw, does poor little Cora feel left out?" Allie grabs my ass and squeezes it, and I look over my shoulder and snicker louder.

"Ew, gross. Why would I feel left out? I'm not gay." She slumps into her chair and pushes her plate away. Picking on her is our way of showing her how accepted she is. "Besides I have zero interest in that right now. My libido is absolutely gone thanks to all this stress."

I climb off Allie's lap and park my ass back in my own chair. Cora's mood is like a wet blanket for me, but Allie keeps going, egging her on. I feel sort of bad for her knowing her parents could go to prison. I know how that feels sort of, though Mom left me when Jimmy got locked up, and I was glad he got locked up.

"Oh, you mean you've never even thought of kissing a girl?" Allie stands and leans over the table with a cheeky expression on her face. "What about me? Want to kiss me, Cora?" She starts to round the table, and Cora scrunches her forehead and fakes a laugh.

"Uh, no thanks."

I can't help but smile at the way Allie is so playful with her. Three weeks ago they hated each other, and I'm glad they're getting along. I need them both in my life now.

Cora stands and puts the chair between her and Allie, but Allie climbs over it and continues to advance on her making kissing sounds. "Come on, Cora. Try it, you may like it."

Cora shrieks and runs around the end of the dining table and past me into the living room giggling, and Shep yaps at her and chases them both. "You're psycho! Stop!" Her cackles as she fends of Allie's playful attacks have me busting a gut.

"Oh I know how we can get her to like girls." Allie grabs Cora by the arms and looks at me. "The gay bomb. We'll take her to the lab and find Gus's gay bomb and use it on her. Then she'll see why we are so in love."

"You guys are so fucked up!" Cora wriggles her arms to escape, but her grin tells me she is feeling accepted by us.

"Let her go, Al. She just isn't the lesbian type." I stand and walk over to them and drape my arm around Allie's body, hugging her around the waist, and she lets go of Cora to kiss me.

The kiss is long and deep, and I feel my body swooning with desire for her. She grabs my ass again, and I tangle my fingers in her hair. I feel Shep's paws on the back of my calf, and Cora makes gagging sounds.

"Seriously... you guys just go do whatever it is you do. I'll clean up after dinner."

Allie pulls away from me but threads her fingers through mine and pulls me toward the stairs, now with a seductive look in her eyes. We haven't had the chance to truly enjoy whatever it is that's going on between us. We love each other, of course, but that hasn't been deeply expressed between us. Sure we've had play time--hair and nails--whatever you want to call it, but we need time alone to really talk about what we feel and where we see it going.

I follow her up the steps to my bedroom. Probably one of the last times we'll do this in this house because we've agreed to move into the bunker together. We have a month each to be out of our respective places, but it won't take us that long. For me, being nearer to Gus's old homestead and living in the place he gave me just seems right. It makes me feel closer to him, like I haven't lost all of him. And it will let me take better care of Jackson and Shep too.

"I think we should take this slow... Don't you think?" I shut the door behind us, and Allie pulls me against her body.

"I think, whatever you want is what you get, because you're pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to me." Allie kisses me and cups my cheek. And when her hand presses against my mound through my leggings it sends a wave of arousal through my entire groin and down my legs.

"Well, I want to enjoy every second of it." I press on her shoulders and she smirks.

"Slow, huh?" she whispers as she lowers herself to her knees. Her fingers curl around the elastic waistband of my leggings, and she works them down, taking my panties with them. I brush some of her chunky blonde hair out of her eyes. She's been leaving it down lately, and I sort of like it.

"I mean, eat me for an hour or so, that's long enough..." I smirk at her as her tongue flicks over my clit, and she moans.

"You taste incredible. How do you do that?"

Allie looks up at me as her tongue sinks between my folds of skin, drinking me. I play with her hair, smoothing it back and keeping out of her eyes and out of the way so I can watch her work. It's more than sex. In fact, it's not about the sex at all. It's about being vulnerable with her, intimate. Letting her have her way with my body to make me feel good and trusting that not only will she make that happen, but that she will do so in a way that makes my heart feel like I'm the only thing in the world that matters to her.

"Mmmm...." My body craves this, the way she makes me feel, the way I want to make her feel, doing that together. I think I always knew that I liked Allie this way; it just took a night of deep emotion and lots of alcohol for me to see it, and I'm glad I do. We're perfect for each other.

She's really going at it now, sliding her fingers into me and sucking my clit, but I hear something downstairs--a shriek and some banging. If Shep is bothering Cora there's no telling what she'll do to him. It's cold outside, too cold for his tiny little body, and we haven't gotten to make him big again, so she can't just throw him out.

Allie moans and pushes more fingers in. After that time she fisted me she keeps pushing me to do it again, and I know that's where this is going. Fuck, do I want that, but with the noise downstairs I can't concentrate. I try; fuck, do I try. But Cora sounds angry.

"Al... stop." I push her head away but she grabs my ass with both hands and sucks me harder. I giggle and push again. "Stop, I have to tell Cora to shut up and lock Shep in his kennel."

Allie backs away and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand while I bend and yank my leggings up. "It's probably because you're so loud with all that moaning."

"Well, if you'd keep your tongue in your mouth I wouldn't moan." I chuckle playfully and head out the door. As I step onto the first stair headed down, I hear someone else's voice now too, not just Cora, and my heart leaps into my throat.

Beck.

I take the steps two at a time, but before I'm halfway down the stairs I see a massive blue flash of light, and it nearly blinds me. The wall catches me with a thud as I clamp my eyes shut. I knock my head pretty good too, praying Cora is the one with the gun in her hand.

"Jess! Oh my God! Jess!" Cora is freaking out, and I've never been happier to hear her voice. I rub my eyes and make it down the rest of the steps, and when I turn toward the kitchen, I see Beck standing there. Completely frozen.

"Oh fuck's sake," I whine, feeling weak in the knees.

"She tried to steal the gun. She was going to kill you." Cora lets the gun drop and backs away. "Jess, oh my God, what do I do?"

"Oh, fuck." I hear Allie behind me, and I stand there stock still as she places her hand on my lower back and starts to laugh. It's a low, deep laugh that starts in her belly and grows until it's booming out of her chest. She laughs so hard I start to smile, then turn to see her doubling over. I glance at Cora who is now smiling too, and I can't contain the chuckles that bubble up out of me too.

"What? What's so funny?" I pat Allie's shoulder and Cora walks over to us. "Al... what's so funny?"

Allie straightens and calms herself and shrugs. "I feel like we're going to keep running into this issue the rest of our lives." She nods at Beck. "In the meantime we have to get rid of her. After the whole shrinking debacle last night, she is pretty pissed. What do we do?"

Cora crosses her arms over her chest and looks at the door. "Well she broke in. We can call the cops and tell them she was breaking in. After falsely reporting me kidnapped they will probably put her in the looney bin or something."

I turn to look at my front door, now damaged. The doorjamb is broken and the striker plate is lying on the ground next to a few splinters of wood. It's evidence of Beck's break in.

"But she's frozen..." I protest. "How do we explain that?"

"I got it." Allie walks over to the freeze ray and shoves it into Cora's hands. "Jess, when you were frozen, you said you didn't know anything that was going on?"

"Yeah..." Confused, I watch Cora turn the gun over in her grasp and narrow her eyes at Allie too.

"Okay, so what we're going to do is call the police, report a break in. Then we unfreeze her and shove her in her car. Jess, you were so cold for like an hour. That'll keep her shivering in her backseat until cops arrive. Cora you can hide the gun in your glovebox, and we'll play it off as Beck is insane." Allie plants her hands on her hips and shrugs. "That's the best I got."

I look around the room. The floor lamp is knocked over, the coffee table moved. I don't see Shep at first, but then in notice him cowering under a chair in the kitchen and see that he's safe. Allie's plan makes sense and hopefully it means that's the last we'll see of Beck.

"Done... let's do it." I meet Allie's gaze and hope this really is the end of all the drama.

Cora unfreezes Beck and heads to her car while Allie and I walk Beck to hers. We open the door and help her violently shivering body sit in the back seat. She mumbles something about getting back at us and how we froze her, and I can't help but think how insane she sounds. I hope the cops get here soon.

By the time we get back into the house, Cora is hanging up with the police. We sit on the sofa and wait, and I look around the room. I'm going to miss this place and the memories I have here with Allie, but I can't wait to make new ones in our new place together. And with her not working for a while, we'll have plenty of time to figure out what we're going to do with these guns. Whether we keep them for our personal enjoyment or try to hide or sell them.

When we hear a soft knock, we all rise, thinking it's the police. But I pull the broken door open to reveal someone who is definitely not a cop. It's a man in his mid-sixties at least, dark salt-and-pepper hair, barrel chest, and across the front of his olive green suitcoat are patches and medals. He holds a hat tucked under one arm and a serious expression.

"Jess Maier?" he asks.

My hair bristles at first and I feel goosebumps rising on my arm. Who is this man and what does he want? He looks like he's military of some sort. I glance past him and see a black sedan parked out front, right behind Beck's car.

"Uh... that's me..." I hug my arms over my chest and hold my breath. Allie is there, gripping the back of my elbow cautiously.

"I'm Major General Thomas Grant. I'm here to offer my condolences for Augustus Baucher, your grandfather." The man nods at me and his expression softens. "May I come in?"

I have no clue how he found me or why now after a month he wants to offer condolences. Why not at his funeral? Why a month later? "Uh, sir... How do you know my GG?"

The man smiles at me before saying, "Gus was my partner in crime. He talked about you all the time."

"He did?" His smile makes my heart warm. GG talked about me with his military buddies? I find myself being drawn to him, but Mr. King's warning echoes in my mind. I can't say a thing about the guns: "deny, deny, deny."

"Yeah, he did. Told me you were his favorite, that you love the World Series." Thomas takes a step across the threshold, and I'm about to let him in to talk when Allie stops me. She stands behind me like a solid brick wall not letting me move. I don't know why. This man knew GG. He may have stories for me, ways to reminisce. Things I want to know and things that would help me grieve. I want to protest, but he holds my gaze captive. Until Allie whispers in my ear.

"Why you, Jess? Why not Gus's kids? Why not his real grandchildren? This is a trap..."

My blood runs cold. He's not here to talk about GG, and now I think we're really in deep shit. It's not over.

It will never be over....