“I love you,” he croaked out, and it was scary to say, especially when he wasn’t sure what reception his words would get. “So much, like, it’s crazy. I didn’t think I could, or would, because how can you love anyone if you don’t trust them?”
I stared into his eyes.
“But then came you, and boom—trust. You’re a safety net over my life; you stand between me and the world, not because it’s your job but because you love me right back.”
I exhaled deeply and opened the door to the reality that I was up to my eyeballs in love with Nick Madison.
“Don’t you,” he prodded me, grinning slowly, “Loc?”
There were a million arguments to be made to stay away from him.
“Love,” he rumbled.
He was young, his life was in flux, he needed time to find out who he really was before trying to add a lover into the mix.
“Baby,” he crooned, his eyes narrowing to slits as he stared at me. “I know who I am, and I know who I want. Have faith and jump.”
He had beaten his demons, and I respected that. He had worked hard, both physically and mentally, and I was proud of him. And now, from a place of strength, from a place of knowing himself, who he was as both a man and an artist, he chose me. Impossible to not fall for a man who was everything I ever wanted.
“You’re gonna get sick of me,” I told him. “Everybody does.”
“That’s because you do everything hard,” he said, chuckling, climbing over me, bending my knees, folding me in half so he could reach my lips and kiss me. “And for most people,” he said, leaning back, lifting his mouth from mine, “it’s too much. You’re too intense, too focused, too passionate. You hold back because you know if you trust someone with your whole heart that you’re going to be disappointed because no one ever stays. No one sticks around through how hard you love them.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“But not me, Loc,” he stated, kissing me again before pulling back. “I want it all. I want every drop of passion in you, and I’m not afraid to be loved as hard as you can, because it’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
The worst part of him saying all the right things was that I knew he meant them. They came from his heart. He loved me, and I knew that like I knew my own name, because it was there, on his face, in his eyes, every time I turned and looked at him. He’d see me and straighten up, like he was lifting toward the sun, and his face would infuse with light.
Christ.
“I want to wake up every morning and know I’m loved, and you’re the only one that will do,” he declared, and I heard the longing in his voice, the yearning, the pleading. “It was done the first day you hugged me.”
I stared at his face, into his eyes, and saw his brows lift slowly, and the goofiest grin I’d ever seen on the man. “I need to find a job. I’m not going to be some kind of freeloader in your life.”
“I know,” he gasped, his voice cracking as he started to shake. “I know.”
“And if it doesn’t work, I’ll return this ring and––”
“I called the store in Rome, and they put me in touch with the designer. He’s making me one, a smaller one, that can go on my left ring finger so the two of them, yours and mine, match.”
I scowled at him.
“They can’t be sized or changed, so that one is yours.”
My grunt was loud. “I see, so you get a brand-new one, and I’m stuck with––”
“My future,” he rasped, and there were tears as he kissed me, grinding his mouth down over mine, and I could feel his trembling joy.
I kissed him back, rolling him over, pressing him down onto the couch under me, and his moan was utterly decadent and submissive. When I lifted up, his eyes were wet, and I wiped away his tears.
“You’re mine?”
“Was there ever any question?”
“Yes,” he huffed out.
“Well, there’s not now.”
“The ring will be ready next week. I want to get married next to the creek at your mother’s house, with Sawyer and his wife, with Gwen and Efrem, and my band, and Rico, and whoever you want.”
“Okay,” I whispered, kissing under his ear.
“Okay,” he echoed, and then he kissed me again and wrapped his arms around my neck so tight that there was no way I could get away.
Not that I wanted to. Not anymore.
Sixteen
An hour later there was a knock at the front door, and when Gwen answered it, she was probably surprised to find people from the local bank there. Nick had scheduled them to come out to the house and speak to her and Efrem, a surprise he’d planned. We went to the kitchen to join them, and the three men had papers spread out in front of Nick’s aunt and uncle. The two people in question appeared shell-shocked.