I chuckle. It’s true.
Ever since our first time, Rachel has been spending more and more time at my place, even bringing over a bag with clothes and toiletries.
“Trust me,” Autumn says. “She wants this. I know it.”
I nod, praying Autumn is right.
“You got this, mate,” Charley says.
I can hear his grin over the phone. Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, I try to put a smile on my face, but it comes across as shaky. I adjust my collar and pull on the sleeves of my shirt, swallowing my nerves.
“I haven’t felt like this in…ever,” I laugh drily. “Even before I fought for the heavyweight title. Goddamn, Charley, what if she says –”
“Mate, if you tell me what if one more time, we’re going to have a problem. Unless you’ve lied to me about how well things are going?”
“I haven’t.”
“Then you’ll be fine,” he says. “Is everything ready?”
I swallow, walking to the window and looking down at the street below. “She’s getting a cab home now.”
“Home,” Charley says. “What did I say, mate? You two would be head over heels in no time.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“I never thought I’d see the day,” Charley jokes. “Ryland Ross, nervous.”
I laugh, shaking my head, able to grin with my best buddy’s help.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
I spend the next thirty minutes with Rusty, pacing up and down on the balcony, tossing a tennis ball in the air every now and then. He snatches it a few times but then whines and lays his chin on his forepaws, looking seriously up at me.
“We won’t be long, boy,” I tell him. “And when we come back, everything might be different.”
I swallow again. I keep doing that, as though the emotion is building up too much, as though I can’t take it.
I hope it’s for the better, I don’t add.
I can’t voice that.
Despite what Autumn and Charley have said, there’s still a layer of fear coating me, telling me that this might end in disaster.
What Rachel and I have is so perfect, easy, and good to risk it…
It almost makes me want to stop to bide my time.
But I can’t imagine a world where I don’t do this. I can’t imagine a world where I don’t declare that Rachel is mine and mine alone for every single person to hear.
My phone begins to buzz from the table.
Hey, I’m downstairs. You told me to text
I clench my teeth, nodding to myself.
“This is it, boy. This is it.”
I’m on my way
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rachel
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Ryland seems far more serious today than he has for the past two weeks.
Ever since we reconnected, it’s like we’ve opened up to each other in the best possible way. It’s like we’ve been able to act like teenagers one minute and sincere lovers the next, leaping from joking to lovemaking to emotional declarations and everything in between.
But this Ryland is completely new with his clenched jaw, narrowed eyes, and hands squeezing the steering wheel so freaking tight his knuckles are white.
He looks dashing in his dress shirt, dressier than the usual sort he wears, with the sleeves rolled down and buttoned with cufflinks. His face is clean-shaven, his hair swept to the side.
“Don’t want to ruin the surprise, do you?” he grins, glancing at me. “It’s not much further.”
I smooth my hands over my belly, clawing on as a shiver runs through me. A thought is bouncing around my head, a crazy idea combining wedding bells with I love you and a happily ever after I could never have envisioned before Ryland came into my life.
I’d tell myself to stop it, to never let my mind go to these unrealistic places.
But my whole life now has become a testament to how the impossible can happen.
Still, I need to be careful.
What we have is perfect in every freaking way. I don’t want to ruin that by presuming too much.
“Have you thought about what I said last night?” he asks.
“About quitting my job?”
He nods.
“I want to. Obviously, it’s not like I dreamed of helping people fix their internet connection when I was a kid. But I don’t want to be a burden to you.”
“Not to be blunt, my little worrier, but I’m a millionaire, and you’re the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. It’s not a burden.”
“But what if….”
He turns a corner onto a quieter street, slowly guiding us to the end of the road.
“What if?” he prompts.
It’s the concern I haven’t been able to voice. I haven’t let myself steer too close to it.
“What if you change your mind?” I suddenly blurt out. “And then I won’t have a job. Autumn will be screwed because she needs my half of the rent money. If you–”
The car comes to a stop outside a squat office-style building set behind a pretty painted fence. There’s a nice garden, flowers in abundance, but I notice the giant red bow stretching from one side of the cozy-looking building to the other.