A happy-tears smile tugs the corners of my lips. “I can’t believe you were freaking out about this.”
Lucky strokes my cheek with the back of his fingers. “Never thought I’d ask anyone to marry me. Especially not after I was such a dick to them...twice.”
“But I forgave you.” I wink. “Twice.”
“I know. I still don’t really know what I’m doing.” He holds up the ring between his fingertips and turns it. “I started shopping for this that night you woke up and called me all disoriented and scared ‘cuz you thought you were…” His dark blue eyes glitter just slightly, and he hitches one shoulder against the bed. “Y’know. And you were saying all that stuff about everything you never got to do. And all I wanted was for you to get better so I could give you all of it. I realized through all this that everything I’ve ever survived had only one purpose. And it was just so I could find you. I’ve never really believed in anything, but I believe that with everything I’m made of.”
I have to press my lips together to keep the urge to cry in check. “So, ask me.” Lucky flashes a wide grin and shifts out from under me and climbs out of bed, and I sit up, looking at him questioningly. “Where are you going?”
He stands in front of the bed and gestures at himself with both hands. “I gotta do at least part of this the right way. That means gettin’ on my knees.”
I smirk. “I thought you didn’t get on your knees for anyone.”
And then he immediately does, lowering himself in front of me. “Well, Ididn’t. Until you.”
He picks up my hand and smooches it, and I think of the concert where I first met him only a few months earlier when he did that, and I thought I’d made a fool of myself.
It seems that literally everythingcan change in a short period of time.
Although, now that I’m thinking about it, there is one thing I kind of want to stay the same.
“Wait.” I squeeze his hand to make him pause. “You have to say it for me. If you were ever going to say it, this is when you should.”
He drops his face to laugh under his breath and looks back up at me. “If I’m being honest, I think that was only ever meant for you, too. I think I’m gonna retire it.” He dips his head, pressing another kiss to my hand, much longer this time, and then meets my brimming gaze. “Lucky loves you. More than anything. More than I thought I couldlove anything. And I’m gonna love you for as long as I live and then some. Marry me, Ava doll?”
“Yes,” I say without a beat of hesitation. “A hundred thousand times yes. And I love you, too. I honestly always have.”
“I know.” He slips the ring on my finger, and I cup his chin, leaning forward to kiss him.
And I kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him, and after weeks of nobody being allowed to so much as touch me,kissing this man feels like the one thing that I really needed to completely heal me.
After a moment or two, Lucky abruptly tears his lips away from mine. “Hold up one hot second.”
He pulls away so fast that it leaves me with my neck reaching forward from my body in an attempt to reclaim the kiss. “What?”
He arches one eyebrow coyly and looks at me through heated blue eyes. “The last time we were talking about me gettin’ on my knees, you had something else in mind.”
A flush of heat whooshes through my entire body, nearly melting me into a puddle on the spot, and my shoulders go limp with anticipation. “Oh please.Please, please, please.I need that like you wouldn’t believe.”
Lucky inches forward, reaching for my leggings and shimmying both them and my panties over my hips and down my legs. In doing so, he briefly leans over me, forcing me to lie on my back while he jerks my knees to pull my ass to the edge of the bed.
“Let’s get one thing straight here, Ava doll,” he murmurs, his lips grazing mine while he slips his hand between my thighs to stroke my wet, aching pussy. My breathing hitches, and I whimper. “If you’re gonna be my wife, you will never have to beg for this. Or anything. For as long you live. And you’re gonna live for a long,longtime. So am I. Because if all this shit couldn’t end us, nothing else will. Know that. Understand that. Believe that.”
Despite my intoxicating wantonness, my eyes fill, and I nod. “I do.”
I do.
Come hell, high water, pandemics, civil unrest, and whatever other fucked-up shit fate has in store, nothing is going to get in the way of that, and nothing will ever separate us again.
Not even a stupid little piece of glass.
