“No, you don’t understand. I knew I wanted you from the very first moment I saw you… all those dates that you went on? In my bar? It was killing me every single time that I sawmy girlwith another guy. It was one of the best days of my life when I finally got to smack some sense into one of them.”
I swallowed down the lump that was steadily building in my throat. Why was David making this hard? When this was already so hard…
“It’s not that simple. You can’t just say that you don’t care about your scent match.”
“Look at me.” David waited until my gaze met his… as I stared into his kind and beautiful blue eyes. “I don’t care about scent matches. If you think that I’m going to throw away my shot at love with the woman my heart beats for… because some other girl might smell really good… well, you would be dead wrong. I’m not picking someone because of how they smell. I wantyou.I chooseyou.”
My jaw dropped.
What was he saying?
David held my face in his hands, gently caressing my cheeks. He held me as if I were made of glass—like I was precious to him.
“Youare my person.You’rethe one for me. If biology says differently, then fuck biology. Fuck what everyone says I should want. I know what I want, and that’s you. You, Avril. In my arms and in my bed every night and at my side every day for the rest of my life.”
“But,” I whispered. This sounded like it was too good to be true. How could I trust it? “When I mentioned how I wasn’tcancelling my wedding… you didn’t sound like you wanted to get married.”
“Yes, I’m not going to lie. It sounds crazy to get married after dating someone for less than a month. It’s stupid and borderline dangerous to marry someone you barely know…” David was shaking his head.
Okay, wow.
I was already torn up with the thought of breaking up with David. This was fine, just eviscerate me a little bit more. Why not?
“But you know what would be really crazy? Paying all those thousands of dollars and planning something you’ve been dreaming about your whole life—then letting it all go without a fight.”
My eyes snapped up to meet his. Was he… did he mean what I thought that he meant?
“You know what? It’s not stupid if it’s what you really want. This wedding—that’s your truth, even if no one understands it. There’s nothing stupid about living your truth. This wedding is everything that you are. It’s everything that’s important to you. If this is what makes you feel happy, then I want that for you. I would do anything for you.”
I gasped.
David must have seen that I was still kinda staring at him like he had two heads.
“Wait, stop trying to break up with me for one second—I need to grab something. I’ll be right back.”
Without even stopping to put on some pants, David leaped up, rushing to his desk and rummaging around inside the drawers. He went as far as tossing some bits of paper aside to the floor in his haste—which totally wasn’t like him. David was pretty much the polar opposite of hand-towel-horror guy; he was actually fairly clean and well organized.
David grabbed something and then rushed back into the bed, pulling back the covers and reclaiming the spot he’d just left at my side.
“I got this for you.”
But he had a little velvet box in his hands…
“I have never had anything in my life feel morerightthan I have felt in these past few weeks with you. I’ve felt it in my soul, with every ounce of me, that you, Avril Stryker, you are the one for me.”
He opened the box.
Inside of it was an exquisite marquise diamond ring, with round diamond accents surrounding the center stone… It was breathtaking and sparkling and looked like it was designed for a fairy princess.
“Avril Stryker. Will you marry me?”
He was starting to look a little blurry. Probably because my eyes were filling with tears. “But you said that getting married so soon was dangerous.”
At this point, I needed to shut up. Clearly, the man wanted me, and I wanted him. I was about to take it back and jam the ring onto my finger when David answered me.
“You’re absolutely right. There’s no guarantee that the two of us would work out. There never is with marriages. But if the two of us don’t work out, we have options.”
“Like what?”
